Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

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colinr0380
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Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#1 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Nov 22, 2008 12:52 pm

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

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In an energetic fusion of images and ideas, Manufacturing Consent explores the political life and ideas of the controversial author, linguistic scholar, radical philosopher and activist, Noam Chomsky. Using new and original interviews, archive footage , playful graphics and outrageous illustrations Manufacturing Consent provocatively and entertainingly highlights Chomskys analysis of the media, focusing on democratic societies where populations are not
disciplined by force but are subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control.

Mark Achbar (The Corporation) and Peter Wintonick encourage viewers to question the films own workings, like Chomsky himself encourages listeners to extricate themselves from the web of deceit by undertaking a course of intellectual self-defence.

Extras
* Interview with directors (2007)
* Interview with Chomsky (2007)
* Chomsky v Buckley (1969)
* Chomsky v Silber (1986)
* Chomsky v Dershowitz (2005)
* Necessary Illusions demo tape (1989)
* Companion book to the film (266pp-downloadable pdf)
* Fully uncompressed PCM stereo audio
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#2 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Nov 22, 2008 1:11 pm

Canada 1992 | Directors: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick | Colour | 170 mins (inc. extras)

In an energetic fusion of images and ideas, Manufacturing Consent explores the political life and ideas of the controversial author, linguistic scholar and radical philosopher Noam Chomsky. Travelling with him through Canada, Japan, Europe and across the USA, the film bears witness to a tireless activist informing, challenging and being confronted by the public and the press.

In preparation for the January release of the BFI disc here is the review of the Region 1 Zeitgeist disc released in 2002 by DVD Savant.

Trailer
Last edited by colinr0380 on Wed May 27, 2009 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Gregory
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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#3 Post by Gregory » Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:11 pm

I love this film. Unfortunately, few documentaries on important social and political topics really succeed in holding the viewer completely in their grip for two hours, let alone the 2 hour 45 minute runtime of this one. They make it an engaging (not to mention inspiring and thought-provoking) experience, without ever dumbing things down or resorting to goofiness. The visual flourishes and humor seem like an honest and natural extension of the filmmaking rather than pandering to short attention spans. Sequences such as the news clipping operating room or the roll-out of column inches on Cambodia vs those on East Timor give a playful visual dimension to the issues being discussed. They remind me of the best films of Charles and Ray Eames.

Chomsky himself was pretty set against the project from the beginning and has never seen the film. He's suspicious of gurus and being elevated to one (which he already had, to his embarrassment) and he clearly thinks the topics of his lectures are the important thing, not the person giving them. I understand his concern that focusing on a single, visible "leader" tends to obscure the role of most other historical actors, but I don't take this quite as far as being skeptical of the entire genre of biography, as he is. His life and story have valuable historical relevance, and a profile like this can serve as a good lead-in to other topics. What really justifies the film's length are its many detours (short and long) into things that pop up in Chomsky's lectures and interviews.

The longest of these is a primer on East Timor of about 30 minutes in length, and it is powerful stuff. East Timor's struggle for independence is something I was involved in as an activist and I encouraged people to watch this film on videotape, only partly because of this section. A couple of times, someone would come to me after having seen it, seeming moved and somewhat upset, saying, "I had no idea." This was understandable, as it was before 1999 and there was an almost total absence in the mainstream media of any mention of what was happening in East Timor, as is discussed in the film. Today, the independent documentary boom has developed into its own branch of the media, and a powerful one at that. The quality of many of these documentary-boom era films is very uneven, but I think we're better off overall than before, when the means to make such films were in drastically fewer hands. Achbar and Wintonick's film, produced in 1992, links the era of Emile de Antonio (an important influence) to the current period of documentary flood, and in some ways provides an important and enduring example of how to make the most of the medium.

(Edited to fix typos)
Last edited by Gregory on Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#4 Post by Hail_Cesar » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:51 am

colinr0380 wrote:USA 1992
Ahem... [-X

I didn't know that the national film board of Canada was a USA production company...

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#5 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:36 pm

Whoops! I should have looked closer instead of blindly copying the BFI leaflet listing!

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#6 Post by Chris » Sun Dec 07, 2008 8:04 pm

I haven't seen the specs on the BFI release, but I was very impressed with the Canadian release from Mongrel Media and would be interested to see how it compares. I reviewed the Canadian release here.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#7 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 07, 2009 9:32 am

My understanding is that the BFI discs are pretty much identical to the Mongrel Media release, including all the interviews and the PDF book - the only difference that I'm aware of is that there's also going to be a booklet reproducing a Sight & Sound article on the film, plus biographies of the filmmakers.

The BFI also promises "fully uncompressed PCM stereo audio", but I don't know what the Mongrel Media audio spec was - and in any case it's not really that important for material consisting almost entirely of talking heads!

