| Zeitgeist: The Movie | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Peter Joseph |
| Produced by | Peter Joseph |
| Written by | Peter Joseph |
| Music by | Peter Joseph |
| Editing by | Peter Joseph |
| Distributed by | GMP LLC |
| Release date(s) | June 18, 2007 |
| Running time | 122 min |
| Language | English |
Zeitgeist: The Movie is a 2007 documentary film by Peter Joseph. It asserts a number of conspiracy theory-based ideas, including the Christ myth theory, alternative theories for the parties responsible for the September 11 attacks in 2001 and that bankers manipulate the international monetary system and the media in order to consolidate power.
The film was released online on June 18, 2007, on zeitgeistmovie.com.[1] While the film has been praised by some for being "compellingly edited", it has also been criticized for factual inaccuracies, and the quality of its arguments, with critics describing it as "agitprop" and "propaganda".[2][3][4][5][6] A sequel, Zeitgeist: Addendum, focuses further on the monetary system and advocates a resource-based social system influenced by the ideas of Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project.[7][8] Following Zeitgeist: Addendum, Peter Joseph created an organization called the Zeitgeist Movement to promote the ideas of Fresco's Venus Project.[9] Joseph also produced an updated 2010 version of the original film in order to address dated material and improve its overall accuracy.[10] A third film called Zeitgeist: Moving Forward was released theatrically on 15 January 2011 and online on 25 January 2011.[11] Peter Joseph has stated that its topics are focused on human behavior, technology, and rationality.[12]
Contents |
The film opens with animated abstract visualizations, film and stock footage, a cartoon and audio quotes about spirituality, followed by clips of war, explosions, and the September 11 attacks. This is followed by the film's title screen. The film's introduction ends with a portion of the late comedian George Carlin's monologue on religion accompanied by an animated cartoon. The rest of the film, divided into three parts, is narrated by Peter Joseph.
Part I questions religions as being god-given stories, arguing that the Christian religion specifically is mainly derived from other religions, astronomical assertions, astrological myths and traditions, which in turn were derived from or shared elements with others. In furtherance of the Jesus myth hypothesis, this part argues that the historical Jesus is a literary and astrological hybrid, nurtured politically. The work of Acharya S, author of The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, was used extensively in part I of the movie. She also acted as consultant for part I of the movie.[13]
Part II uses integral footage of several 9/11 conspiracy theory films to claim that the September 11 attacks were either orchestrated or allowed to happen by elements within the United States government in order to generate mass fear, initiate and justify the War on Terror, provide a pretext for the curtailment of civil liberties, and produce economic gain. These claims include that the US government had advance knowledge of the attacks, that the military deliberately allowed the planes to reach their targets, and that World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, and 7 underwent a controlled demolition. In a March 17, 2009, New York Times article, Alan Feuer reported that Peter Joseph had indicated that he had "moved away from" his opinion on whether the September 11 attacks were an inside job perpetrated by the U.S. government, but a later clarification on the Zeitgeist Movement website clarified that Joseph was shifting his focus, not retracting his views.[7][14]
Part III argues that three wars of the United States during the twentieth century were waged purely for economic gain by what the film refers to as "international bankers". The film alleges that certain events were engineered as excuses to enter into war including the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
According to the film, the US was forced by the Federal Reserve Bank to become embroiled in these wars, not with a view to win but to sustain the conflict, as this forces the US government to borrow money from the bank, allegedly increasing the profits of the "international bankers". The film then goes on to claim that the Federal Income Tax is illegal.
This section also claims the existence of a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a "North American Union". The creation of this North American Union is then alleged to be a step towards the creation of "One World Government." The film speculates that under such a government, every human could be implanted with an RFID chip to monitor individuals and suppress dissent.
An updated version of Zeitgeist released in 2010 removes the North American Union section among other changes.[15]
The film was screened on November 10, 2007 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood as part of the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival, where it won the Best Feature Award in the Artivist Spirit category for feature-length documentaries.[16][17] In September 2008, Zeitgeist, The Movie also received a Special Acknowledgment Award at Rutger Hauer's ICFILMS Film Festival in Milan, Italy.[18] The movie is available on DVD, along with Addendum, which was later packaged as a bonus DVD with The Lost Children of Babylon's Zeitgeist: The Spirit Of The Age album, released on November 30, 2010.
