This weekend's Cinema International film, "Requiem for the American Dream," is a documentary about America's greatest living intellectual: Noam Chomsky.
Now a Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky revolutionized linguistics with the idea of "universal grammar": the idea that language acquisition is an innate structure, or function, of the human brain--a structure that is universal across languages and cultures. This idea represented a radical--and corrective-- break from the linguist B. F. Skinner, who imagined babies learning as "empty vessels," which language had to be "put into."
In addition to his importance as a linguist, Chomsky has also remained among the most courageous critics of American foreign policy. Beginning during America's war in Vietnam, and continuing on through his criticism of America's support of Israel and its invasion and occupation of Iraq, which he called the greatest war crime of the twentieth-century, Chomsky's political writings and speeches have provided a much needed alternative to mainstream discussions of America's role in the world.
Screenings of "Requiem for the American Dream" are free and open to the public Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30.
