Drift Reality

Once upon a time I dreamed of making film. While I was teaching English in Korea, I applied to USC and UCLA film schools and was summarily rejected - two additions to what has become quite a litany of rejections I’ve encountered through the years. After pouting for a month or so I said to myself, “F%#k it, I’m going to make a film anyway,” and I borrowed some money from my family, bought a camera and started filming everything I could over in Seoul.

When I returned to the States I spent an entire Summer teaching myself how to edit, and produced a 60-minute piece I dubbed Miguk.

Over the years, Miguk has been watched by literally hundreds of thousands of people, many of them prospective teachers who wanted to learn about what life was like over in Seoul before going. I’ve connected to dozens of people through the film and one of them is now running what I consider one of the top online resources on life in Seoul.

He was recently kind enough to provide a review of Miguk on ZenKimchi for which I am very grateful to him.

In the wake of the altercation, the dark-haired woman and light-haired woman have found a nearby park and begin to discuss the situation. The discussion gradually begins to evolve into something much broader and a realization is made between the two of a underlying connection in their thought processes.

As the dark-haired woman walks the light-haired woman back to her apartment, the light-haired woman shares an experience from her past that enlightens the situation in the present.

With this realization in mind, the dark-haired woman returns to her apartment and equanimity is restored.

In part 2, the dark-haired woman is startled by a mysterious phone call. She looks at her phone and immediately gets dressed and leaves her apartment, and the man who she had been sleeping in bed with.

As she walks down the street, she sees flashes of the man from Part 1 who is teetering while sitting on his bed. As she frantically walks through the city, a couple in an alley nearby begin arguing.

As the dark-haired woman continues to pace through the streets, the couple’s fight begins to crescendo. It becomes violent as the dark-haired woman turns the corner. She sees the altercation and shouts. The man looks up in surprise and quickly dashes away, leaving his counterpart - a woman with blonde hair - crying as she leans against the alley wall.

At its best Zeitgeist, the Movie explores power dynamics latent in religious, political, and economic institutions that have dominated modern Western civilization. At its worst, Zeitgeist is nearly two hours of left-leaning propaganda that borders on stoner conspiracy theory.

At the very least, Zeitgeist is a well-produced piece of cultural production that defies the theory that you need a marketing strategy, a visible producer, director, or even a traditional film production methodology to have an impact Zeitgeist has already been viewed by nearly three million people with none of the above simply by being posted on Google Video and marketed through word-of-mouth.

Interestingly enough, there is no mainstream coverage of Zeitgeist - only blog coverage - perhaps because there is no one visibly associated with the film (which is a great depiction of the relative shortcomings and advantages to the blogosphere versus traditional media). Even the omniscient Wikipedia doesn’t provide any coverage of Zeitgeist.

At any rate, I was recommended Zeitgeist by a close friend of mine with left-leanings and watched it with a bit of skepticism. I found that the film actually kept my attention for nearly two hours (despite my consistent urges to fact check dubious claims made throughout the film).

After watching the movie and noodling it a bit, I’ve drawn a few conclusions:

1. Zeitgeist the Movie was produced on a decent budget Although there was very little original video content produced for the piece and no discernible marketing or distribution costs, there were still substantial financial and time investments that must have gone into the research, planning, and editing of the video. The editing in particular was fairly impressive, stitching a hodgepodge of voice-over, music, still images, video content, animation and sometimes just a black screen together to create an engaging experience. Anyone who thinks that this was produced by a small group of friends wanting to make a subversive video needs to think again.

2. Zeitgeist’s underlying argument doesn’t make a great deal of sense So let me get this straight (note: I don’t believe in these inferences so if you are a fanatical Christian, from the CIA, or a member of the illuminati / federal reserve please do not hunt me down):

• Part 1: The Christian bible appropriated stories and myths from astrology and shares a great deal in common with other mythologies. It has largely been used to subjugate and pacify the masses.
• Part 2: There is allegedly evidence suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration, in large part to satisfy the financial goals of organizations and individuals who profit from war.
• Part 3: The Federal Reserve Bank and federal income tax are institutions controlled by ‘the elite’ and they are manipulated for personal gain (at the expense of the American people).

Am I crazy or do these three inferences have very little to do with one another apart from sharing a vague platform about power dynamics?

It is almost as if three Berkeley professors who respectively teach theology, political sciences, and economics got together, sucked on a bong for several hours, and then decided they would collaborate on a film and split up the screenwriting into three distinct parts without consulting with one another or considering the role of continuity in a film.

3. Zeitgeist is propaganda - Productions that make staunch social or political commentaries but do not contain verifiable sources are basically propaganda. I’m sorry to say it, but this is propaganda of the worst type entertaining, emotionally compelling, and ultimately manipulative. Time and time again, the film draws sweeping conclusions and points out ‘flaws’ in conventional thought with no basis in third-party authorities.

There are only a few instances when a verifiable source is connected with any of the claims made during the video and all too often, the arguments are simply categorical. Even more condemning is the method of overlaying strategically selected audio content over video footage containing a mainstream media logo, conjuring a sense of validity out of thin air.