Filmmaker Dmitri Bushny, writing in the Russian weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, was a rare voice in the mainstream press in praising the film, saying that it "utterly destroyed the official version" of the September 11 attacks. Acknowledging widespread criticism of part 2 as "internet nonsense", he defended the film for raising questions about the attacks, arguing that "there is no distortion in putting forward rational questions and trying to answer them. This is done persuasively, and no perception of underhand shuffling or manipulation arises."[19]
A review in The Irish Times entitled “Zeitgeist: the Nonsense” wrote that “these are surreal perversions of genuine issues and debates, and they tarnish all criticism of faith, the Bush administration and globalization—there are more than enough factual injustices in this world to be going around without having to invent fictional ones."[20] Other reviews have characterized the film as "conspiracy crap",[21] “based solely on anecdotal evidence” and “fiction couched in a few facts”,[22] or disparaging reference is made to its part in the 9/11 truth movement.[7]
Some journalists have focused on it as an example of how conspiracy theories are promulgated in the internet age. For example, Ivor Tossell in the Globe and Mail argued that contradictions in the film are overwhelmed by passion and effective use of video editing:
The film is an interesting object lesson on how conspiracy theories get to be so popular.... It's a driven, if uneven, piece of propaganda, a marvel of tight editing and fuzzy thinking. Its on-camera sources are mostly conspiracy theorists, co-mingled with selective eyewitness accounts, drawn from archival footage and often taken out of context. It derides the media as a pawn of the International Bankers, but produces media reports for credibility when convenient. The film ignores expert opinion, except the handful of experts who agree with it. And yet, it's compelling. It shamelessly ploughs forward, connecting dots with an earnest certainty that makes you want to give it an A for effort.[23]
Filipe Feio, reflecting upon the film's internet popularity in Diário de Notícias, stated that "Fiction or not, Zeitgeist, The Movie threatens to become the champion of conspiracy theories of today."[24]
Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, mentioned Zeitgeist in an article in Scientific American on skepticism in the age of mass media, and the postmodern belief in the relativism of truth. He argues that this belief, coupled with a "clicker culture of mass media," results in a multitude of various truth claims packaged in "infotainment units", such as Zeitgeist, Loose Change, Poltergeist, or The Twilight Zone.[25]
Jane Chapman, a film producer and reader in media studies at the University of Lincoln, called Zeitgeist "a fast-paced assemblage of agitprop", an example of unethical film-making.[26] She accuses Joseph of "implicit deception" through the use of unreferenced and undated assertions, and standard film-making propaganda techniques. While parts of the film are, she says, "comically" self-defeating, the nature of “twisted evidence” and use of Madrid bomb footage to imply it is of the London bombings (she approvingly cites a student journalist who calls it an "out and out lie") amount to ethical abuse in sourcing (in later versions of the movie, a subtitle is added to this footage identifying it as from the Madrid bombings). She finishes her analysis with the comment:
Thus legitimate questions about what happened on 9/11, and about corruption in religious and financial organizations, are all undermined by the film’s determined effort to maximize an emotional response at the expense of reasoned argument.
Skeptic magazine's Tim Callahan criticizing the first part of the film (on the origins of Christianity) wrote that "some of what it asserts is true. Unfortunately, this material is liberally — and sloppily — mixed with material that is only partially true and much that is plainly and simply bogus. […] Zeitgeist is The Da Vinci Code on steroids."[27]
Chris Forbes, Senior lecturer in Ancient History of Macquarie University and member of the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney, severely criticized Part I of the movie, asserting that it has no basis in serious scholarship or ancient sources, and that it relies on amateur sources that recycle frivolous ideas from one another, rather than serious academic sources, commenting, "It is extraordinary how many claims it makes which are simply not true."[28] Similar conclusions were reached by Dr. Mark Foreman of Liberty University.[29]
Acharya S (aka D.M. Murdock), a source and consultant on the the film, responded to Callahan's critique[30] (to which Callahan responded[31]), and also rebutted Forbes' statements insisting that the primary sources used in her research support the ideas in her writings.[32]
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