Occupying my library studies school work

This weekend I stayed away from political and social activities and completed three assignments for my Libraries and Popular Culture class. It's a great class, and I'm learning a lot, and it's definitely worth the work. One of my assignments was to write a review of a documentary dealing with popular culture. I picked the movie Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Mass Media.

I watched the movie and wrote the review, I was struck by exactly how applicable Chomsky's ideas were to the current Occupy movement. So I'm posting my review here in the hopes that it will contribute to discussions of ideas and strategy in our quest to rein in the corporatocracy our nation has become. (If you would like to watch the film, you can do so here. If you can't devote three hours in one sitting to this, you could check out the film from the Oklahoma County Metropolitan Library System.)

My review follows below:

Introduction

            On November 4 I watched the 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick. I’ve read some of Chomsky’s political analyses, and I’ve wanted to watch this movie for years. Recently I checked it out from the public library because it seemed very relevant to our class discussions on corporate hegemony in creating mass culture. Manufacturing Consent also seemed an appropriate choice for our class documentary project.

Summary

            This 168-minute film is partly an analysis of Chomsky’s political ideas, partly a biography of Chomsky, and partly an examination of some of his opponents and detractors. Chomsky, a self-described anarcho-syndicalist, says that coercion in human society should take place only for clearly justified reasons. He argues that concentrated private control of economic resources allows the owners of these resources unjustified control over society. In a totalitarian society, elites retain power by using obvious overwhelming force. In a democracy, such as the United States, elites maintain power by “manufacturing consent.”

            Chomsky says that the elites who own and control mass media believe that ordinary people must be diverted and controlled for their own good. This is not done by direct censorship. Major newspapers and major television stations control the political agenda through such strategies as selecting topics, framing issues, filtering information, and setting the boundaries of acceptable debate. 

As an example of this process, Chomsky compares US media coverage of genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s with coverage of atrocities committed by US-backed Indonesian forces against the people of East Timor in the same time period. He argues that abuses committed by US enemies were exaggerated while abuses committed by US allies were ignored.

Additional Sources

            Making a balanced selection of additional sources related to this movie was challenging because Chomsky’s opponents often use such extreme language in attacking him that they undermine the credibility of their own case. My own sympathy with Chomsky’s views undoubtedly made it more difficult for me to be neutral. Nevertheless, I hope this resource list would be useful to library patrons who had a variety of responses to the film.

1. The IMDB Web page on Manufacturing Consent (Internet Movie Database n.d.) contains reviews from both viewers and critics. While most of these reviews are positive, there are cogent dissenting points of view, as well as links to message boards for further discussion. There is also a link that allows a viewer to watch the movie for free.
2. Z Magazine was one of the sources of information that Chomsky suggested in the film. This website by the publishers of the magazine (Z Communications n.d.) contains links to much news and analysis from a libertarian socialist point of view, as well as a link to an online version of the magazine. Viewers who found the movie convincing would particularly like this site, and Chomsky himself has a blog here.
3. This page (Wvong 2001) by Canadian computer programmer Russil Wvong offers a critical assessment of Chomsky’s work. While agreeing with Chomsky in part, Wvong also presents evidence that Chomsky advances his claims in intellectually dishonest ways. Wvong also argues that Chomsky is willing to accept human rights abuses when perpetrated by regimes he supports.
4. The book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Herman and Chomsky 1988) offer a clearer and more comprehensive explanation of Chomsky’s “propaganda model” than the movie does.

Discussion Topic

            Noam Chomsky, a linguist by training, is most emphatically not part of the culture-and-civilization tradition. His work on universal grammar—which he believes is hard-wired into the human brain—has convinced him that ordinary people are creative geniuses. He doesn’t believe that ordinary people are dupes, but simply that they lack resources to gain complete information.

            In the 1992 movie, Chomsky advanced a specific model for how corporate elites create and maintain what Antonio Gramsci calls “hegemony” over popular culture. Chomsky argued that most news media outlets are owned by giant corporations that share the interests of the rest of the ruling elite. This allows them to control the terms of popular debate and crowd out dissenting ideas.