Anyway, here's the specs off the press release, with the usual caveat about last-minute changes:
• Interview with the directors (2007)
• Interview with Noam Chomsky (2007)
• Chomsky v Buckley debate (1969)
• Chomsky v Silber debate (1986)
• Chomsky v Dershowitz debate (2005)
• Necessary Illusions demo tape (1989)
• Companion book to the film (266 pages – downloadable PDF)
• Illustrated booklet with Sight & Sound review and biographies of the filmmakers
• Fully uncompressed PCM stereo audio

Release date: 26 January 2009
RRP £19.56 / cat. no. BFIVD658 / cert 12
Canada / 1992 / colour, and black and white / English, optional subtitles for the hearing impaired on feature film / 167 mins + 215 mins / DVD-9 / original aspect ratio 1.33:1

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#8 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 07, 2009 9:36 am

Chris wrote:I haven't seen the specs on the BFI release, but I was very impressed with the Canadian release from Mongrel Media and would be interested to see how it compares. I reviewed the Canadian release here.
A tiny correction to an otherwise excellent review: the PDF file is not the original Chomsky/Herman book Manufacturing Consent but the book that was written to accompany the film. But this is impressive enough in its own right, consisting not only of a full transcript of the film but also copious annotations, many of which are more detailed than the relevant segment. It amounts to 266 pages, few of which aren't crammed with material.

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Gregory
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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#9 Post by Gregory » Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:13 pm

MichaelB wrote:...in any case it's not really that important for material consisting almost entirely of talking heads!
It's quite a coincidence that you put it this way, as one of the small handful of songs featured in the film is by Talking Heads.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#10 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:27 am


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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#11 Post by greggster59 » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:44 am

colinr0380 wrote:DVD Outsider review.
Interesting read. More of an essay on Chomsky than a DVD review but Chomsky's views invite scrutiny. For my part, I have always found Chomsky's perspective useful in trying to look at the world from outside the box. His "propaganda model', which is carefully spelled out in the books Manufacturing Consent and Necessary Illusions is an excellent primer on critical thinking. It's no wonder idealogues of all kinds try to discredit him in the mainstream.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#12 Post by Oedipax » Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:15 pm

Wow, I had no idea the extras were going to be so extensive on the bfi edition. I'm ordering right away! I've seen the film several times and it's a great primer on Chomsky's ideas (with a heavy dose of inconvenient truths). It's too bad they didn't also include his debate (now over 20 years ago) with Richard Perle on U.S. foreign policy, it's astonishing. You can find it on YouTube, at least.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#13 Post by machbar » Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:55 pm

Gregory wrote:Chomsky himself was pretty set against the project from the beginning and has never seen the film.
When Noam initially agreed to be filmed, he described our project as a "useful idea" and only once, in a casual conversation well into filming, suggested that I should be making films about movements, rather than individuals. It was an opinion, not an instruction. I felt with Manufacturing Consent and The Corporation I was doing both.

After permission was granted Noam never once objected to being filmed (although his house was off limits to our cameras) and even joked that if we weren't there when he got off the plane, he thought he'd arrived at the wrong place. He has remarked in a complimentary way on several occasions how widely the film has been seen around the world, and the impact it's had, particularly outside the USA. True, he doesn't like being presented as a movement leader, which is why we included him saying that in the film. We also felt that his life and story have valuable historical relevance and contribute to understanding the roots of his analysis.

As to whether he's seen the film, it's hard to say. Before we locked picture, we sent a VHS to him and his wife, Carol. Carol got back to back to us with a couple of comments: during the Japanese award ceremony in the film the order of his first and middle names had been reversed; also, we had a sequence of exterior still images of their home, with a zoom in to his office above the garage which we had match dissolved with some stills we'd found of him seated inside his home office with massive piles of books surrounding him. Carol asked us to correct the order of his names and remove the exterior images of their house for security reasons. We complied. In my conversation with Carol I got the impression Noam may have been listening from the other room as she watched the film.

The main reason he gave for not watching the film was that seeing himself on screen made him uncomfortable because he always had regrets about how he put things in spontaneous conversation, presumably as compared with his more precisely considered writings. (However, he did attend the Boston premiere of The Corporation and joined me on stage for a Q&A). He was later sent a transcript of Manufacturing Consent which he responded to in print, (grudgingly, at 3 in the morning, under my publisher's deadline) so he had a pretty good idea what was in it. His notes in response to the transcript can be found in my companion book to the film, "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (Black Rose Books, 1994), all in italics.

Years later a woman told me she attended at a small video screening of the film at a public library on Cape Cod near where the Chomskys have their summer place. She said she saw Noam there. She said he arrived late and left early.

Mark Achbar

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#14 Post by MichaelB » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:20 am

machbar wrote:His notes in response to the transcript can be found in my companion book to the film, "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (Black Rose Books, 1994), all in italics.
Presumably this is the same book that's presented as a 266-page PDF document on the DVD?

