Saturday, February 6, 2010

I'm a conspiracy theorist (but I know where to draw the line)

I don't often pick shoddy movies, but tonight I picked a couple of them. First off was "Zombieland" which scored 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm not sure how that happened. It was funny for about forty minutes and then the plot went to shit and I hoped half of the main characters (the hapless women who would do well to star in a Stephanie Meyer book) would die already.
The next one was all me: "The Conspiracy to Rule the World". Michael cast his gaze over at me several times during this movie and I begged him to give it a chance. I thought: these guys are up against Big Media and they don't have any money and so forgive them their penchant for punk rock, random and jolting editing and predilection for cheesy graphics.
The "documentary" started out pretty strong, though it was covering very familiar terrain in regards to:
  • was something affixed to one of the planes that flew into the towers?
  • why is there no video footage of the plane hitting the Pentagon?
  • why was there no wreckage of the plane that hit the Pentagon?
  • were bombs planted in any of the towers?

The film makers seemed to enjoy honing in on BBC reporter Jane Standley's report that WTC7 collapsed twenty minutes before it actually did as though this was some sort of smoking gun. Do you think, perhaps, that if you were stationed in NYC on that day as planes were flying into city landmarks and thousands of people were dying and the emergency responders were being stretched to capacity and hundreds of thousands of people were in a state of shock and panic that maybe, just maybe, inaccurate information was being passed around and some of it made it to the air? I mean, is that really less of a plausible theory than one that sees this particular reporter embroiled in some sort of intricate and complex terrorist plot in which she inadvertently forgets to keep her mouth shut until the allotted time?
Hey. 9/11 was an excellent opportunity for the US government to ram a lot of nefarious things down the throat of a citizenry embroiled in grief and patriotism. Read Shock Doctrine: it will change the way you view the world.
The difference here is that Naomi Klein references the hell out of almost every claim she makes. I have never read a book that had such a vociferous bibliography. That is how you fight the enemy and dispel myths. That is why David Suzuki doesn't raise his voice or cast wild allegations about the climate.
Do you want to be taken seriously? Then put together a serious argument and back it up with facts.
This movie was so bad as to be unintelligible. I was totally lost when one of the main contenders in the movie started rambling in an almost incoherent manner about the first born children of some passengers aboard one of the doomed flights being kidnapped and then the conversation morphed into uranium and I almost turned the movie off.
If you can't site your sources? If you can't site facts? Don't make a documentary and expect to be viewed as anything other than a crackpot. "Films" like this make people throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There is a valid point here: people are being stripped of their rights and freedoms; the populace is becoming increasingly surveilled; it is becoming increasingly difficult to be an anonymous citizen; dissent is being dealt with more severely; the mainstream media (for the most part) is utterly biased and a barren wasteland in regards to truth and independent journalism.
Don't watch this movie. Check out Naomi Klein and Gwynne Dyer. Watch "The Corporation". Please: if you have other suggestions - post them here.
"The Conspiracy to Rule the World" is not the way to change peoples' opinions and it makes the job of those who do wish to change the world that much more difficult because they now have to defend such movies.
I literally have a twitch in my left eye and am now going to bed.

1 comment:

judith said...

These types of movie makers feed off those types of people who toss the babies out with the bathwater... b/c they just keep having those babies. These are the same ones who make up that crap and send it out in emails for old ladies to get all upset over.

Next time consider renting a Monty Python movie!