Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
(1) It’s a Japanese film–beginning and ending with and frequently accompanied by Japanese pop songs, all by Kiyoshura Imawano. (None of the songs are subtitled, though English words pop up in the lyrics intermittently.) Junkerman–an American filmmaker based in Tokyo and working with a Japanese producer and mainly Japanese crew–has focused on Japanese subjects in four of his previous half-dozen documentaries. Here the most obvious Japanese angle is an emphasis on Chomsky’s critique of the imperialist excesses of Japan, principally its cruel treatment of the Chinese. More subtle and yet more crucial is that although the on-screen audiences are American, the film addresses its American viewers as members of a global community. I can’t even imagine a member of the Bush team speaking to us in this fashion. The film offers a small taste of the sort of discourse that’s been going on lately outside the U.S.–and not only in Japan.
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(3) The film opens with a flurry of short printed quotations about Chomsky, one of which comes from the New York Times: “Arguably the most important intellectual alive… his political writings are maddeningly simple-minded.” Initially I laughed at this as a prime example of Times doublethink, but on further reflection I realized that it’s absolutely correct. But why should we value intellectuals in proportion to the abstruseness and complexity of their ideas? Chomsky’s simplicity is really lucidity; it has nothing to do with naivete and everything to do with expediency. Chomsky cuts to the chase.
