Saturday, November 15, 2014

Manufacturing Consent (1992)

Director: Mark Achbar                                        Writer: Peter Wintonick
Film Score: Carl Schultz                                    Cinematography: Peter Wintonick
Starring: Noam Chomsky, Bill Moyers, Paul Andrews and Mark Achbar

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is one of the best documentaries every produced. Directors Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick made a crucial decision to stand out of the way and allow Chomsky, through a multitude of interviews and documentary footage, to speak for himself. The film’s title comes from Chomsky’s book of the same name, first published in 1988, a critical look at the corporate underpinnings of the media in American and the link between the media and politics in controlling U.S. cultural thought through propaganda. The film begins with Chomsky’s background as a professor of linguistics at M.I.T. and his subsequent philosophical writings about the nature of a free society. His view is that the more advanced a society becomes the more they need freedom from political and economic ties of the state and the ability to create on their own without coercion from a dominant governmental force, even if it is a democratic one. His study of human language and cognition has led him to advocate for an anarchic, socialistic society that seeks out authority and challenges the assumptions made by that authority, especially in respect to the subliminal control it exerts over society.

One of the most egregious areas of coercion in Chomsky’s view is private control over resources, but today that could be extended to include health care and insurance as well. Chomsky takes this idea in the direction of the media, where the Constitution defines the need for a free media that can act as a control on government and help voters make informed decisions. But the Constitution was written by men who believed that the masses were not capable of governing themselves and created a representative democracy that would remove them from the actual process of the law, placing the power in the hands of the elite. In order for the elite to control the masses, it then becomes necessary to indoctrinate them with propaganda, hence the need for control over the illusion of a free media. The key to Chomsky’s model of control hinges on the importance that there be a perception of liberal bias in the media. In this way the consumers of the news believe that there is an adversarial relationship between the media and the government and rest easy in the false confidence that their interests are being protected by media watchdogs. But the reality is that all of the major media in this country is owned by, and are subsidiaries of, major corporations that depend on advertising dollars from other major corporations to survive and therefor have no interest in subverting the dominant economic culture in this country by telling citizens the truth.

What the film does well is to present the alternative to Chomsky’s view. In yet another interview with Bill Moyers, he talks to writer Tom Wolfe who condescendingly dismisses Chomsky and academia as the new clergy, who need something to be wrong so that they can be the keepers of knowledge and understanding. The close up on Moyers as he grins almost lecherously at the idea, is chilling. But at the time of the film there were still 23 corporations who owned over fifty percent of news media in the country. Today there are far fewer as a result of consolidation, and a mere six corporations own ninety percent, while Tom Wolfe has become irrelevant in the literary world. From there the film goes back to biography, with Chomsky risking his career to get involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam, and unconsciously updates this message. Today the media’s “liberal bias” can be seen as total absorption with the idea of embarrassing the government, and that shift has had extremely negative consequences because it only seems to apply to Democratic leadership. While the right-wing hammers away at Democratic leaders in Washington, the mainstream media seem powerless to resist and join in by reporting their sensationalist lies as truth. But when anyone criticizes republican leadership, the right-wing reacts violently with spurious accusations of anti-Americanism which, again, the mainstream media seems compelled to report as actual news.

Anti-American accusations are closely linked with anti-war accusations. In the film, the first Iraq war had just concluded, and Chomsky makes mention of Bush Sr.’s illegal activities in the C.I.A. that are fleshed out in the documentary Dark Legacy, which even connects him to the JFK assassination. Clearly Bush Jr.’s illegal war in Iraq, in which he and his administration lied to Congress and lied to the world to achieve, fits right in with the media’s lack of criticism and utter lack of presenting alternative views to war, almost since the beginning of the Republic. The bulk of the middle section of the film is taken over by the example of the genocide in East Timor and the U.S. support of the Indonesian invasion that was completely suppressed in the media compared to the genocide in Cambodia that was reported widely in the U.S. New York Times editor Karl Meyer is interviewed refuting Chomsky’s claims, but it’s clear he doesn’t even realize how he is part of the system. A similar situation happened later with Rwanda. After failed U.S. military intervention in Somalia, the U.S. simply turned its back on Rwanda and the lack of anything like outrage in the U.S. media simply allowed it to continue.

Our civilization has developed within a context of convenient myths, says Chomsky. The most insidious is that of individual material gain. This ultimately selfish outlook on life is, of course, supported and reflected by the government that runs it. In a way it’s endearing that people want to believe that their government is good, a righteous experiment devoted to the welfare of all its citizens. But that’s not what it is. The United States is an oligarchy, with the corporation at the head and in control. And in that sense it’s not much different than the film The Matrix. People are continuously fed lies and myths that support the things they want to believe, continually given diversions like technology and sports, and immersed in a consumer society in which news media is just one part, no different in their minds than the reality TV and Facebook feeds they numb themselves with. “The question is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this, possibly terminal, phase of human existence democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.” Manufacturing Consent is a tremendous film that should be viewed and discussed by everyone in this country. It’s that important.

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