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.
Personal branding
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 power of names
Marshall McLuhan (July 1968, age 57). Poor old Nix-on
The Nixon campaign has been consulting me on the best ways Richard Nixon can use the media to win this year’s race for the Presidency. I told them that he should put his campaign ads on radio rather than TV. A hot character like Nixon is ideally suited to radio. His hot-stuff will not go over well on TV. If they insist on putting him on TV, I told them, they should make sure he says as little as possible. He should be as silent as his beloved ‘silent majority.’ That should cool him down. Unfortunately, Nixon can do nothing about his name. The ‘Nix’ sound in Nixon has a pronounced negative subliminal effect on voters. A name of course is a medium. And the medium is always the message. You can turn off your TV but you can’t turn off your name. Names are numbing blows from which we never recover.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). Good old Mars-hall?
Douglas Coupland has a good deal of irreverent fun with Marshall McLuhan’s name. He places “the name Marshall McLuhan into commonly available internet name generators” and generates for example McLuhan’s porn star name (Pud Bendover), pimp name (Slick Tight) and drag name (Vanilla Thunderstorm). He also uses a word scrambler to break and reassemble ‘Marshall McLuhan’ into a large number of three and four letter phrases such as ‘alarm small hunch,’ ‘clam hah small um,’ and ‘call sham man hurl.’ But these exercises – entertaining as they are in a smirking way – do not tell us much if anything about McLuhan or the power of names.
However, a case can be made that McLuhan may have suffered from a negative subliminal effect associated with his name in the more pedestrian way he alleges Nixon did. McLuhan’s name was played with by his academic enemies who mocked him by calling him ‘McLoon.’ How much of a blow was this? Did it encourage his readers to view his ideas as loony? On the other hand his boyhood nick name was ‘Mars’ the Roman God of War (from Mars-hall) which may on balance lent him considerable subliminal strength and contributed to his combative nature.
What does your name say about you? Or not?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan, 2009, pp. 2-9.
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 3.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
Marshall McLuhan (August, 1967, age 56). We’re in the money!
Today I signed a deal with Eugene Schwartz. The Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Newsletter is destined to make McLuhan Inc. a tidy sum of money. The newsletter according to our ad copy will be “a startling, shocking Early Warning System for our era of instant change!” Each month the newsletter will deliver “the most vital developments of our day – filled with both immense danger and previously undreamed-of potential.” What developments? “The Teen-age drop out,” “The Ghetto Rebellion,” “The super-urbs” replacing our cities. Here are some of the pressing questions of the day the newsletter will answer. “Why do Negro youngsters in Watts say ‘Why should I interrupt my education to go to school? Why did IBM spend thousands of dollars with Dr. McLuhan to devise a sensory profile of their executives? Why have advertising agencies become the most effective educational institutions in our society?” I can’t wait to hear my answers.
Me (August, 2010, age 58). They’re in something else!
The first edition of the monthly newsletter was mailed to roughly 4,000 subscribers in July 1968 and continued until sometime in 1970. The subscribers paid $50 a year for the newsletter and McLuhan was promised a minimum of $10,000 in the first year and $20,000 in the second, and his son Eric as editor of the newsletter was promised $15,000 a year and a top-floor office on Madison Avenue. [For more]
The newsletter had three problems. (See Marchand’s biography of McLuhan)
- Much of the content was vintage McLuhan, but it did not differ very much from what Mcluhan was saying elsewhere for free.
- The newsletter’s advice was general rather than specific and topical.
- The newsletter “did nothing but intensify suspicions that McLuhan was a charlatan and a man out to exploit his reputation as a media wizard for every penny he could get.” (p. 228.)
McLuhan made no money out of the venture. It is hard not to be disappointed in McLuhan. The harsh part of me says: The moral is, if you’re going to sell out get the money up front. The sensitive part of me says: The moral is, if you’re famous people will try to take advantage of you.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, pp. 209, 210, 227-229.
What Marshall McLuhan was up to? [cont'd]
Marshall McLuhan (December 14, 1977, age 66). Really, I was stunned!
I still can’t get over Peter Gzowski’s outrageous suggestion on television yesterday that I failed grade six! I can’t imagine where he got the idea. As told him – “I never failed any grade ever.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). Could McLuhan have actually forgotten that he failed grade six?
One might think it odd for a man to forget failing grade six. Marshall McLuhan, however, forgot a great many things after the brain surgery he underwent in 1967. For example, he forgot books he had read, his children’s birthdays, and where his friends lived. Granted, his biographers do not comment on McLuhan’s denial that he failed grade six on the Gzowski show, which is when you think about it extremely odd. Perhaps they didn’t because it seemed like a small, unimportant thing. On the other hand it may also be a small, but striking example of how McLuhan was changed by the surgery and perhaps also his strokes.