            Do you think Chomsky’s argument was accurate in 1992? This movie was released before widespread public use of the Internet. How has the existence of the Internet affected the accuracy of Chomsky’s position? Does greater availability of the means to publish mean that corporate control is much less of a problem than it was?

References

Achbar, Mark and Peter Wintonick (directors). 1992. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. Necessary Illusions/National Film Board of Canada. Zeitgeist Films, 2002, DVD. Includes Chomsky’s 2002 reflections on the film, extended excerpts of 1969 Firing     Line debate with William F. Buckley, Jr., and a 1971 discussion with Michel Foucault.

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of  the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.

Internet Movie Database. n.d. “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.”             http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104810/. Accessed November 5, 2011.

Wvong, Russil. 2001. “Noam Chomsky: A Critical Review.” http://www.russilwvong.com/future/chomsky.html.  Accessed November 5, 2011.

Z Communications. n.d. “Z Net: A Community of People Committed to Social Change.”           http://www.zcommunications.org/znet. Accessed November 5, 2011.

Trivia

The other day, Feminist Peace Network on Facebook posted a link to Issue 9 of the online journal TRIVIA - Voices of Feminism. This is the issue on goddesses from March 2009. It looks really interesting. I've read the editors' introduction and an article by Carolyn Gage on how the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by US forces in 1898 might have been stopped if Queen Liliuokalani has listened to her native shamans instead of  following Episcopalian teachings.

This is how I discovered that the feminist journal Trivia still survives after all these years. Or, more accurately, it was revived in 2004 as an online publication. Their dedication to their most recent issue, Are Lesbians Going Extinct? tells the story:

This issue of Trivia is dedicated to Mary Daly, without whom this online journal simply would not be. Trivia, a Journal of Ideas, its predecessor, published in print from 1982 to 1995, grew out of a study group that spun off from Mary's classes at Boston College. It was named after the Triple Goddess TRIVIA—whom we first encountered in the pages of Daly's Gyn/Ecology. While the journal developed its own identity over the years, it remained, and in this online version remains, rooted in her steadfast vision of female power and possibility. The word "lesbian" did not go far enough for Mary. She preferred to talk of "Terrible Women"—women who break the "Terrible Taboo: the universal, unnatural patriarchal taboo against Women Intimately/Ultimately Touching each Other."

Not only do they have an archive of all of their online issues, but you can order copies of most of the old print issues as well.

As I've said before, the existence of small independent feminist periodicals played a crucial role in creating radical feminist and lesbian movements that challenged patriarchy and all forms of oppression. Each time I discover another surviving feminist or lesbian periodical, I gain new hope that those movements can continue to move forward.

off our backs alive, kicking

Or at least that's what they say on their web site.

The link above is not a permanent link, but here is what the oob site is reporting as of this writing:

Our newly reorganized, re-energized gathering of enthusiastic, talented and committed radical feminist women is dedicated to oob's continuation as the beacon and source of feminist journalism and activism it has been since 1970. We plan to survive and thrive! Look for our next issue to hit your libraries, bookstores and mailboxes in mid June 2009!

This is very good news. Founded in 1970, off our backs is the oldest surviving feminist periodical in the US. You may remember that last fall, oob was in such difficult financial shape that they suspended their print edition and took time to re-group. But now the print edition of off our backs is back, and they've also started a blog as well.

Congratulations, sisters.

In praise of feminist periodicals, especially _off our backs_

Just the other day, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Feminist Peace Network, where I saw an announcement of the publication of the latest--and possibly the last--print edition of the feminist news journal off our backs. This special Women's Visions for Peace Issue looks as if it will be very good. And it's encouraging to learn that oob will survive on the World Wide Web--and possibly in print as well.

I bet that oob could still use some more donations, which is why I started writing this post.

But then I started thinking fondly about off our backs, and all of the years it's been around, and the different forms it's taken. If my memory serves me correctly, oob was founded in February 1970 as a monthly newspaper. It served as a place where many fine feminist disagreements were argued out in great detail, and a source of women's news from all around the globe. Sometime in the current decade, facing budget dfficulties, oob transformed itself into a semi-monthly magazine style publication.

