On Saturday evening I attended a brilliant (but under-reported in the media and local blogosphere) culmination of viral marketing: The international showing of the documentary Zeitgeist at the Labia Theatre, Cape Town. I have never seen so many people entrancing and exiting this art nouveau theatre. It seems that these underground left-wing movements are great at below the line marketing. According to the website (whether it can be believed), 95 000 people attended the screenings around the world. Their website traffic also had a great surge (have a look at Compete’s measurements) .

The documentary started off well in Part I with a retracing of Jesus Christ mythology back to Pagan sun-god mythology, and questioning many Western biblical characters and stories. I think this was probably the most factual information they had, so they used this as a technique to win the audience’s trust, much like comedians who use their best material first to get the audience laughing, and then proceed to get less funny whilst still getting the laughs. Part I also had a very tenuous link to the rest of the film, and in fact it made no rational sense to include it (but the filmmakers were certainly not counting on rationality).

As the film progressed into Parts II and III, the left-wing bias became more and more conspicuous and factual bases became, contrarily, more and more hidden. Part II produced a conspiracy theory of absurd proportions, effectively saying that America’s goal is economic creation and justification through secret self-destruction. It began to question the story of 911, and claimed as fact the real ‘motives’ behind it and the real ‘terrorists’ involved (I’m being deliberately opaque here as I’m not going to do a retelling of the documentary). It proceeded to talk of manipulation and propoganda tactics used by governments on their own people. Only the subtle minds in the audience picked up that the exact some tactics of emotional language, extremely selective evidence, and sudden and abrupt changes in sounds and imagery was being concurrently used on them.

Part III devolved even further into a chaotic, selective mess that kept me looking at my cell phone and wondering when it would end. No doubt it contained elements of truth, but these were so scattered across a sea of nonsense that it would be easier finding the Titanic than the real facts. At one point of insanity in the documentary, I felt a mixture of dumbfoundedness and sleepiness at the absurd suggestion that the US government was deliberately making its population dumb.

When the film ended, the leftists (and by that time much of the audience was propagandized into temporary ‘left-istry’) clapped rapturously. Whether that sore feeling on their right hand is still with them remains to be seen.

posted by rowanp at 9:46 pm & filed under culture, ranting, philosophy |