Clearly, McLuhan was not the man he once was after his surgery. As McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand says: “his friend John Wain described him as ‘nervous, fragile, tense’ [in] the year after his operation. To some extent, he remained that way for the rest of his life.” And a neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne, who knew McLuhan in the 1970s, recalled “he was querulous and irritable in his later years … He didn’t come across as being particularly mentally alert or flexible.” The question is how fundamentally he was changed. As readers of this blog know, I believe the changes were pronounced. So much so as I have argued in earlier posts. One can say the surgery cost McLuhan his genius.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall Mcluhan: the Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 214.
What was Marshall McLuhan up to?
Marshall McLuhan (December 13, 1977, age 66). I’m stunned!
Peter Gzowski actually suggested on television today that I had failed grade six! The fact is – as told him – “I never failed any grade ever.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). What was McLuhan up to?
What Gzowski asked was whether ordinary people who hadn’t attained McLuhan’s academic stature (Full Professor Toronto, Cambridge Ph.D.) should be able to feel better knowing that McLuhan had failed grade six. An easy question. At least one would think so. At any rate, McLuhan’s response clearly surprised Gzowski.
Why did McLuhan deny he’d failed? It is a fact that he did fail. And you can read about it in the biographies of McLuhan by Philip Marchand and Terry Gordon. It is also a fact that his Mother persuaded the school to let him go on to grade 7 and prove he could do the work, which he did. So why didn’t McLuhan say this? What was McLuhan up to?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
PS: For something completely different see yesterday’s post
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 10.
Philip Marchand, Marshall Mcluhan: the Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 17-18.
The elusive Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (May 19, 1966, age 54). Foul play!
“How is it Professor McLuhan,” Eric Goldman asked me earlier today on WNBC television program The Open Mind, “that you should be so concerned with media? Here you are the son of Baptist parents, convert to Catholicism, a Canadian student of English literature, formerly an engineering student and now …”
“Oh, don’t bother with that data.” I said.
“Why?
“It’s all wrong! And in any case quite unnecessary.”
Me (June 2010, age 57). What was McLuhan up to?
Gerald Stern who quotes this exchange between McLuhan and Goldman in his introduction to McLuhan: Hot and Cool says that McLuhan typically refused to discuss his family life, personal opinions or his past. As a result, “personal and biographical information about McLuhan is difficult to trace.” And, “Stearn adds, “there is a coy, almost purposeful elusiveness about the man himself.” Why? Stearn suggests there is no good reason why McLuhan side stepped these subjects: he was simply a “puzzling” character.
This is possible, but there is I think a better answer. It is more probable that McLuhan actually believed what he said: that biographical details were “quite unnecessary.” McLuhan was trained at Cambridge in the close reading critical analysis of I. A. Richards. I imagine if McLuhan had been asked if asked about the usefulness of biographical details in the understanding of any authors work he would have said these details were “quite unnecessary.” Everything you needed to know to understand a poem or a novel, Richards taught, was in the written work – that is in the work’s diction, rhythm and structure. And this was the method McLuhan followed in his teaching.
(And see tomorrow’s post for a more troubling example of McLuhan’s elusiveness.)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
McLuhan: Hot and Cool. Edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn, 1967, p. IV.
The measure of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (May 6, 1966, age 54). Really?
Well, how’d I do Corinne?
You were magnificent Marshall. But surely Patrick Watson was exaggerating when he said that “no one can make sense out of more than ten percent of what” you say.
Me (June 2010, age 57). A test
While Marshall McLuhan was renowned for being difficult to understand to say that 90 percent of what he says is incomprehensible does seem an exaggeration. Granted Patrick Watson’s aim was to be controversial when he said this on the CBC television program “This Hour Has Seven Days.” (May 6, 1966) But this is as good an excuse as any to make the point that Marshall McLuhan is not as difficult to understand as is commonly thought. Or maybe he is.
Here by way of a test is a bit of what Marshall McLuhan had to say on the program.
[The interviewer, Robert Fullford, asks.] “Has [the world] changed because of TV?”
[McLuhan replies:] “Television gave the old electric circuitry that’s already here a huge extra push in this direction of involvement and inwardness. You see, the circuit doesn’t simply push things out for inspection, it pushes you in. It involves you. When you put a new medium into play, people’s sensory life shifts a bit, sometimes shifts a lot. This changes their outlook, their attitudes, changes their feelings about studies, about school, about politics. Since TV, Canadian, British and American politics have cooled off almost to the point of rigor mortis … .”
