1950s and 60s
Back to School.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Forever young.
In a letter to Sheila Watson, McLuhan writes that the Bloomsbury group – Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Maynard Keynes, and the rest – was a “child cult.” They celebrated the virtues of youth and were determined never to grow up.
Sensible people, of course, then and now, have always thought such ideas are selfish, irresponsible and ultimately dangerous. But today such ideas, arguably, are viewed with even greater hostility. Parents seem determined to do everything they can to get children to grow up as fast as possible. Marshall, of course, has other ideas.
Marshall McLuhan (September 20, 1965, age 54). Forever learning.
It is impossible to learn without embracing a cult of the child. To learn you must be like a child. You must look at the world without pretension. Children are born with a hard wired formula for learning. That formula, as I wrote Sheila, is to allow oneself “the freedom to play and probe.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 324.
Marshall at the crystal ball.
Marshall McLuhan (February 25, 1965, age 54). What’s in and what’s out.
“Professor McLuhan, how can you say, clotheslines, seams in stockings, books and jobs are all obsolete?
“Clotheslines, seams in stockings, books and jobs are all obsolete.”
“Seriously now, isn’t that a clothesline I see in your backyard? Isn’t your current celebrity based on books?”
“Jane, these predictions follow from a close observation of the electric age in which we now live. Everything is in flux. But if you don’t like them, it doesn’t matter. Here’s another. Everything you thought you knew about children and their role in society is changing. For example, one day it will be a commonplace for children to have credit cards.”
“Really, an American Express Card for little Bobby?”
“Well, if you don’t like that idea …”
Me (September, 2010, age 58). What do you make of those apples?
These are just some of the predictions that showed up in the Life Magazine profile article on Marshall McLuhan by Jane Howard that I talked about yesterday. Squint and they all seem bang on. The question is what can we learn from them today? Perhaps that any one as perceptive as this is still worth listening to.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Jane Howard, “Oracle of the Electric Age,” Life Magazine, 25 February 1965, p. 92 and 96.
Marriage: You’ve got to work at it
Me (September, 2010, age 58). And now for something completely different.
Marriage is a subject people don’t typically turn to Marshall McLuhan for insight or advice. But when you think about it, it’s not a bad idea. After all, he was married for 41 years. He and his wife Corinne had six children. By all accounts their marriage was a success.
For those of you looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right, here’s what Marshall had to say about the secret to a great marriage, when he was interviewed by Jane Howard for a close up article she wrote about him in Life Magazine in February 1965. (By the way I found my Mrs. Right in 1976.)
Marshall McLuhan (February 25, 1965, age 54). Don’t play the match game.
“Corinne, what did I say to that journalist, Jane Howard, about marriage? Was I for it or against it?”
“Don’t be silly Marshall, of course you were for it. Here’s exactly what you said. It’s right here in this week’s issue of Life.”
Like any other relationship marriage must be remade by the contracting parties every day. It’s a terrible illusion in people’s lives that if they don’t match each other exactly, they ought to drop everything and split up. They don’t consider the possibility of making as an alternative to matching. Any relationship can be a depth relationship, if you try and make it so. People used to say, ‘Well I’m married, that’s that, put up or shut up’ – which I happen to think is a very good idea. But now they get divorced – they drop out of marriage for the same reason they drop out of school, because they’re looking for a depth relationship, a profound role.
“Not bad eh?”
“Not bad at all, Marshall, not bad at all.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Jane Howard, “Oracle of the Electric Age,” Life Magazine, 25 February 1965, p. 99.
Guess if you can.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Who can make sense of …
Rock ’n’ Roll kids, the surfers, and the hippies?
Swingers, poets, and artists?
New York City, Southern California, and Canada?
Topless restaurants, Playboy, and silicon breasts?
Sputnik, the DEW-Line, and the Cold War?
Suburbs, Watts, and Vietnam?
Howl, Mad magazine, and Dyslexia?
Teen age and Executive Drop Outs?
Computers and the mini skirt?
