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.
Rhetoric
Sound trumps sight.
Marshall McLuhan (1970, age 59). Whitehead’s observation.
I ran across this observation of Whitehead’s in his admirable “Dialogues” some years ago and commend it to your attention: “With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.“
Me (February, 2011, age 58). Let’s explore this idea.
Which of these do you find more powerful?
This?
Or this? The same clip, but play it with the sound turned off
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Culture Is Our Business, 1970, p. 146.
The power of speech
Marshall McLuhan (June 12, 1951, age 39). To connect only listen!
Ezra Pound’s remarkable readings of his poems, particularly Canto 56, opened my ears to his rhythms. As I put the matter to him in a plea that he issue these readings as a commercial discs for the general public, “the poet’s own voice provides an entry to his world which is otherwise hard to discover.”
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Why not try it?
Reading McLuhan can be a confusing and frustrating experience. One of the best ways to gain entry to McLuhan’s world is to listen to McLuhan talk about his ideas.
Here he is talking on Youtube. Click on the image to play.
Don’t think about this as “McLuhan Lite” think about it as “The Real McLuhan.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 224.
One of the downsides of the current recession?
Marshall McLuhan (December 14, 1960, age 49). No joking around.
I was just remarking to Claude Bissell that the “current recession seems have had a bad effect on the flow of jokes.” The joke must be an exception to the universal rule that in the electronic age everything becomes substitutable for everything else.
Me (September, 2010, age 58). Ohio’s Phil Davison to the rescue.
In our own current recession which lingers on the jokes also seem to be drying up. Here for your amusement is some found humour.
With thanks to Writing Boots.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 274.
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.
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.
McLuhan was no gentleman.
Marshall McLuhan (1934 or 35, age 22/24). Tonight I crossed swords with Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein came to Cambridge today to speak on the subject: “I am I because my little dog knows me.” Naturally, I could not help letting the remark slip, rather loudly I admit, that this is a prime example of the infantile nature of her prose style. She was not amused. Stopping mid (child-like) sentence she fixed me with a look, grabbed her umbrella, and made her way through the crowd to where I was standing. “What,” she said, “are people like you doing here at Cambridge?” “My dear woman,” I said …
Me (August, 2010, age 58) What did McLuhan say next?
Unfortunately, we do not know what Marshall McLuhan said next. And it is not clear that this is actually how he found himself crossing swords with Gertrude Stein.
Philip Marchand tells the story this way in his biography of McLuhan. But Terry Gordon in his biography of McLuhan tells the story very differently. According to Gordon, McLuhan did not boorishly interrupt Stein’s address. Instead, Stein spoke boringly and without interruption for an hour. McLuhan, irritated, waited till the question period to ask what Stein thought of Wyndham Lewis’s thoughts about “the subject of time,” suspecting that it might well get a rise out of Stein because of the length of her talk and her well-known sensitivity to Lewis’s poisonous criticisms of her writing style.
No matter, whoever is more clearly the injured party – McLuhan in the Gordon version, Stein in the Marchand version – McLuhan proves himself to be no gentleman. And either way, we can still speculate as to what McLuhan might have said next. Two come-backs come to mind: “My question exactly;” and “You mean my fallacy is all wrong?”
What do you think Marshall might have said?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, 1989, p. 46.
W. Terrence Gordon, Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, p. 62.
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.