What do you think? Is 90 percent of this something “no one can make sense out of?”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Who Was Marshall McLuhan, edited by Barrington Nevitt with Maurice McLuhan, 1995, pp. 135-36.
Marshall McLuhan: Cult Hero (cont’d)
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Let’s be serious.
Marshall?
Yes.
That book Representative Men: Cult Heroes of Our Time. [see yesterday's post]
What about it?
If you’re a cult hero, does that mean people think you have the answers?
Yes. But as usual people are wrong. I don’t have the answers. I’ve got something far more important. I have the questions.
Me (June 2010, age 57). To find the questions look for the answers
Marshall McLuhan’s books would be easier to understand if he asked his questions in the form of questions. Instead his questions appear in the form of bold unqualified statements, which he called probes. Famously McLuhan said he made these statements not because he wanted people to believe him, but because he wanted them to think.
Here is an example: As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.’ (The Essential McLuhan, 1995, p. 283.)
Consider the number of ways our age is becoming a ‘do it yourself age.’ In McLuhan’s day someone else made appointments, dialed telephone calls, took messages, and typed and edited reports and presentations, and published. Now with the help of technology, we do these things ourselves.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Representative Men: Cult Heroes of Our Time, edited by Theodore L. Gross. New York: The Free press, 1970.
Marshall McLuhan: Cult Hero
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Corinne, look at this!
Look at what, Marshall?
This new book, Representative Men: Cult Heroes of Our Time. I’m a cult hero.
A what?
A cult hero. I quote – “the hero is an exceptional person who maintains authority over average people and seeks to realize an ideal. In the pursuit of this ideal, the hero demonstrates certain characteristics. He is a courageous, active social man whose passions are more intense than the people he represents; he is a man willing to dive, to take chances; he is someone finally who sees more deeply into the experiences of the average man.”
Is that what you are?
It appears so. But then who knows how long as my 15 minutes will last
Me (June 2010, age 57) Yesterday and today
A book like Representative Men, which was published in 1970, reveals the extent of Marshall McLuhan’s fame and influence in the late 1960s. Who made the list? Just to read some of the names is to get a sense of high Marshall McLuhan flew in the 1960s and how far he has fallen in the public’s estimation today: JFK, Jacqueline Onassis, J. D. Salinger, Malcolm X, Frank Sinatra, Arthur Miller, and Martin Luther King.
Certainly in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan was seen as someone who “sees … deeply into the experiences of the average man.” A man who had the answers. Whether he will ever be seen again as the man with the answers is doubtful. But, as I hope this blog shows, whenever you turn to McLuhan insight and answers are possible.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Representative Men: Cult Heroes of Our Time, edited by Theodore L. Gross. New York: The Free press, 1970.
The eccentric Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (June 1966, age 54). I do it my way!
No, Corinne, I definitely will not.
But Marshall I can’t always be available to run down to your office to tell you it’s time to go to a meeting at the CBC.
Why not?
Might I remind you, I’m one woman and we have six children?
A point Corinne, I admit it, a point.
Then for Pete’s sake, wear the wrist watch I bought you for your birthday.
I’ll think about it. Isn’t it time we left studio?
Me (June 2010, age 57). The problem with eccentricities
Here are some of Marshall McLuhan’s eccentricities:
For many years he refused to wear a watch or have a clock in his office.
He judged a new book not by its cover but how interesting it was on page 69.
He did not know his children’s birthdays.
He dictated letters to his secretary lying flat on the floor beneath his desk.
He fell asleep at departmental meetings
He wore pre-tied ties that were held on by an elastic band.
He regularly phoned people at all sorts of hours, some times in the middle of the night.
He thought numbers divisible by 3 to be lucky and avoided numbers not divisible by 3 for such things as addresses, appointment dates, and membership numbers.
He felt it was possible to judge the merit of a Ph.D. thesis on the first 3 pages and frequently said so at oral examinations.
He once claimed that it took him no more than 5 minutes to read Milton’s Paradise Lost.
He disliked being photographed or tape recorded.
He was a notoriously bad listener. But – as one who knew him said – was polite enough to wait till your lips stopped moving before speaking.
The problem with eccentricities is that in focusing on them you lose sight of the man. Instead of a real person with thoughts, desires, and feelings, you are left with a card board cut-out man. A figure of quirky fun. Someone you have categorized and now cease to think about.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post:
Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan, 2009.