Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?

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1

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,

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