Noam Chomsky Went Gangnam Style … Ever So Briefly?

I’m usually pretty dialed into this stuff, but somehow this one slipped by me last fall. During the Gangnam Style craze, MIT shot a parody video where Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics, made a cameo appearance. Maybe it slipped by me because the appearance is brief. About 5 seconds, starting at the 3:20 mark. We were on the ball enough, however, to spot another parody by Ai Weiwei and then we had Slavoj Žižek demystifying the whole Gangnam Style phenomenon, complete with wild hand gesticulations and frantic rubs of the nose. Anyway, one day this will make for some good archival footage — public intellectual meets international pop culture craze — so we’re adding it to the trove.

Related Content:

Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education

A Shirtless Slavoj Žižek Explains the Purpose of Philosophy from the Comfort of His Bed

Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power (1971)


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Comments (4)
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  • sia says:

    To conduct such a thing at a university and MIT at that… you people know how to bring shame to everything we value, eh?

  • Leon says:

    Very interesting. It looks like they’re having a lot of fun. And now I want to hear about Zizek demystifying the Gangnam Style thing. He’s always pretty interesting, even when I don’t agree with him.

  • Denn Guerrier says:

    “Shame to everything we value”, eh?

    To “conduct” a parody video, in the vein of celebration of probably the most extreme example of a memetic video in our culture … memetics being something that I’m quite certain Noam Chomsky is on board with.

    Seems like you just don’t appreciate anything outside of your narrow perspective, eh?

  • Alissa Clough says:

    Sweet! It “translates” to Boston so well! Chomsky IS the Big Daddy!
    (of linguistics and higher learning, if nothing else)…

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