4. Zeitgeist is worth the price of admission - Actually, the price of admission is free so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is worth slightly more than the price of admission.  I actually found myself engaged for the majority of the film. Considering the number of Hollywood products that are so excruciatingly boring they have left me feeling as though I just had a chunk of my soul nipped out with tweezers, I would say it is pretty impressive that a film primarily distributed through Google video could captivate my interest for nearly two hours.

5. Zeigeist matters - I’m not actually saying that I think Zeitgeist is going to change the world here. What I am saying is that I’m thoroughly amazed that a feature length video production could be anonymously produced, distributed through a free online service, and be watched by millions of people (although I’m sure only a fraction of the viewers made it through the entire thing).

At its core, Zeitgeist is simply about power and that is something I can dig (after all, I did study at the LSE). It attempts to represent the dominant articulation of power in religion, politics and the economy and I think anyone would be crazy to argue that there aren’t serious imbalances in all three of these landscapes. Simply put, Zeitgeist is hyperbole and if taken as such, is a worthwhile experience.

What is not hyperbole however is the fact that in its form, Zeitgeist proves that subversion of dominant institutions is actually feasible in the mediascape. The fact that it exists and continues to rack up views is evidence that an idea can be transformed into a feature length documentary that hits people without a Hollywood budget, Madison Avenue advertising, or any mainstream media coverage.

Ultimately, it is what the video represents, not what it expresses, that is the most compelling argument in Zeitgeist.

Back when I was living in Korea, I decided I wanted to go to film school and become a filmmaker, so I took the GRE, kicked ass, and applied to USC and UCLA film schools.  I was summarily rejected from both - two great additions to my litany of failures in life.

At any rate, if I had gone to film school and made it as a filmmaker I would have made the greatest movie ever made and I would have called it “The Greatest Movie Ever Made.” 

Why would it be the greatest movie ever made?  Because I would cut all the bullshit and give people what they want: The Redskins, Wolverine, the little man from Willow, a naughty schoolgirl, and the alien from Contra. 

It is probably better to show you rather than tell you, so here it is:

I have to admit that the pathetic thumbnail of Chris Crocker’s contorted kabuki face with the caption, ‘Leave Britney Alone,’ was enough to pique my sometimes sordid sense of curiosity to the point of clicking through and watching his painful (for me not him) diatribe on why people need to stop hassling Britney Spears.

I suppose I should preface this by admitting that several days prior, I had actually dug up an online version of Britney Spears’ bumbling performance at the VMAs after hearing it discussed on sports radio on the drive to work in the morning.  Clearly, there was a precedence set in my mind as I thumbed through YouTube several days later and let my eyes linger over the thumbnail for the video before deciding it was clearly a waste of my time and moving on.

At any rate, it was several days later that I was perusing MySpace and saw that a friend of mine had actually posted the clip to another friend’s profile (in the comments section) and I suddenly realized I was going to have to watch this video, which I did.  Now you can watch it as well before proceeding (at your own peril):

At the time I am writing this article, 9:45 PM (ET) on September 18, 2007, I see that nearly 7.5 million people have watched Chris Crocker’s pathetic appeal to the masses.  I see that the video has elicited enough of a response from over 100,000 people that they went so far as to leave a comment.  I can also see that a rather substantial volume of people have already satirized the YouTube video with spin-offs (most of them making a mockery of Chris Crocker).  I also see that in addition to the response in the social media space a quick query of Google News reveals that there are over 150 results for the search term ‘Chris Crocker,’ meaning he had about that many pick-ups in the mainstream media.

David Duchovny’s claim in Californication that “people are getting dumber and dumber” springs immediately to mind but then I suddenly feel ashamed because I realize I am using a quote from a show on Showtime as a frame of reference to look condescendingly down upon pop culture.

How disgustingly hypocritical and sad - especially only 30 minutes after I sat down with the intention to start writing a piece of narrative fiction only to find myself feeling more comfortable writing about Chris Crocker and YouTube.

Or is it?

When I step back and really think about it,  I don’t think people are getting dumber and dumber - I think people have always been dumb. 

I think instead, what is happening is that through social media people have the ability to broadcast their idiocy to the world.  It is almost as if there has been a veil surrounding how dumb people can be (and I am including myself in this categorization) and social media has lifted that veil for all the world to see.

Are we really so short-sighted and arrogant to believe that we were actually somehow more sophisticated when we were younger? 

I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like when I was eighteen I was sitting at home leafing through LL Bean catalogs and looking for the next flannel shirt I wanted to purchase (hey - I was going to high school in Cleveland, Ohio so give me a fuc#%ing break).  Thank God I didn’t have a Webcam and YouTube because I probably would be making Chris Crocker shaking his head in embarrassment  with the crazy s%*t I would have come up with back then (I write ‘back then’ with a nervously optimistic tone). 

If we really put things in perspective, what we have is a young self-absorbed kid who wants to be an acotr, who has managed to independently create something that over 7.5 million people have viewed and received coverage in most major news outlets in the US.  So is he really that much of an idiot? 

Or are we idiots for looking down upon him?