5. Zeitgeist: The Movie - Peter Joseph
Zeitgeist enjoyed great success upon its release, particularly with an online audience. It swiftly became the most viewed documentary film on the internet for a full 6 months and there was frenzied talk of an entirely new form of viral filmmaking in response to it all. But given the fantastical, unfounded, blatantly moronic content of the film, Zeitgeists success is a real shame. A warning against the establishments ability to drain its citizens of intellectual, personal freedom, Zeitgeist was a call-to-arms in how we process the truth and how to find the real truth through our own self-empowered, wide-ranging, archival research. Too much dependency on one source of the truth, ie the establishments prevailing narrative, leads to collective idiocy, so the documentary film attests. At times a polemic, other times merely an apocryphal botched-job of a fil , Zeitgeist has a few main targets for its accusations; firstly the myth of Jesus Christ, claiming that most Christian teaching was borrowed from Ancient Egyptian myths. Secondly, the accusation that the U.S government knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance of them happening and thirdly an altogether odd claim that the banking sectors corruption and collusion with the media has created poisonous information highways which we must fight back against. Certain anti-Semitic strains have been detected in the film conviction that so many bankers are pulling strings behind the curtain. Zeitgeist goes as far to say that the Federal Reserve and IRS are in on the act (though what the act is exactly it doesnt really say), and that these conspirators even set up their own bank in a bid to solve their own financial problems. Zeitgeist is a befuddled movie with befuddled claims but does at least make a thought-provoking link between income tax and patriotism. Zeitgeist was messianic in its call-to-arms for its viewers to form an informed and urbane youth class of sceptical technocrats but so often the films messages are transparently exposed as being the fustian tirade of one individual. Peter Joseph, a kind of stoned version of Michael Moore, wrote, directed and produced the film on a shoestring budget of $7000. Its occasionally outrageous accusations are never cited or even explained before the next major accusation comes along. In a way its all good fun but not necessarily harmless. For Zeitgeist built up a certain cult support, particularly amongst a young demographic who saw the film as expressing holistic, universal truths. It became a thick persons idea of what a mind-blowing documentary was like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a36_CwzA0bk There is a poetic kind of beauty to Zeitgeists attempts at the truths. For a film which warns us against believing in unregulated, top-down information flows, its opening gambit of a claim (a blatant, outrageous fib) that there is no evidence a Boeing 747 hit the Pentagon is a blooper if ever there was one. Photos exist of just such a plane and just such a government building. Defendants of the film claim that Zeitgeist isnt about objective, factual truths (oh really) but about making the viewer aware to the possibility of an alternative narrative than the one which prevailing wisdom (based on government-centric information flows) promotes. Which is all well and good but rather than being a clever, post-modern jest at the way we attain knowledge, mostly Zeitgeist was just plain wrong in the knowledge it spouted. It wasnt outlandish, it was just inaccurate. But, as a new form of media phenomenon, the online success story Zeitgeist is a vital piece in the evolution of the documentary puzzle. Personally, I think Charlie Brooker might devote an entire episode to Zeitgeist; The Movie.