In whatever form off our backs survives, I am completely in awe that they've managed to keep themselves going for more than 38 years.

Back during the 1970s and 1980s the United States had dozens, even hundreds, of small independent feminist periodicals. Most were produced without the benefit of computer equipment. They were hand-made by overworked and mostly unpaid women armed with typewriters, light tables, exacto knives and hand waxers.

I bet many people have no idea what a hand waxer is. I bet many people think it is something used by a cosmetologist to remove unsightly hair from the back of your hand. No, no, no. Back in the seventies and eighties we were all about loving our bodies the way they were instead of molding and torturing them into some different patriarchally approved shape or texture.

But I digress. A hand waxer was this little contraption that you used to apply hot wax to the back of your copy so that you could apply it to the layout sheet. (It was a mess. I don't have very good near vision, and I could never get anything straight.) Once you and your sister collective members had laboriously applied all of the copy and all of the graphics to your layout sheets, you would deliver it to the printer. In a day or two, you would go back and .pick up a bundle of newspapers. Some of these you would mail to subscribers, and some you would deliver to your local distribution points. Add in all of the writing and researching articles, trying to sell advertisements, and so forth, it was all a freaking lot of work.

Besides the feminist and lesbian-feminist newspapers and magazines, there was also a vibrant network of independent feminist bookstores. All of this was undermined and done in by a range of cultural and economic forces. There has been an ongoing right-wing backlash over the past 30 years. Large corporations have concentrated control over publishing and bookselling. The mainstreaming of gay culture undermined independent, radical lesbian, feminist, and gay voices.

And then, of course, there has been the rise of the Internet--which may give independent radical voices a chance of re-emerging..

Besides off our backs, I don't know how many survivors are left. Sojourner, once published in Boston, seems to have gone under in 2002. Sinister Wisdom is still with us. On the Issues survives, at least as a web site. There is also a website called feminist reprise that maintains an archive of second-wave feminist writings. And then, of course, we now have feminist blogs.

Here's to all of you, sisters, and to any of you out there that I don't know about or neglected to mention. Here's to all of us. And a very special thank you to oob for keeping on keeping on for all those years.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that not only did I myself once take part in a feminist newspaper collective, it is also true that back in a different lifetime I was also an occasional contributor to off our backs.

More on the situation in Thailand

Directly below you will see a summary of information on the situation in Thailand from mainstream sources.

Here are two other things worth checking out:

A blog called JOTMAN has a long post here, with a wide variety of sources, and links to videos taken on the scene. The post says that it is continuously updated. This looks really interesting and informative, but it is starting to get past my dinnertime, and I don't have the brain cells left to summarize it. Just look at the darned thing, okay?

Then, I also found this fascinating paper on Militarization and Terrorism and counter – terrorism measures in Thailand: Feminists and women human rights defenders.

Among many interesting points, author Virada Somswasdi says that:

In contemporary Thailand, whilst some feminists oppose militarization, a good number of women’s rights activists (however, categorization of feminists and women’s rights activists needs a debate.) are swayed by the hatred of the former corruptible civilian prime minister and impatience in the judicial and democratic process to prosecute him and his cronies, thus give support to the 2006 military coup d’etat, and indeed militarization and patriarchy.

Okay. Time for me to leave the beautiful Belle Isle Public Library and go home to my cat and my dinner.

Truthdig - A/V Booth - Amy Goodman, ‘Democracy Now!’ Producers Arrested at RNC

Courtesy of Truthdig, here's an update to Sunday's post about violations of civil liberties at this summer's political conventions.

According to the “Democracy Now!” Web site, producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested Monday afternoon “while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention,” and host Amy Goodman was arrested for “defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.”

You can find the Democracy Now web site here.

Over at feminist blogs, The Goddess has posted more information
about police misbehavior in St. Paul.

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

Don't think I've ever seen this blog before, though I've seen pieces from it on AlterNet. Looks interesting.

Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines