ZEITGEIST, THE
MOVIE
By Tyler Vile
Peter
Joseph’s Zeitgeist,
the Movie isn’t the type of movie that you’d see at your
local Cineplex or
on late night television. It was released free for viewing on the
internet in
June 2007,
a true “independent” film.
Zeitgeist
is sort of
a hybrid montage/manifesto of the radical left in the
late 20th and early 21st
centuries. It uses well edited
images and sound bytes from artists and thinkers of recent times, such
as anti
establishment comedy geniuses Bill Hicks and George Carlin as well as
countless
others.
The
monologues are sometimes
accompanied by arbitrary trance music and
trippy visuals, which raises the question of whether this was made for
the
politically minded, or those on drugs.
The film
promotes atheism, anti-capitalism, and anti-totalitarianism. While I
completely
support all of these things, I feel that this movie at times pushes
these
ideals into the absurd and points too often to the “vast right
wing
conspiracy.”
It
warns of a coming New World Order
through talking about the
European Union, and the proposed North American, South American, Asian,
and
African Unions merging into one
Brave New
World-esque world state.
That’s
the only thing that seems
outlandish to me
in this film, because these unions have yet to take place and that part
of the
film is mostly empty postulating and fear tactics.
The
portions that address
war, religion, and capitalism are much more grounded in sense and
history.
Religion
has been used as a means of
control for centuries, war is about profit
and conquest and always has been, and the “free” market system has
given the
corrupt and greedy a means to rule society.
The film’s ultimate goal
is
revolution through education, and I would say it does a
fairly
good job of
achieving that.
