Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
Yesterday I told you what Robert Fulford had to say about me in Maclean’s. I must say the man really does not get me. He is hung up as teenagers say on Euclidian space. It blinds him to the truth of the medium is the message. He says I’m repetitious. But I have to keep repeating myself because he does not get it. That is to say getting it is something he does not get. Get it?
Me (December 2009, age 57). More critiquing of the critics
Let us look now at the criticisms that can be found in the blurbs printed on the covers and dust jackets of the 4 copies of Understanding Media that I have on my McLuhan book shelf. There is more than a hint of criticism to be found there because McLuhan’s publishers knew controversy sells books.
Second printing, October, 1966, Signet Book, new American Library of Canada: “Understanding Media is the book that’s making history and hysteria- with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan is the new spokesman of the electronic age- the oracle whose revolutionary ideas have blasted an explosion of debate from academy to coffee house. [The publisher] “His critics are infuriated by his ideas ….” Richard Schickel, Harper’s.
Third printing, 1968, McGraw Hill, hard cover: “An infuriating book.” Commonweal.
First MIT Press edition, 1994, soft cover: “McLuhan’s theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate. … There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan’s work in the last few years …. Lewis H. Lapham revaluates McLuhan’s work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.”
Critical edition, Ginko Press, hard cover, 2003: “Infuriating, brilliant and incoherent. “ Commonweal Review. “The medium is not the message.” Umberto Eco.
There is a recurrent idea in the blurbs. People are “infuriated” by the book. Why? Among other things Robert Fulford, whose criticism of McLuhan in Maclean’s set off this series of blogs on the criticism of Marshall McLuhan, presumably would say his arrogance is infuriating. (To be continued)
Is there anything in Understanding Media that you find infuriating? Tell me what it is and why it is infuriating.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for the is post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
Tags: Advertising, American mind, Communications, Criticism, Culture, Education, Social media, Technology, Thinking
Marshall McLuhan (September, 1964, age 53). These guys don’t get it
I spoke at the Progressive Conservative party’s Conference on goals for Canada. Former Prime Minister Diefenbaker was there when I made my address, but I don’t think he heard what I was saying. He hasn’t been listening a lot lately. Not in the flag debate. Don’t like that new flag much myself but it doesn’t do any good to resist change you must lead it. Among other things I told them that “political parties must now begin to think seriously about their responsibility to teenagers.” I hope they heard that one if they don’t they’re dead.
Michael Hinton (October, 2009, age 57). They still don’t get it
According to journalist Martin Sullivan after Marshall McLuhan spoke, Eugene Forsey, one of the senior figures in the party, turned and said, “Is McLuhan suggesting Diefenbaker should where a Beatle wig?”
To understand the importance of McLuhan’s idea you need to understand some Canadian political history. In 1963, after winning with a minority in 1962 and the largest majority to date in Canadian political history in 1957, John Diefenbaker’s Conservatives were defeated by Mike Pearson’s Liberals. The conference McLuhan spoke at in 1964 had been organized by Dalton Camp. Camp was a major strategist and power broker in the Federal Conservative party, who would orchestrate the removal of John Diefenbaker from the leadership of the party, in ‘the night of the long knives’ in the hopes of shifting the Liberals from power in the next election. Camp believed “there are business and professional men, and the rising generations of young people, who do not find political organization in its traditional form either appealing or challenging.” The conference, as Forsey’s remarks suggest, did not succeed in Camp’s aim which was as he put it, to stimulate, “from fresh springs of awareness new channels of thought, inquiry and purpose. What we cannot do again is merely ingest the realities of a new society into an inert doctrinaire conservatism.” That, however, is precisely what the Conservatives did and the Liberals held onto power for the next 16 years.
Given that today most Canadians under 30 seem to have little interest in the traditional political process and political parties is their anything Canadians learn from this? What about in other countries, such as the United States and Britain, where those under 30 also appear to be disengaged from politics? Why don’t political parties think seriously about their responsibility to teenagers? If they did what would they do differently?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Sprague, D.N. Post-Confederation Canada: The structure of Canadian History since 1867. Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall, 1990, pp. 255-321, and appendix I.
Sullivan, Martin. Mandate ‘68. Toronto: Doubleday, 1968, pp. 89-91.
Tags: Communications, Culture, Education, Global village, Listening, Politics, Rhetoric