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#15 Post by machbar » Fri Apr 10, 2009 8:09 am

Yes, that's the one. The eco-friendly paperless version.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#16 Post by Gregory » Fri Apr 10, 2009 12:55 pm

Mark, it's an honor to have you post on our forum. I hope the comment you quoted did not suggest to anyone that Chomsky was 100% against the film or had any ill will whatsoever toward the filmmakers. I meant to suggest only that he had some serious reservations about the basic conception of the project for the reasons I explained, and you've elaborated on that in greater detail than I did.

I've heard or read Chomsky talk about the film and/or transcript in a few places (including the Black Rose companion book) but one of my main sources for stating he'd never seen the film was the interview on the Zeitgeist DVD (made 10 years after the film) in which he says he probably never would watch it, mainly for the reasons Mark explained. Interesting to hear reports of his watching at least the middle portion (putting in an "appearance"?).

---
Regarding the BFI edition, I did purchase it and am very pleased with it. My main reason for getting it was to see the long Chomsky v. Dershowitz debate. It was as interesting as I'd expected, and likewise as frustrating. Dershowitz makes a few good points but also trots out many of the same old canards about Chomsky's positions on Israel/Palestine that have already been refuted numerous times in print and, even worse, lowers the professional and intellectual standards of the debate with his irritating "Planet Chomsky" ripostes.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#17 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:41 am

I agree with Gregory, thank you for posting. Manufacturing Consent along with The Corporation would stand as my favourite documentaries of the last couple of decades, extremely accessible to general audiences as Gregory talked about, informative and inspirational in their content and easily rewatchable despite what can initially seem a daunting running time (not to mention subject matter!)

I particularly liked the use of Noam Chomsky in the film and wonder whether Chomsky not wanting the documentary to be 'about him' as talked about above affected the way the film was made, or whether there was already an approach in mind that the film would be more about the ideas and where they took the audience than simply about the man himself? In the finished film Chomsky's ideas are the guiding force but he strikes me as being used less as an all-knowing master who will tell us exactly what to think but more as an 'inspirational tutor' kind of figure who encourages different (or more analytical) thinking from simply accepting the media's take on a subject without question. The filmmakers, and the audience by association, are the intrigued students who, from the initial ideas expressed by Chomsky, go off to do their own research into different subjects and start seeing the world in a different way because of this new, questioning approach.

Another aspect of Manufacturing Consent that I liked was the collage feel to its construction - the bringing together of all sorts of footage to illustrate a point. It could seem a strange, choppy approach to the material but I think it beautifully illustrates an idea of sewing together material from many disparate sources (and viewpoints) that provided only small segments of the story in order to tell the 'whole' story on a subject, emphasising the leg work that has to be undertaken in order to move outside acceptance of an 'official' account of an event. It causes the film itself to feel like the product of a Chomsky-style comparative trawl through many different papers, radio and news programmes and outside research in order to show the big story that has obscured somewhat by being broken down into smaller reports tailored towards a specific radio, TV or newspaper audience demographics, if it has not been ignored completely through an in itself telling absence of comment.

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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#18 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Jul 07, 2009 5:05 am

Gregory wrote:Regarding the BFI edition, I did purchase it and am very pleased with it. My main reason for getting it was to see the long Chomsky v. Dershowitz debate. It was as interesting as I'd expected, and likewise as frustrating. Dershowitz makes a few good points but also trots out many of the same old canards about Chomsky's positions on Israel/Palestine that have already been refuted numerous times in print and, even worse, lowers the professional and intellectual standards of the debate with his irritating "Planet Chomsky" ripostes.
Having finally got my set through various channels (for some reason when I ordered this through MovieMail I got a copy of the VHS(!) of the film! Perhaps they were trying to get rid of stockpiles?), I wanted to chime in on the subject of these debates, even though I'm barely qualified to do so!

Firstly though I thought it was interesting to see the start of the Buckley/Chomsky debate which I had seen most of on the Zeitgeist DVD. On the Zeitgeist disc the debate starts rather abruptly and that seems to be explained on the BFI by the picture flaws during Buckley's introductory speech. Perhaps that was felt to be unacceptable by the other disc's producers? However it was interesting to get to see that relatively short opening sequence before the quality improved during the debate itself.

Also while it was great to see the film itself fully subtitled, it was a shame that some of the debates could not have been, even if their verbose nature would have probably made that budgetarily impossible! Beyond just helping the hard of hearing I think it might also have helped a viewer such as myself to quickly be able to look up terms or names of authors and their works are being used that I was unfamiliar with and would want to follow up. But its a minor complaint I guess (And I love the pdf of the book, especially the little Chomsky action figure cartoon at the very end! I want one of those dolls for myself!)