The sixties?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 53). Me.
You’re going to kick yourself when I tell you. In a word – television.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964i.
What did McLuhan mean by that?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Isn’t it obvious?
“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Who’s looking at who?
In Understanding Media McLuhan says this old saying illustrates the fundamental principle “that distinguishes hot and cold media.” That principle being that cold or cool media demand participation because they are low definition (providing little data) while hot media demand relatively little participation because they are high definition (providing much data).
If you’re wondering how this proverb illustrates this hold on to your hat. McLuhan says, “Glasses intensify the outward-going vision, and fill in the feminine image exceedingly, Marion the Librarian notwithstanding. Dark glasses, on the other hand, create the inscrutable and inaccessible image that invites a great deal of participation and completion.” In other words, girls who wear dark glasses get the passes, not because they’re hot but because they’re cool. And perhaps, also, boys who wear glasses don’t make passes, because they’re getting way too much information. Seriously, somebody should study this.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 49.
The secret is to avoid eye contact
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Isn’t it obvious?
“The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Really?
What did McLuhan mean by this? Read Douglas Coupland’s recent biography of McLuhan and you will find this quotation separated from its context and put up as meaning that a man’s name has a subliminal effect. If your last name is Rich, for example, people won’t think you’re poor. A somewhat kooky idea that McLuhan adopted in his analysis of the difficulties of Richard Nixon. (See this blog – The Power of Names – in which I must admit I did not see this distinction as clearly as I do now.)
Take a look at what McLuhan is actually trying to say with this line in Understanding Media (p. 49). He starts with the observation that “in a highly visual and highly literate culture” – read Canada, Britain or America – most people can’t quite catch the name of a person they’re being introduced to for the first time. Why? Because McLuhan says you’re so caught up in looking at the person that you don’t hear the name. It’s as if the sound is blocked out or dimmed. To get the name you then ask “How do you spell your name?” (How much more visual can you get?) This wouldn’t happen, he says, in a highly auditory ear culture. In such a culture – to reach the quotation at last – “the sound of a man’s name … is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”
If you lived in an ear culture rather than an eye culture, McLuhan says, you’d hear the name. But we don’t do we? Even today after half a century of television and now the internet we still seem to be a highly visual culture. We still have trouble hearing names for the first time. What do we do to help people hear names at large business meetings and social events? We ask them to wear name tags. (How much more visual can you get?)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 49.
The Twist is out
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Isn’t it obvious?
If you want to know how media work you must look at how the world works. Consider this fact which I ran across in the special “Russia” issue of Life magazine (September 13, 1963). Apparently the Russians have declared the Twist “taboo” in restaurants and nightclubs. The explanation for this state of affairs is obvious. The twist is cool which is inconsistent with the hotness of Russia’s economic development programs that are driving its industrialization.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Really?
This explanation for the cool reception of the Twist in cold-war Russia is so wonderfully quirky that it boggles the mind. And yet it is a remarkably apt analogy if you find analogies persuasive. The Russian economic development program was focused on the growth of heavy machinery. The very idea of an economic plan and heavy machinery is hot (low participation, high definition). The Twist is the epitome of cool (high participation, low definition). See for yourself….
Of course there are other reasons …
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 44.
What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Here are two short lists.
Three things that haven’t worked in America since the coming of TV:
Movies
National magazines
Comic books
And two things that thanks to TV Americans have discovered a new passion for:
Skin diving
Small cars.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Now what?
I wonder if it’s too late to make a call to my broker?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 417 and 421.
What good is talk?
Marshall McLuhan (November 1965, age 54). Talk is the way.
Of course, for me, the best way to explore a subject is by talking it through. I can’t understand what I think about something until I start talking about it. And sometimes it takes me four or five goes at it before I’m even close to capturing what an idea is really all about. Some people have to think before they speak. For me I don’t start thinking until I’m speaking. Writing doesn’t usually help me think the way talking does. When I’m talking I feel alive.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). How do you think?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 66.