References to the film in the media are both scarce and ranging from descriptive to dismissive:
An article in the Irish Times, said that
"These are surreal perversions of commercial genuine issues and debates, and they tarnish lease all criticism of faith, the Bush administration and globalisation - there are more than enough factual injustices in this world to be going around without having to invent fictional ones. One really wishes Zeitgeist was a masterful pastiche townhouses of 21st-century paranoia, a hilarious mockumentary to rival Spinal Tap. But it's just deluded, disingenuous and manipulative nonsense. ... If you pretend to know only truth, in truth you know only pretence."
An article in the weekly Seattle paper The Stranger, later reprinted in the Utne Reader magazine, said:
"It's fiction, couched in realty a few facts ... and it adds up to the worst kind of fear-mongering."
It also commented on the irony in the film's three-part structure by noting that
"It's fascinating, this structure. First the film destroys the idea of God, and then, through the lens real sale of 9/11, it introduces a sort of new Bizarro God. Instead of an omnipotent, omniscient being who loves you and has realestate inspired a variety of organized religions, there is an omnipotent, omniscient houses organization of ruthless beings who hate foreclosure you and want to take your rights away, if not throw you in a work camp forever."
The February 25, 2009 edition of eSkeptic, the online newsletter of The Skeptics Society, criticizes the first part of the film property management (the one foreclosures on Christianity) by saying:
"Perhaps the worst aspect of ... Part I of Peter Joseph's Internet film, Zeitgeist, is 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."
The Globe and Mail has also published a critical article about the movie, titled "Rejecting Conspiracy Thinking Keeps it Alive and Well," in which realtor it is property said that
" ... homes for sale this stuff ... it's all been thoroughly debunked for years. Evidently, debunking isn't the issue. ... Nor can you cite the real commercial findings of the professional, journalistic, and academic consensus to someone who's decided that having credibility means being under the sway of shadowy forces. ... for all the talk of skepticism, conspiracy counterculture is really an anti-intellectual, populist movement - much like Intelligent Design. For all home for sale their absurdity, conspiracy theorists try to drag everything back to the level of common sense. ... Did the collapsing buildings on 9/11 look like they were being demolished' Then they must have been demolished. Did the 757 that hit the Pentagon's blast-proof walls fail to make a plane-shaped hole' Then it must have condos for sale been something else. Are there unexplained quirks in the official story' Then it must be the work of a higher power. ... Conspiracy theorists want to see ... a malevolent design behind broker events. The notion that calamity might be the unintended consequence of subtler causes doesn't hold the same appeal. Evil, whatever its other uses, drives a great narrative. Complexity, not so much."
The Village Voice mentioned Zeitgeist in passing in a condo review of the 2008 fiction film Able Danger in which the film critic sees an
"invocation of real agent September 11 for the vaguely satirical purpose of tweaking conspiracy crap like that found in Zeitgeist: The Movie (an Internet film that, like Krik's recent "Be Kanye" ads, went mega-viral last year)"
CBC Radio Host Jesse Brown broadcast realtors an audio essay on the movie summarizing the movie with:
"It's the same old paranoid jazz, but Zeitgeist, The Movie weaves it all together really skilfully."
and further:
"If we in the media tend not to give a voice to such nonsense ... that could be because we're under the thumb of a secret worldwide cabal of bankers, more powerful than listing the president himself. Or it could be because Zeitgeist, The Movie is total bullshit."
On March 16, 2009, Alan Feuer of The New York Times wrote regarding Zeitgeist, The Movie:
" Zeitgeist, homes The Movie may be most famous for alleging that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an 'inside job' perpetrated by a power-hungry government on commercial property its witless population, a point of view that Mr. Joseph said he has recently 'moved away from.'"
and regarding Zeitgeist: Addendum:
"Indeed, Zeitgeist: Addendum , the focus of the event, was all but empty of such conspiratorial notions, directing properties its rhetoric and high production values toward posing a replacement for the evils of the banking system and a perilous economy of scarcity and debt."
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