Intellectuals are underappreciated in the United States of America. They are despised, marginalized, and ignored. It's not a job any mother raises her daughter or son for. Intelligence itself is generally mistrusted. Critical thinking is not taught, encouraged, or rewarded. Edward Snowden is a lifelong pariah, as is Chelsea Manning, for having blown the whistle on despicable behaviors. The behaviors continue, and the critical thinkers are in exile and prison, respectively. They're lucky they're not dead. Why, then, is Noam Chomsky allowed to wander freely among us, meticulously parsing the evils of our system? He's even got a new movie out. Requiem for the American Dream opens this Friday at the Roxie.
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning both actually did something. They didn't just think about how wrong things were, they noticed a particularly heinous behavior in their own neck of the woods, and broadcast its existence to the world. God bless them. We're all the better for it. Chomsky, although reputed to be an activist, isn't that kind of activist. Not the kind who changes the course of history by doing the right thing at risk and peril of his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The world's most famous professor of linguistics merely thinks about evil in high places, and writes and talks about it.
Requiem for the American Dream is 73 minutes of systems analysis by an old man. The title refers to the myth that you can make good in the United States, raise yourself up by your bootstraps, move from working- to middle-class, buy a house, a car, find a dog and someone to bicker with for the rest of your life, and live happily ever after. In the 1950s and 1960s, what Chomsky repeatedly refers to as the Golden Age, this wasn't myth but reality. The post-war boom continued right up to 1970 or so, before earning power started to tilt in the other direction, until we got to where we are now.
In order to understand how and why the American middle class is now as dead as the dodo, filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott have carefully organized the old, age-spotted, bespectacled head's address to the camera into 10 sections. Numbering sections is a terrible idea, since it creates in the viewer an inevitable dread of never getting to 10, no matter how short the film is, and 73 minutes seems short given the portentousness of the title, the finality of America's fall. But it's worth sitting through, to find out where all the money went.
An intertitle announces "10 Principles of the Concentration of Power," and the first on the list is "Reduce Democracy." Although Chomsky is a radical thinker, his delivery is far from fiery. He's too focused on following his own train of thought to give over any energy to facial expressions or vocal modulations. He might be a dentist describing your upcoming root canal, and, like a dentist, what he describes lights a fine terror in your soul. To ease you through the process, music is applied, black-and-white archival footage is supplied, home movies, lines on graphs wiggle up for the richest and down for everyone else.
For the curious, here are the other nine principles: Shape Ideology, Redesign the Economy (from manufacturing to financial services), Shift the Burden (tax the poor), Attack Solidarity ("You're only supposed to care about yourself"), Run the Regulators (let the banking industry regulate itself), Engineer Elections (establish the citizenship of the unbridled corporation), Keep the Rabble in Line (crush unions), Manufacture Consent (direct people to the superficial things in life, via advertising), and Marginalize the Population (by removing the influence of everyone but the affluent). The devil is in the details. Papa Chomsky lays them out slowly, carefully, inexorably, as he has faithfully for 50 years.
The film is less depressing than the reality he analyzes because Chomsky is alive, his brain still works, he's enough of an optimist to keep talking. "I don't think we're smart enough to design a just society," he says by way of conclusion. He quotes social philosopher John Dewey: "Until all institutions �" production, commerce, media �" are under participatory democracy control, we won't have a democratic society. Policy will be in the shadow cast by business over society." In a now-frail voice, Chomsky encourages you to "dismantle illegitimate authority," reminding us that "activists have created the rights we enjoy." Have at it, people. We have nothing to lose but our chains.