dir. John Junkerman
Opens Fri March 21 at the Little Theatre.
Filmed by an American for a Japanese audience, and scored by awful Japanese rock, Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times is made up of lectures that the Moses of the radical left delivered in the Bay Area and New York City last year. He is also interviewed in what appears to be his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there are segments capturing him after his lectures, when he is signing his best-selling books, or being pulled away to another engagement. This is the crammed life of a celebrity--a man who has thousands upon thousands of fans who can never get enough of him.
Power and Terror offers very little (if any) in the way of surprises. And nor should one who is long acquainted with Chomsky's views watch this documentary for new insights or amazing revelations about the evils of American power. One should watch for assurances--for the comfort in the rhythm of Chomsky's blockish and basic ideas about the state of the world, American foreign policy, and the history of power.
Chomsky ideas have a definite beat that comes with little accompaniment. There are no soaring moments (as with Foucault--a thinker whose concepts on power were far more interesting than Chomsky's), almost no ornaments, just the repeated thump of information, the 1-2-3-4 dance of newspaper facts, whose tonal center is that multinational corporations own everything, control everything, and know exactly why and how they own and control everything.
Chomsky, however, thinks that things are getting better. That thanks to the resistance movements of the late '60s, '70s, and '80s, America is today a more democratic society. In the early '60s, he claims, it took five or so years for Americans to protest the growing war in Vietnam; whereas today, peace-loving Americans respond to American militarism almost immediately. This makes Chomsky happy. But it's surprising that an intellectual who is hyperaware of the bloody side of the history of civilization (Hegel's "Butcher's Bench"), and the entire Enlightenment project, would have no problem saying we are "more civilized" in the total Western, Enlightenment sense of the term. You would expect him to hesitate.
Then again, when does Chomsky ever hesitate? Like our favorite pop song, he never misses a beat.
