Chamblee54

A discussion group chose to feature Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. The 1992 flick is about Noam Chomsky, and his thoughts. His 1988 book, with a similar title, got this one star review: “Book came with a booklice and a carpet beetle.”
MC opens at “Erin Mills Town Center, the home of the world’s largest permanent, point-of-purchase video wall installation.” You see several of these video walls in MC. They are a matrix of living room sized tv’s, with wide black bars separateing them. A video wall was quite modern in 1992. Today, it is obsolete and boring. This is a metaphor for MC. While it’s ideas may have been cutting edge thirty years ago, they have been replaced many times. Is the news any more honest today, than in 1992?
MC is about how the media, and government, control the American people. Historically, when governments want to tell you what to do, they threaten to kill you. The American system is a bit more subtle. We use advertising techniques, and selective use of information, to get you to do what the government’s bidding. There is a quote about this in the film.
Interviewer: “Manufacturing Consent,” what is that title meant to describe? Chomsky: Well, the title was actually borrowed from a book by Walter Lippmann, written back around 1921, in which he described what he called the manufacture of consent as a revolution in the practice of democracy. What it amounts to is a technique of control. And he said this was useful and necessary because the common interests, the general concerns of all people, elude the public. The public just isn’t up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a specialized class. … There’s a version of this expressed by … theologian Reinhold Niebuhr … His view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent over-simplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.
MC was made when George HW Bush was President. Chomsky said something about stage managed elections. The 1992 elections were an example. Mr. Bush was a war-time President, with a quick victory. He should have been easily re-elected. Instead, Ross Perot ran as a third party candidate. The Republican vote was divided. The Democratic Governor of Arkansas was elected President.
Heavy-handed gimmicks illustrate some of the arguments. An article in the London times becomes a misleading article in the New York Times. A group of actors, in medical costumes, pretend to perform surgery. The patient on the operating table is the article. Sections of the article are removed with a scalpel. This is not how newspapers work. It should be no surprise that when AP sends an article to 100 newspapers, the text is going to appear in many different ways. Often, a paragraph is removed because there is not room for it. It is not always a sinister plot.
One of the central stories is the treatment given to the Cambodian genocide, and the war in East Timor. I heard a great deal about Cambodia, probably because it was a bunch of commies doing it. I may have heard about East Timor once or twice. Apparently it was a nasty little genocide. Unfortunately it was on behalf of some American allies, so we never heard about it. In the years since MC, East Timor gained independence from Indonesia, and is functioning today.
At the time MC was released, there was an exhibit in downtown Atlanta. Tbilisi, Georgia (თბილისი, საქართველო) was the “sister city” of Atlanta. I was talking to a lady. “In our country everything is run by the secret police. In this country everything is run by the banks and the computers.” In many ways, it doesn’t matter what the 99% thinks. The only opinion that really matters is who controls the capital, to finance everything. It is certainly convenient if the people do as they are told, and don’t make trouble, but ultimately it comes down to who has control of the money.
Much of this movie is the personality of Noam Chomsky. In one remarkable moment, he admits “I’m not given to false modesty.” Mr. Chomsky comes across as a rude, abrasive piece of work. One tough-to-watch sequence is devoted to a debate in the Netherlands, with Mr. Chomsky speaking past his opponent. It is typical of many discussions. People seldom address the concerns of those who disagree. In many ways, Mr. Chomsky plays the same selective information game as the media he roasts in MC. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.