NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9606

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From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Film rev: Manufacturing Consent
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INSIGHT FEATURES / December 1992

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/** media.issues: 251.0 **/
** Topic: Chomsky on Media **
** Written  2:56 pm  Dec 21, 1992 by hrcoord in cdp:media.issues **
From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: Chomsky on Media

/* Written  8:43 pm  Dec 20, 1992 by [e-mail] in igc:nfd.ifeatures */
Film Review / 700 Words

A New Documentary
On Noam Chomsky
and the Media

By David Peterson
Insight Features

    "They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for
their blindness."
                                        --John Milton

   Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonock use this line from the great
English poet as the inscription to their new documentary,
`Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.' The same
quote was also used to inscribe the 1988 book by Chomsky and
Edward Herman, `Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of
Mass Media.'

   The quote captures one of Chomsky's basic themes: in the
relatively freer, formally democratic societies, particularly the
more powerful ones, the role of the media is to blind people to
their real interests in truth, freedom, authenticity, fellowship
and justice.  As a component of an ideological system, the role
of media is to "manufacture the consent" (the phrase penned by
Walter Lippmann in his 1922 book `Public Opinion') of these same
people to policies and to a way of life that is typically not in
their best interest and often self-destructive as well.

   This unhappy fact of life also has a more optimistic
concomitant: the native capacity of people to escape from these
doctrinal constraints.  We all feel the need to move in the
direction of something more truly human, providing we are willing
and able to make the effort.

   Hence ruling elites of every stripe have always found
themselves forced to resort to forms of thought control and
deception.  They have done so more or less to the same extent
that their social structures were unjust or their governments
behaved unjustly, whether against their own citizens or other
countries.

   In Chomsky's perspective, the human species is not without its
emancipatory potential.  Thus, as opposed to the political
insider, the activist's ideal is to help people discover their
decent instincts, as well as to provide them with the moral,
intellectual and political tools they need to act on these
instincts in a positive and constructive fashion.

   The film's general approach is to portray Chomsky's legendary
and uncompromising labors toward this end.  More important, it
succeeds--impressively.  Achbar and Wintonock have managed to
match many of Chomsky's theoretical points with helpful footage
concretely representing the point he's making.

   One good example: Chomsky is shown quoting Reinhold Neibuhr's
infamous line about the need for "necessary illusions," i.e.,
"emotionally potent over-simplifications" to keep the great mass
of people in check and on the proper course.  The filmmakers then
cut in with a Reaganesque PR film on the glories of the Strategic
Defense Initiative, complete with space-based lasers zapping
incoming Soviet ICBMs.  It's a riot--you'll love it.

   The film also has some excellent vintage footage of Chomsky
appearing on Dutch TV, in a 1971 debate with the French historian
Michel Foucault.  There are clips of a debate with William
Buckley on `Firing Line' and of Chomsky speaking outside MIT,
denouncing the technocrats who created the Indochina wars.  There
is a powerful treatment of the comparative U.S. media coverage of
the Cambodian and East Timorese bloodbaths, which serves as a
classic example of the media's subservience to power.

   There are also interviews with people who think the Chomsky-
Herman Propaganda Model is a lot of crap.  From my seat in the
balcony, the film does have one boring lapse. The work is in two
parts; first is "Thought Control" (95 minutes), second is
"Activating Dissent (72 minutes).  About two-thirds of the way
through part one, the filmmakers travel to Media, Pa. Who knows
why the footage is there, except maybe they invested a lot of
time and couldn't bring themselves to cut it?

   Most average, everyday people know little or nothing about
Noam Chomsky.  Yet I think they are the people who would most
enjoy and have their eyes opened by this film.  As Chomsky puts
it toward the end of part two:

   "The question is whether privileged elites should dominate
mass communication, and should use this power as they tell us
they must--namely, to impose `necessary illusions'....Either the
general population will take control of its own destiny and will
concern itself will community interests, guided by values of
solidarity, and sympathy, and concern for others.  Or
alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.

                            -- 30 --

   David Peterson is a free lance writer living in Chicago.
** End of text from cdp:media.issues **