The Review
Nim Chimpsky (named after linguist
Noam Chomsky —although that information is never once mentioned in this
film) is a fascinating subject. In The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker talks about what Nim experiment revealed about the differences
between human and chimpanzee communication.
This film,
however, is completely uninterested in the linguistic findings from the Nim
experiment. Instead, it simply focuses
on Nim’s strange life as a chimpanzee raised by humans, and then abandoned by
them.
It’s a
great piece of documentary storytelling, but I would have been more interested
in a film that also incorporated the linguistic significance of the experiment.
Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on "Democracy's Endgame?"And from the Daily Show, a rather insightful comment from this interview with Roger Ross: "I think a certain amount of fundamentalist evangelicals are obsessed with sex. That's the bottom line."
10 comments:
I came to your blog because I was looking for some other reviews for the Flashman series, which I am working my way through.
Having looked through some other of your blog entries I noticed that we have quite a lot in common; I currently teach in English in Japan, as you did, and I am taking an MA course in TEFL/TESL, and looked into work by or about Chomsky, Pinker and Bryson hoping that it would be useful on my course.
This film was well-made but, as you say, didn't seem to be particularly concerned with the theories of language that the protagonists were seeking to confirm or refute.
As far as Pinker and Chomsky are concerned, it seems that their theory of universal grammar has a number of potential flaws. You mention in your review of the Language Instinct that some reviews have been critical of Pinker. I wonder if you have read Tomasello's "Language is Not an Instinct" as it seems to damn almost the whole book with the exception of its clear exposition of Chomsky's theory, and its criticism of prescriptivists (Language Mavens). Another book I read recently that criticizes Chomsky is the very readable (if a little repetitive) Language: The Cultural Tool, by Daniel Everett.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Hey, thanks for dropping by, and thanks for the comment.
>>>>This film was well-made but, as you say, didn't seem to be particularly concerned with the theories of language that the protagonists were seeking to confirm or refute.
Yeah, it wasn't a bad film. Interesting enough. But I just think it would have been twice as good if they would have integrated the purpose and results of the experiment a little bit better.
I was not aware of that review, but I googled it just now, and found a copy here.
http://www.princeton.edu/~adele/MTLngNotInstinct.pdf
At the moment, I've just superficially skimmed it, but it looks interesting and I hope to sit down and read it more carefully later. Thanks for the heads up.
How are you finding the Flashman series?
I've just finished the ninth volume - Flashman and the Mountain of Light. All of the books are great but my favourite ones are Flash for Freedom! Flashman at the Charge and Flashman in the Great Game. I think that in that period, Fraser's storywriting was just that little bit better than his later books and the first of those has a great supporting character - John Charity Spring.
And, yes. That's the review of Pinker's book. It's certainly an interesting challenge and I have not been able to find any answer from Pinker online.
I'm not sure I noticed much of a difference in the story-telling quality of the books, but it could be I wasn't reading them attentively enough. I did seem to notice an ideological shift as the books went on, where it seemed to shift from a satire of the British Empire to a defense of it.
I hope I spoil nothing if I say that John Charity Spring will pop up again in one of the later books.
I agree that Fraser himself appears to become a lot more of an apologist for the British Empire in later books, with his endnotes as educational as ever but also didactic. I can think of a few reasons for this. One of those is that he simply changed in later life and became progressively more conservative and interested in traditional Victorian values. It’s also possible, I suppose, that he had to bow to editors who thought his books would be better without the lecturing, and that he may have had more freedom to refuse editors’ requests in the later books. However, I have read an interesting idea that Fraser knew that a straight defence of Victorian figures would have been difficult or impossible at the time he was writing when it was far more fashionable to be anti-imperialist and counter-cultural. The character of Flashman, on this reading, is therefore a clever way of presenting the books as part of the same trend of mocking the follies of empire, while subtly engendering a certain respect in the reader for some of the historical figures such as Alexander Burnes, Colin Campbell, George Broadfoot, and Abraham Lincoln. It’s pretty clear that Fraser does have a lot of admiration for some – if not all – of the people who appear in his novels, and it is possible that Flashman is largely a foil for those people and the humble, courageous and dutiful British soldiers of the day. Or it could be a combination of those and other factors.
Whichever it is, I think the change in tone is what I meant by saying that his later books are not as good as the earlier ones; Flashman’s Lady and Flashman and the Redskins seemed to include a bit more editorializing by Fraser than the books prior to that and the latter of the two has “too many notes”. Having said that, there is at least one other example earlier in the series although Fraser puts this in Flashman’s mouth in Flash for Freedom! He is complaining that what most English Christian abolitionists fail to realize is that the Africans themselves were also slave-owners and sold “their own people” into slavery. This is something that Fraser himself complained about in an angry parting shot to Britain and the world that was published in the Daily Mail after he died. You can read it here, although it may dismay you.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506219/The-testament-Flashmans-creator-How-Britain-destroyed-itself.html
Anyway, just to let you know that I like your ESL worksheets and may like to borrow them sometime in the future. In particular your peer-review sheets for writing.
>>>> I have read an interesting idea that Fraser knew that a straight defence of Victorian figures would have been difficult or impossible at the time he was writing when it was far more fashionable to be anti-imperialist and counter-cultural. The character of Flashman, on this reading, is therefore a clever way of presenting the books as part of the same trend of mocking the follies of empire, while subtly engendering a certain respect in the reader for some of the historical figures such as Alexander Burnes, Colin Campbell, George Broadfoot, and Abraham Lincoln
That....actually makes a lot of sense actually.
>>>> it is possible that Flashman is largely a foil for those people and the humble, courageous and dutiful British soldiers of the day
I think in the later books Flashman is definitely a foil for the courageous British officers. I got the impression in the early books that Flashman was meant to serve as a satire on the Victorian cult of duty. The irony was that even though Flashman had no redeemable characteristics, he still caused less harm than all these brave young soldiers who lead their men into disastrous situations, such as in Afghanistan and Crimea, and I got the impression that Fraser was trying to say that blind devotion to duty and honor was even more destructive than Flashman's naked self-interest. But i could have been reading into the books what I wanted to read.
>>>Having said that, there is at least one other example earlier in the series although Fraser puts this in Flashman’s mouth in Flash for Freedom! He is complaining that what most English Christian abolitionists fail to realize is that the Africans themselves were also slave-owners and sold “their own people” into slavery.
Ah, I forgot about that part. Okay, so even in the early books Fraser is getting a few shots in.
As for the article, I've come across it before but thanks for the link. It does do a good job of explaining Fraser's thoughts near the end of his life. I still have yet to come across an article which describes any sort of transition in his thinking over the years though.
>>>Anyway, just to let you know that I like your ESL worksheets and may like to borrow them sometime in the future. In particular your peer-review sheets for writing.
Thank you sir. You're welcome to any of them, and let me know if you have any suggestions.
Thanks, and I'll see if there is any way of making my some of my own worksheets public.
As for when, or if, Fraser himself changed over the years, maybe there will be some clues in his journalism. I haven't found very much yet, but according to this obituary he was a writer for the Herald, based in Glasgow, and the Cumberland News. Maybe by finding some editorials by him we can get an idea of where he stood earlier in life.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/flashman-creator-herald-writer-george-macdonald-fraser-dies-1.871945
I've ordered his memoir from the Second World War, which I have heard is also an extremely un-PC look at the war, but which Fraser argued was an honest one. Although I have heard that his later memoir "Light's on at Signpost" is something of an extended rant while ostensibly being about his scriptwriting days in Hollywood.
Well, it isn't unusual for people to turn cantankerous in later life and he's still an enjoyable read regardless of his politics.
>>> Maybe by finding some editorials by him we can get an idea of where he stood earlier in life.
That's a good idea in theory, although I'm not sure I see myself scouring the archives at this point in time. But if you happen to run across something, or if you find out anything from his memoirs, let me know.
Just out of curiosity, what is your nationality? I ask because as an American, I never even heard of Flashman until I went abroad and started interacting with British people. Once I did discover him, I quickly became addicted however. Did you have a similar experience in Japan?
Actually, I am British but I didn't know about Flashman until after coming to Japan either. I think I became acquainted with him during some discussion of the war in Afghanistan, when someone used the term in place of the word "chickenhawk", to refer to people who supported the post-9/11 wars but wasn't prepared to fight them, arguably like Flashman who was, as he fully admits, a coward. However, after picking up a few of the Flashman books I introduced some other friends of mine who became hooked.
I think I have been reading these books about as long as you have, although I have been getting through them at a slower pace.
>>>although I have been getting through them at a slower pace.
No harm in that. They do get a bit repetitive if you read them all at once.
What about the source material? Is Tom Brown's Schooldays considered required reading in Britain then, or is it just as obscure as in the US?
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