What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Faking the Moon Landing
I’ll be first in line to see Fly to the Moon when it opens on July 12th. Based on the trailer , the film tells a light-hearted but plausible story about how and why NASA might have faked the moon landing. The clip even makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to the conspiracy theorists who are going to eat this movie like buttered popcorn.
By creating fictional characters based on real people, and mixing real-life details of governments’ attempts to “sell” the moon landing to the public with whimsical elements and a “they faked it all” message, “Fly Me to the Moon” will remain soft headed by people saying, ” That’s right .” that’s all that happened!” for years, even if the film was clearly intended as a joke. (Conspiracy theorists are not known for their sense of humor.)
Five Movies That Shaped Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theorists tend not to be very creative either, so they always borrow heavily from movies when it comes time to formulate their paranoid worldview. Where you and I see entertainment, they see veiled revelations and secret plans – confirmation that their strangest ideas are true. To prepare for next month’s disinformation campaign, let’s delve into five science fiction films that have had a significant influence on conspiracy theorists and explore the connections between these cinematic stories and real-world beliefs.
Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang’s vision of a world in which a happy-go-lucky elite lives in glittering skyscrapers while lowly fly-by-nights toil in squalor below has influenced conspiracy theorists for nearly 100 years. While I don’t think most modern conspiracy theorists actively watch silent German films from the 1920s, Metropolis influenced every science fiction film that followed, and the entire plot of the conspiracy theory is laid out in the film: This is how the robot Maria controls the minds of citizens. a simplified depiction of a class system intended as an illustration but taken as literal truth, the use of esoteric imagery of the Tower of Babel and the Whore of Babel—fringe thinkers like to associate things with misunderstood antiquity. It’s all there.
Where to watch: The Roku Channel, Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, Kino Film, digital rental.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
This 1962 film greatly shaped the public understanding of brainwashing. Shadow actors secretly influencing the minds of innocent people through nefarious mechanisms are present in almost every conspiracy theory, usually because it is the only explanation for why the sheep cannot see the TRUTH. it’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM (All caps is another useless argument.) But The Manchurian Candidate ‘s portrayal of brainwashing and mind control isn’t particularly accurate or helpful, but how people’s thoughts can and can’t be manipulated is far more important . complex and nuanced than shown in the film. It’s a shame that the CIA destroyed (or hid) most of the results of their (very real) mind control research, because if you go deep into “Project Paperclip” and other covert influences. programs, it begins to appear that research has actually reached the depressing conclusion that esoteric methods such as hypnosis, truth serum, secret dosing of LSD and similar gross human rights violations do not work as well as simply extracting confessions from people .
Where to watch: MGM+, The Criterion Channel, Tubi, digital rental.
Capricorn One (1978)
Moon landing conspiracy theories began with the publication of a pamphlet by Rockedyne employee Bill Kaysing , “We’ve Never Been to the Moon.” To ensure that the space program would continue to be funded (Bizarre idea; why do they even care what the public thinks?) The film continued to inspire new moon landing conspiracy theories in an unholy feedback loop, including the one that formed the basis of the film. ” The Shining “ is Stanley Kubrick’s secret confession that he helped NASA create footage of astronauts bouncing around on the lunar surface. demonstrating how impossible it would be to convincingly fake footage of a space mission – this was a big budget production where they were really trying for realism, but the Capricorn One mission to Mars looks fake as hell.
Where to watch: Prime Video , Peacock , Hulu , The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Freevee, digital rental.
Alternative 3 (1977)
The British mockumentary Alternative 3 is another film based on a conspiracy theory. Few people have seen the original program – it only aired in the UK and Australia – but its ideas still resonate in conspiracy circles. The film begins with an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of 24 British scientists and ends with a shadowy secret government program in which elites are fleeing to colonies on the Moon and Mars to escape global warming. In Alternative 3, the moon landings are legal, but are only undertaken as a smokescreen to hide the real space program. So Alternative 3 has secret space programs, a shadowy cabal of rich people pulling the strings, slave colonies on the moon, and even aliens, all of which have become gospel to a certain circle of fringe thinkers. It’s easy to see why it had such an impact. This is a really well made film (see how the Mars landing is brilliantly dramatized in this film). Here in the US, a “novelization” of the film was released as (fictional) Secret Documents and quickly became a bestseller. Due to a publication date error that affected some bookstore chains, it was placed on store shelves early and then quickly removed, leading to hysteria among the fringe newsletters and reactionary radio shows that made up the conspiracy theory community before the advent of the Internet. . It was as if the government had censored the book’s release.
Where to stream: YouTube
The Matrix (1999)
Unlike Alternative 3, few people believe that 1999’s The Matrix is a literal documentary, but if you accept the film’s premise—that reality itself is suspect so you can’t even trust your own senses—it’s not matter. The idea of alternate realities wasn’t invented by The Matrix , but the film presented it so attractively that it spread even among people who wouldn’t normally consider such esoteric ideas. The idea that you have “taken the red pill” and can see the actual reality in which the rest of us are stuck in our pods receiving a stream of fake sensory information is intoxicating for some, as it removes the cognitive dissonance that arises from when your beliefs are questioned, which helps explain why everyone backs away from you when you start telling them about how they faked the moon landing.
Where to watch: Netflix, digital rental.