A tribute to and a lament for Marshall McLuhan. Five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday, I present one of McLuhan’s observations and talk about its relevance today. 300 ideas. 300 days. 300 posts.
Entertainment
The artistry of advertising.
Marshall McLuhan (May 26, 1964, age 52). Dear Diary:
No one seems to realize that advertisers are every bit as much artists as the Symbolists poets are. That is they aim at certain effects and their artistry is to produce those effects in our minds. I’m not praising them when I say they are artists or advertising is artistry. I am simply stating a fact.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Is this art?
This, I believe, is Marshall’s and my 296th post. As the 300th post in this blog draws near I am tempted to address only the most important, most significant, ideas in the McLuhan cannon. But then I asked myself what would Marshall have done and I realized this would be a most unMarshall thing to do. Instead, therefore, we will press on with whatever comes to hand.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 116.
The big switch.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“[T]he movie has excelled as a medium that offers poor people roles of riches and power beyond the dreams of avarice.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Ah one can dream …
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 291.
Movies will conquer the world for Uncle Sam.
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Hollywood and globalization.
It seems obvious that Hollywood is a great training ground for globalization. To see what the western world is all about all you have to do is buy a ticket to a Hollywood film. If so then the battle for and against globalization will be won on the media battlefield. For globalization to triumph Hollywood movies must beat TV and the internet. But then maybe he’s wrong or perhaps the movie has moved on.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“the film medium … [is a] monster ad for consumer goods.”
“The movie, as much as the alphabet and the printed word, is an aggressive and imperial form that explodes outward into other cultures.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 294-295.
Which came first the film or the book?
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). The book of course
“Even the film industry regards all its greatest achievements as derived from novels.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Can you think of any film that inspired a great book?
McLuhan observes that the book and the film are closely related to one another. As evidence for this he points to great films being inspired by novels and the difficulty of imagining a film being based on a newspaper. Yet it is odd that the forces of inspiration seem to work in only one direction. It is easy to think of novels (and plays and even comic books and video games) that inspired great (ok may be not great, but not completely schlock) films, but hard to think of any film that inspired a great (or even reasonably good) book and none outside the realm of fantasy and science fiction. No disrespect to Alan Dean Foster, but he’s no Charlotte Bronte.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 286.
Seeing our present as future.
Me (October, 2010, age 58). Another one for McLuhan.
The critics of Marshall McLuhan said he was a charlatan speaking gibberish. Yet here he is in 1964, sounding remarkably sane to modern ears, predicting a now ubiquitous small, hand-held electronic device – cell phone, blackberry, i-phone – on which you can play a movie. Granted he doesn’t see it as digital but 20/20 future sight is asking a lot. Lesson – if you’re going to predict the future be ready for criticism if you get it right.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Clearly …
“At the present time, film is still in its manuscript phase, as it were; shortly it will, under TV pressure, go into its portable, accessible, printed-book phase. Soon everyone will be able to have a small, inexpensive film projector that plays an 8-mm sound cartridge as if on a TV screen. This development is part of our present technological implosion.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 291-292.
The power of film.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). You go where it goes.
“It was Renee Clair who pointed out that if two or three people were together on a stage, the dramatist must ceaselessly motivate or explain their being there at all. But the film audience, like the book reader, accepts mere sequence as rational. Whatever the camera turns to, the audience accepts. We are transported to another world.”
Me (October, 2010, age 58). Which is hard to believe.
But for all that may in fact be true. Stranger things can happen:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 286.
The deeps of TV
Me (October, 2010, age 58). The way to understand is to experience.
Anyone who reads Marshall McLuhan knows that TV is a cool medium. And that far from being a passive medium TV demands high involvement or participation from all of the senses. But to be told this is not to understand it. The best way to understand this is to experience it. Here in glorious 1960s black and white is the message McLuhan claimed hit audiences in his day most powerfully.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Bye bye couch potato …
“The banal and ritual remark of the conventionally literate, that TV presents an experience for passive viewers, is wide of the mark. TV is above all a medium that demands a creatively participant response.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 336.
John and Yoko and Marshall McLuhan’s theory of dinosaurs
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Perhaps the most insane of McLuhan’s ideas
In 1969 on the last Saturday before Christmas CBS television arranged for Marshall McLuhan to interview John Lennon and Yoko Ono about their ‘War is Over’ campaign and anything else McLuhan thought they should talk about. Their wide-ranging discussion took place at Marshall’s office in the Coach House at the University of Toronto and lasted about an hour. Among other things, they talked about the importance of Elvis in John’s career, Yoko’s contribution to their creative partnership, the cultural differences between Britain and America, and, of course, McLuhan’s explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. I don’t know what John and Yoko thought of McLuhan’s ideas about the dinosaurs, but it must have crossed their minds that this was one seriously crazy dude. And if so it would be difficult to say they were wrong.
Marshall McLuhan (19 December 1969, age 58). It’s the frustration!
“Frustration creates bigness. Frustration releases adrenaline in the system. Adrenaline creates much bigger muscles and bigger arms and legs … . This is why dinosaurs ended in sudden death, because as the environment became more and more hostile, more and more adrenaline was released into their bodies and they got bigger and bigger and then they collapsed.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Read a ‘transcript’ of the interview between John Lennon and Marshall McLuhan
What the ads learned from the movies.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course, it’s obvious …
“When the movies came, the entire pattern of American life went on the screen as a nonstop ad. Whatever any actor or actress wore or used or ate was such an ad as had never been dreamed of. … The result was that all ads in magazines and the press had to look like scenes from a movie. They still do. But the focus has had to become softer since TV.”
Me (October, 2010, age 58). Yes or no?
Today the focus has softened so much that the ad has been re-woven into the movie. It’s called “product placement.” Instead of Clark Gable taking off his shirt to reveal an undershirt and everyone runs out to buy one, and the movie makers are surprised, Brad Pitt opens the fridge and guess what’s sitting there – a coke. And what do you order later on at the refreshment stand because you’re feeling thirsty? A coke.
And nobody’s surprised, least of all the movie makers who charged Coca Cola a sizable fee for coke’s appearance in the scene. Despite its historical roots in the movies not everyone is a fan of product placement. The director John Lynch for example:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 231.
We have no idea what is going to happen
Marshall McLuhan (June 17, 1963, age 51). Why?
Because “[t]he extension of the nervous system by electric media has no precedent in human culture.”
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Don’t like that answer?
Actor Richard Dreyfuss takes a stab at another one:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 289.