A tribute to and a lament for Marshall McLuhan continues. If he had lived Marshall would have been 100 on July 21, 2011. Join me in the countdown to his centennial, and an exploration of more of his observations on the way media work in the electric age in which we live.
Hot and cool media
Is TV hurting the Liberal’s and NDP’s chances in the election campaign?
Marshall McLuhan (April 24, 1979, age 67). Yes!
“We have an election underway here in Canada and the issues include separatism, as well as jobs and inflation. All of these are hot issues. That is to say, they are completely unsuited to the TV medium.”
Me (April, 2011, age 58). The McLuhan strategy.
And today we also have an election underway. And while the issues have changed, Marshall’s observations remain relevant. If TV is unsuited to the selling of hot issues then the party that avoids the issues on TV is most likely to win. Not surprisingly, McLuhan had another idea, too: hot issues could be pushed on a hot medium like radio. If McLuhan is right, this could be what is required for a Liberal or NDP victory. Hot sell on radio, cool engagement on TV. But can any of the opposition leaders beat the Harper stare?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 545.
Elections in the electronic age
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Don’t ask and you will receive.  Â
“In the cool TV age, the office must chase the man, as in the pre-railway days of Jefferson and Washington. Anyone seeking office is far too hot for the new cool electorate.”
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Me (March, 2011, age 58). Is Canada no longer in the electronic age?
There seems to be an awful lot of seeking going on in Canadian politics right now.
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 Cordially, Marshall and Me
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Reading:Â
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 60.
It’s all happening here
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). The sorcery of TV.
“TV means that the Vietnam war is the first to be fought on American soil. Parents can now see their sons killed in living color. All sons become ours on TV.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Today, with what’s been happening …
In Japan, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere our TV family has never been bigger or more stricken with tragedy. It is possible that this experience of a seemingly unending TV cooled string of hot conflicts and disasters may well prove today to be as McLuhan said about the experience war on TV in the sixties “unbearable.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 52.
The cool of color tv
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Watch and learn.   Â
“Color TV is the coolest possible mythic medium. In the hands of the old movie gang, it is used for hot effects of more intense realism.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Have a look
TV color:
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Movie gang color:
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Cordially, Marshall and Me
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Reading:Â
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 86.
A lesson for ad men
 Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). A fatal error.  Â
“The TV sound track still yields the hot radio pitch, even in ads – a fatal error.”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Judge for yourself.
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Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:Â
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 86.
Lessons in hot and cool
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). For your information some questions.
“Why are [lapel] buttons better than billboards? Why is the story board at an Advertising Agency more involving than the finished ad? Why are ads better than the features on TV and in magazines?”
Me (March, 2011, age 58). Because they’re cool.
As usual McLuhan has his finger on something. By better of course he doesn’t mean superior in all ways.  He means more involving.  For example:
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 86.
TV demands casualness.
Marshall McLuhan (October 29, 1960, age 49).  It’s a cool medium.
“The forms of entertainment that work best on television, whether it’s Paddy Chayefsky or even the Parr Show, are ones which admit of a great deal of casualness, in which people can be introduced and dialogued with in the presence of the camera at all sorts of levels of their lives.”
Me (February, 2011, age 58). Paddy Chayefsky in dialogue.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, “The Communications Revolution,” panel discussion at Third Annual Conference on the Humanities, Ohio State University Graduate School, October 29, 1960, in Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, 2003, p. 41.
Did TV hurt baseball?
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). It is possible …
That baseball’s popularity will ebb and football’s will grow as TV continues to do its work on us. TV and football are tactile. Baseball is visual.
Me (December, 2010, age 58). Really?
This is one of those predictions by McLuhan that at first strike me as crackers, but then when I look for evidence I’m surprised by how much the facts support him. Have a look at the results of this Gallup poll, which shows that since the coming of TV in the late 1940s the popularity of baseball in America has fallen and football has risen.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture is Our Business, 1970, p. 118.
It took TV to really make the telephone’s stimulus pay off.
Marshall McLuhan (1964, age 52). Of course …
“In the 1920s, the telephone spawned a good deal of dialogue humour that sold as gramophone records. But radio and the talking pictures were not kind to the monologue, even when it was made by W.C. Fields or Will Rogers. These hot media pushed aside the cooler forms that TV has now brought back to a larger scale. The new race of nightclub entertainers (Newhart, Nichols and May) have a curious early-telephone flavor that is very welcome, indeed.”
Me (November, 2010, age 58). Is this where the internet has taken us?
Now we have a brand new race of entertainers turning the book into dialogue. Very welcome, indeed.
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Cordially, Marshall and Me
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Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 270.
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.