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.
Humour
The medium is the mess-age
Me (September, 2010, age 58). The one worder.
Marshall McLuhan had no small talk. His long time friend and colleague, Ted Carpenter, says that McLuhan could talk about small things but was incapable of doing so without turning the small thing into a large subject with “his unflinching directness.” For example, he tells the story of walking with Marshall to the coffee shop of the Royal Ontario Museum. They entered the Museum by the imposing front entrance way. And in the middle of the entrance on the steps was “a turd.” Looking down, McLuhan spoke volumes with a single word.
Marshall McLuhan (1950s, age 40s). “Human.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Edmund Carpenter, “That Not-So-Silent Sea.” Typescript posted on Internet, p. 9.
Still more suggestions for new Chapters of Understanding Media
Marshall McLuhan (August 2010, age 99). Is this funny?
Again? More joke titles for new chapters for Understanding Media? Now you’ve gone too far.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). You tell me.
Here are even more tongue-in-cheek suggestions for new chapters for Understanding Media:
Coronation Street: Ear’s to the Medium
Girdle: It’s a Cinch
White Out: A Step Backwards?
The Foreman Grill: Reversal of a Hot Medium
Telemarketing: Dollars and Sense
Financial Fraud: Give and Take?
Robin Hood: The Medieval Poor Man’s Credit Card
Megaphone: Old Yeller
White Wall Tires: Extensions of Spats
Flatulence: Wind at Your Back
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. xi – xiii.
More suggestions for new Chapters for Understanding Media
Marshall McLuhan (August 2010, age 99). Is this funny?
Joke titles for new chapters for Understanding Media? Swift said, “satire is a glass in which we see every countenance but our own.” But really I fail to see the humor in this exercise.
Me (September, 2010, age 58) You tell me.
Here are some more tongue-in-cheek suggestions (See The Understanding Media Pun Contest) for new chapter topics and titles for Understanding Media:
Automatic Pencil: Getting the Lead Out
Pit Bull: Man’s Best Fiend
Microscope: Little Wonder
Smoke Signals: The Message is Blowing in the Wind
Quack-Quack: Fowl Language
Boring Conversation: Medium Tedium
Capital Punishment: A Live Issue?
Swedish Massage: The Masseuse is the Massage
Push-Up Bra: The Cleavage is the Message
Gypsy Fortune Teller: The Medium is the Message
George Hamilton: Narcissus as Narcosis
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp. xi – xiii.
The understanding media pun contest
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Pun.
Part II of Understanding Media contains 26 case studies, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each deals with a particular medium or technology. McLuhan delighted in puns and so it is not surprising to find puns in some of the titles of these chapters: for example “Clocks: The Scent of Time,” “Movies: The Reel World,” and “Automation: Learning a Living.”
Your challenge, should you decide to accept it is to come up with punning or joking chapter titles either for technologies that did not make it into Understanding Media or for chapters that did but for which McLuhan did not provide a punning subtitle.
For example, “Toasters: A Slice of Leaven,” “The Passenger Pigeon: A Bird in the Band,” “The Sun Dial: Tempus Fidgit.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 2010, age 99). I like a challenge
What about: “The Microscope: To see or not to see,” “Etch-a-sketch: Pane in the Ass,” or “Invisible Ink: The Write Stuff.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, pp.xi-xiii.
What would Marshall say? (continued)
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation (continued)
Yesterday we left Marshall in conversation with journalist Herb Caen at a topless restaurant in San Francisco in August 1965. Readers will recall that McLuhan had called attention to the visual bias of Caen’s language. Let’s take one more look – sorry, I apologize for my visual orientation – at that exchange. Here, to refresh your memory is their conversation from yesterday:
[Caen] Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.
[McLuhan] Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually. And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Question: What do you think Caen said next:
(a) “If you say so Marshall.”
(b) “Fascinating, I never noticed – look I’ve done it again – my visual orientation.”
(c) “What?”
(d) “Actually, I’m rather inhibited.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54) The answer is …
Of course (d) – which, if memory serves me, I followed up with:
Another interesting word. Inhibited is the opposite of exhibited, and what is exhibited causes you to be inhibited.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
What would Marshall say?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). McLuhan in conversation.
Forty-five years ago, in August 1965, McLuhan was in San Francisco to take part in the Marshall McLuhan Festival organized by the PR team of Howard Gossage and Gerald Feigen, who had organized the event to build McLuhan as a public figure. One day they took McLuhan for lunch at a topless restaurant along with journalists Tom Wolfe and Herb Caen. In the article Caen wrote about the outing he reports this exchange between himself and McLuhan:
Being President of the Leg Men of America, I never felt a primal urge to lunch among the topless ladies, but in such distinguished company who could resist? ‘Strip steak sandwich,’ I said to waitress Marilyn, who was wearing blue sequin pasties and not much else. As she walked away, I commented ‘A good-looking girl.’
