Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?

I discovered Noam Chomsky

by picking up a couple of DVDs at a video store

in New York a few years ago:

Manufacturing Consent and a Rebel Without a Pause.

I remember this sequence

where a few kids from a school radio station

are interviewing Professor Chomsky at their little station.

Noam was giving them his full attention,

as he does to everyone who requests it.

Film and video are both, by their nature, manipulative.

The editor or director proposes an assembly

of carefully selected segments that he/she has in mind.

In other words, the context becomes more important than the content.

And as a result, the voice that appears to come from the subject

is actually coming from the filmmaker.

That is why I find the process manipulative.

The human brain forgets the cut, a faculty specifically human

that, I will learn, Noam calls psychic continuity.

The brain absorbs a constructed continuity as a reality

and consequently gets convinced

to witness a fair representation of the subject.

On the other hand, animation that I decided to use for this film

is clearly the interpretation of its author.

If messages or even propaganda can be delivered,

the audience is constantly reminded

that they are not watching reality,

so it's up to them to decide if they are convinced or not.

Also I have been looking for a project

that would add up a long process to a hopefully coherent result,

a way to focus my often shattered creativity

and maybe contribute to expose values I share.

Of course, the egotistic side of me also felt empowered

about the prospect of spending some time

with "the most important thinker alive,"

as he is described in a paragraph

which coincidentally ends by asking

why Chomsky is "an American hater,"

a misconception only possible if you consider

that the same people who run a country also constitute it.

But what the hell?

Professor Chomsky is not getting any younger, and I better hurry up.

After all, I just did a film about my aunty for similar reasons...

not animated, though.

Then again, she is less controversial.

Or is she?

We're going to have a conversation,

and sometimes this going to run and sometimes not so.

Hopefully, it's not going to be too distracting.

Oh, it doesn't bother me.

Okay, 'cause it's a bit noisy.

It's like that.

It's an old-fashioned sound,

so I wanted you to be prepared.

Hearken back to your youth.

Doesn't it wreck the audio?

Well, a little bit. We will hear the camera.

But as long as we understand the word, I don't mind.

Yeah.

So I prepared my question a little bit,

but I... ah, I'm sorry.

I'm a little bit nervous. I... I...

You are nervous?

He is.

After all your experience in the public eye?

No, not... it depends on the person I'm meeting

more than me.

So I wanted to start with asking you

if you could record the very first memory of your life.

- The first memory of my life? - Yeah.

Yeah, I suppose.

There are memories that I can date

because I know where they were, you know.

So I can date memories from about a year and a half,

when I was sitting on a...

I know where it was,

so it had to be a year and a half,

where I was sitting on a counter,

and my aunt, who...

My parents had jobs, which was unusual.

This was the 1930s.

So there was a stream of aunts and cousins

and others who came through,

and there were several aunts who spent time with us.

One of them was trying to get me to eat oatmeal,

which I didn't want to eat.

So I just put it in my cheek and refused to swallow it,

and she was... tried to figure out

how to get me to swallow that oatmeal.

But I must have sat there for a long time.

I was a stubborn kid.

I was not going to eat that oatmeal.

I remember that very well,

and that had to be at about 16 months or 17 months,

and I remember other things from that time.

I was in a nursery school, I remember,

and sort of standing there looking around,

wondering what all these kids were up to and why and so on.

And do you think it's connected

with the development of language,

the formation of memories?

Does it correspond to where the brain start to grasp...

A lot is being learned about language acquisition.

The more intensively the topic is studied,

the more sophisticated the research techniques,

the more we learn

that children know quite a lot of language,

much more than you would expect,

before they can exhibit any of that knowledge.

The direct evidence about this...

and there's also indirect evidence.

So just to mention some of the indirect evidence,

there is a technique of teaching language

to the deaf-blind.

Actually, my wife did a lot of the work on this.

It's called the Tadoma method.

Yes, with the hand.

Well, what they do is teach the person

to put their hand on someone's face

and, using the motions of the face and the vocal cords,

to interpret what you're saying.

Extremely little, very little information comes through.

But people get a very satisfactory knowledge

of language from that,

I mean, so much so

that you have to do pretty complex tests

to see what they don't know.

However, they have never succeeded in using this method

for people who lost sight and hearing

before about 18 months old.

What seems to be the case

is that during the earlier exposure,

where the child is not manifesting very much knowledge,

maybe producing a word or two-word sentences,

they're acquiring the basic character

of language, quite a lot of knowledge,

which they can then build on when they...

it's unconscious, of course, but they can build on it

when they get this later instruction,

which has very little evidence.

And they can, in fact, live in a society

where people are talking,

and they can understand what they're saying

if they can put their hand on your face.

In fact, I should say that, you know,

one of the most striking things about language

which has really not been studied...

just consider an infant, you know, a one-day-old infant.

Now, the infant...

There's all kinds of things going on in the world.

How does the infant figure out

what part of what's going on in the world

has to do with language?

It's an incredible feat.

No other organism can do it.

Well, you know, when I grew up,

we used to believe in reincarnation.

Reincarnation?

It's a fairy tale, but I think

it make me look to a new being as a fully completed person.

That's Plato.

That's Plato's theory of remembrance.

He was puzzled by the question of how you would know so much.

And he said, "Well,

you must remember it from an earlier life."

You're as smart as Plato.

So I wanted to ask you quickly

the type of education you received from your parents

and quickly about at school.

It was a Deweyite progressive school,

which was very successful.

For me, at least, it was perfect.

It was not unstructured, but it did emphasize

initiative, creativity, working with others.

There was no grading, you know,

but you were encouraged to pursue your own interests

and... within a structure that was established,

so you did, you know, learn the things you had to learn.

But, I mean, you were all pursuing your own interests

and often working with others.

In fact, I didn't... I wasn't even aware

that I was a good student until I went to high school.

I went from this relatively free, creative,

exciting environment

to a pretty regimented and academic high school

where everyone was ranked

and you'd do exactly what you were supposed to do

and everyone's trying to get into college and so on.

And then I discovered I was a good student.

I mean, I knew I had skipped a grade,

and everyone else knew I'd skipped a grade,

but nobody else...

The only thing anyone noticed was,

I was the smallest kid in the class,

but it didn't mean anything aside from that.

And I can remember the school years very well.

I barely remember high school.

It's kind of like a black hole.

And do you think competition is counterstimulating?

It shouldn't be.

What's the point of being better than someone else?