I was impressed that the film itself looks far better than on my old Zeitgeist disc - I didn't think the various pieces of footage could look so sharp! I'll probably still keep my old disc though since it contains the long version of the Dutch debate with Foucault. I did kind of miss the balance that this more respectful debate provided, despite both sides disagreeing on some fundamental points. On the BFI disc we mainly had the debates that became extremely heated and while their addition was appreciated I felt the need for a cooler companion debate to have been included as well.

On to the Dershowitz. I agree with Gregory's comments on the debate, but it was relatively more balanced than the opening paen to Shimon Peres might have suggested! It was also interesting following my recent return trip through Adam Curtis to note that the RAND Corporation was briefly brought up as a company looking to build links between the West Bank and Gaza - something that led me to think that this is another 'building projects for the boys' type of situation. The thing that I kept thinking during the debate when Israeli peace terms were put forward was that I kept wanting to add the caveat "on our own terms" to the end of each sentence. I don't think the West has got to the stage of considering these things from the other point of view yet, and still considers itself an impartial and neutral observer of these events. Even acknowledging the one-sided nature would perhaps be a step forward on this. That's where Chomsky seemed to make a little headway in suggesting to approach proceedings not from a 'Palestinian' or 'Israeli' side but from an 'American' side, since that is an area in which the American public can and should have influence on the debate of how their government should approach the Israel question.

I found the continued talk of moving into "the future rather than the past" strange, which reminded me a lot of the way that the Iraq War was now done and we should forget about it having been an illegal one and move on. Is it an attempt to downplay the importance of history because that might raise uncomfortable questions? (Sort of a Waltz With Bashir-styled absolution and lack of culpability for actions through collective amnesia?) Whose future are we envisioning and whose past are we forgetting - and who decides that we should move on from consideration of the issues as if they have been covered already?

As someone who still thinks the best chance of peace might have been achieved with Yitzhak Rabin until he was assassinated I was left relatively cold by talk of peaceful solutions, which all seem to involve pleasant language while carrying blithely on as before (e.g. the Wall and continued settlements). Unfortunately the debate seems rather dated now, with its talk of "upcoming elections". Of course for all the questioning of Chomsky of whether he would support the Palestinians if they agreed to terms unacceptable to him personally, there did not seem to be any discussion of what might happen if the Palestinians actually elected Hamas as their representatives instead!

From viewing the excellent last interview discussion with Edward Said who went into a lot of detail about the divisions within the Palestinian side itself, events would have seemed to have been leading towards a situation such as this, where you have one party in Fatah which is more moderate and supported by the West, but at the same time another which is given the democratic support and legitimacy of the people themselves. Perhaps the greatest test, and the one which the West failed, was in supporting democracy even when it makes a choice that you fundamentally disagree with. By not working with Hamas they have not just disenfranchised the peace process by showing how little the opinions of the electorate matter, but have added an extra layer of bureaucracy to the proceedings, as now there is an extra Israeli-backed Palestinian government to please as well.
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Re: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

#19 Post by Gregory » Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:55 am

colinr0380 wrote:...Of course for all the questioning of Chomsky of whether he would support the Palestinians if they agreed to terms unacceptable to him personally, there did not seem to be any discussion of what might happen if the Palestinians actually elected Hamas as their representatives instead!
From viewing the excellent last interview discussion with Edward Said, he went into a lot of detail about the divisions within the Palestinian side itself, which would have seemed to have been leading towards a situation such as this, where the you have one party in Fatah which is more moderate and supported by the West, but at the same time another which is given the democratic support and legitimacy of the people themselves. Perhaps the greatest test, and the one which the West failed, was in supporting democracy even when it makes a choice that you fundamentally disagree with. By not working with Hamas they have not just disenfranchised the peace process by showing how little the opinions of the electorate matter, but have added an extra layer of bureaucracy to the proceedings, as now there is an extra Israeli-backed Palestinian government to please as well.
Chomsky has said that there's plenty of bad things that could correctly be said about Hamas, but I don't think he'd allow the discussion to focus on that (he mainly sticks to discussing the U.S. role, due to his often-cited views about responsibility). I remember that whenever he was asked whether he approved of Chávez in Venezuela, he'd say that it didn't matter; what mattered was whether the Venezuelan people supported him, which they overwhelmingly did (and still do). He would probably say something similar if asked the same question about Hamas: that if it's going to be a free election, the people must not be punished for choosing what others consider the wrong side.
The whole "peace process" was discredited long before Hamas was elected. The rejectionist/accomodationist distinction that Chomsky introduced into the debate long ago is a fundamental issue here. A crucial reason the U.S. (and this apparently includes Obama) can't accept Hamas is that they promote a two-state solution according to the international consensus. The U.S. and Israel reject this.

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