Question: What do you think McLuhan said next?
(a) “She certainly is.”
(b) “I hear you Herb.”
(c) “Excuse me, Marilyn, I’ll have the strip steak too.”
(d) “Interesting choice of words. Good-LOOKING girl. The remark of a man who is visually oriented, not tactually.”
Marshall McLuhan (August 1965, age 54). The answer is …
Of course (d) – I have little in the way of small talk. And, if memory serves me, after I said that I said this:
And I further noticed that you could not bring yourself to look at her breasts as she took your order. You examined her only after she walked away – another example of the visual: the further she walked away, the more attractive she became.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Herb Caen, “Rainy Day Session,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 12, 1965, p. 25.
To hell with the facts
Marshall McLuhan (1970s, age 60s). Violence and media go hand in hand.
The media’s power to incite violence is evident in the structure of our language. Did you know that the word violence is derived from the Latin word for crossroads?
Me (August, 2010, age 58). “Cross” roads, of course, are “angry” roads. And doesn’t anger frequently result in violence?
Unfortunately, if you look up the word violence in the dictionary, the Oxford, Mcluhan’s favourite dictionary, you will find that its origin is traced to the Latin word, violentia. Violentia does not mean crossroads. It means impetuous or furious, which is a shame because McLuhan’s derivation is far more interesting than the dictionary’s – at least to a student of media.
What was McLuhan thinking? McLuhan-biographer Philip Marchand says, McLuhan never allowed the facts to govern his ideas. And McLuhan is known to have defended his tendency to alter facts to suit his argument with the line – half a brick will break a window as easily as a whole one. Granted. But it is hard to escape the linear thought – however big the brick is it still has to hit the glass to cause damage.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 62.
The McLuhan collection agency
Marshall McLuhan (1960s, age 50s). Ask and ye shall receive!
Today I sent a letter to a client who has not paid my speaking fee. I told them I felt like the parrot in the story who had been crossed with a tiger. “Polly want a cracker. AND I MEAN NOW!” I hope they got the message.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). I wonder
Perhaps only McLuhan would have sent letter like this. I’d like to think it did the trick. [For more on McLuhan's unique sense of humour]
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 189.
What’s art?
Marshall McLuhan (1970s?). Of course …
I was chatting with the artist Eric Wesselow. I asked him, “What is art? He started in on the fact that etymologically, art simply means something that is made.
“Actually,” I told him, “art is what you can get away with.”
He looked somewhat taken aback. So I asked him, “What is a portrait? “A portrait,” I said, “is the picture of a person where there is always something wrong with the mouth.”
Me (August, 2010, age 58). And yet …
I have always found these oddball definitions funny. And perhaps that’s all they are. However they also have a ring of truth. The second calls to mind the most iconoclastic portrait in western culture – the Mona Lisa – the first has crossed the mind of anyone who has ever walked through a gallery of modern art. At any rate the next time I go to an art gallery, I’m going to find it hard not to think of McLuhan’s definitions.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan, 1994, p. 222.
Smile!
Marshall McLuhan (1966, age 54/55). A suggestion …
Tony Schwartz, the sound wizard, was telling me about his latest project. He was doctoring a tape recording of one of New York City Mayor Lindsay’s speeches.
“Marshall, the idea is to take out all his ‘ahs’ so he can hear how great he would sound if he didn’t use them. For example, in his speech Lindsay says: ‘It is ah … a great pleasure to be with you ah … tonight.’ Now listen to it without the ahs.”
No Tony I have a better idea. Why don’t you add a ‘hah’ after every ‘ah’ it will give the mayor’s speech the element of surprise!”
Me (July, 2010, age 57). A favourite anecdote
McLuhan liked to begin his speeches with terrible one-liners. For example, ‘cash is the poor man’s credit card,’ ‘a streaker is just a passing fanny,’ ‘he was never so humble but there’s no police like Holmes,’ ‘he lived as if each moment was his next,’ and ‘diaper backwards spells repaid, think about it.’ Humour ages quickly. Who knows at one time some of these may have been funny.
In his speaking McLuhan rarely used narrative-style jokes to make a point. He seems to have preferred to use one-liners to encourage the audience to be more open to the unexpected. There are however exceptions to this rule. In a speech apparently given at Johns Hopkins in the 1970s, he opens and closes the speech with traditional narrative-style jokes, both of which I think are still funny.
What is your favourite McLuhan joke? [search 'joke' on this blog for inspiration]
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, Who Was Marshall McLuhan? 1994, p. 190-191.