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.
Visual medium
The importance of the unimportant.
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1970, age 59). Cavett’s right!
Today, Dick Cavett made a remarkable observation. He and I were talking on his TV show and he asked me why it was that when people come out of a movie it takes them a while before they start talking to one another. It’s as if they’re overwhelmed by what they’ve seen. Film is a private rather than a corporate affair. One does not have this kind of experience watching TV. TV is corporate rather than private. It encourages talk.
Me (July, 2010, age 58). But, does it matter?
The experience Cavett talks about of leaving a movie theatre at a loss for words is I think a common one. We’ve all had it. And it was the exactly this type of real world observation that fascinated McLuhan and which he loved to talk to people about. (Others being that radio is a visual medium, the telephone a non-visual medium, and children like to watch TV close up. Still others that radio as background “noise” at work is not visual. People tend to shout on cell phones. And listening to music with ear buds while running or biking can blind you to the visual.)
These seemingly unimportant experiences may be the keys to understanding the effects of media. At least McLuhan was drawn to them.
What do you think? Was McLuhan on to something.
Are there other seemingly unimportant media effects have you observed?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Listening for this post
The Dick Cavett Show, December 1970.
The coolness of TV and PowerPoint too
Marshall McLuhan (1965, age 54). TV is cool!
As I have pointed out in Understanding Media, TV is a cool medium. It is low definition. It provides information sparsely, not richly, which means it is extremely involving. All the senses are put to work. Naturally it induces high participation in an audience.
Me (June 2010, age 57). So is PowerPoint!
Like TV, PowerPoint is a cool medium. Although little recognized as such, PowerPoint’s coolness is one of the reasons – McLuhan would have said the chief reason – it has come to dominate the world of presentation and at the same time attract widespread criticism as a tool for oversimplifying communication.
Last year I saw a PowerPoint presentation given by the chief economist of a bank in which it was easy to see how cool the medium was. The presentation took place in a large ballroom in a hotel in Montreal. Two large screens glowed on either side of her. While she was obviously a good speaker and the audience seemed to be very involved in the talk hardly anyone looked at her. Instead all eyes were riveted on the screens. After the presentation was over I asked someone at a neighbouring table what they thought of the talk. Their answer: “Too simple.”
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1965, p. 319.
Who’s on trial?
Marshall McLuhan (April 2, 1971, age 59). We are.
When I heard the news on TV about Lt. Wiliam Calley’s life sentence for the My Lai massacre it suddenly hit me. TV steps up our sense of involvement so much that for example in the public broadcast of a trial the audience becomes the criminal. Or more prosaically, the medium contains not the message but the user.
Me (May 2010, age 57). What do you remember most vividly?
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the memories that remain most vivid to me are associated with TV broadcasts:
- O.J. in the white Ford Bronco;
- the crashing of the jet liner into the Twin Towers;
- the funerals of JFK
- and Winston Churchill;
- the first moon landing.
Why? McLuhan would say that in these TV spectacles the audience becomes the criminal, the terrorists, the corpse, the astronaut.
What events do you remember most vividly?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 430-31.
Another lesson in the practicality of Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan (June 3, 1968, age 56). Don’t Do It Pierre!
I have been trying to explain to Pierre Trudeau why he should refuse to participate in TV debates. It has nothing to do with his skills in political debate or his suitability to the medium. It is the medium. TV and debates do not mix.
Me (April 2010, age 57). A Change of Heart?
As was noted yesterday, according to Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan’s most recent biographer, the last thing you should look for in the work of Marshall McLuhan is usefulness or practicality. “There are, perhaps, no practical political, religious, or financial applications to Marshall’s work,” he writes. “It could even be argued that it should be seen as a rarefied artifact unto itself, an intricate and fantastically ornate artwork that creates its own language and then writes poetry with it.”
And yet here again what McLuhan says to Pierre Trudeau about debating and TV seems to have a practical aspect to it. The idea is that TV is a cool conversational medium not a hot debating medium. McLuhan’s advice to Trudeau is to refuse to debate on TV. This is practical advice. However, it is not without its difficulties. How Trudeau could have explained such a decision persuasively to the press and his political opponents is far from clear. It also represents an apparent change in McLuhan’s thinking on the subject. In Understanding Media, for example, McLuhan suggests that only hot personalities have problems with debates on TV. He says Kennedy beat Nixon in their debate on TV because Kennedy was cool and therefore more naturally suited to the TV medium while Nixon who he said was hot looked bad on it.
Have political debates on TV been a misuse of the medium? Can cool personalities win in debates on TV? Or do we all lose?
Dip into the Kennedy Nixon debates and weigh in.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan, Toronto, Penguin, 2009, pp. 142-43.
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 352.
Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media, 1964, pp. 329-30.
Was Marshall McLuhan’s thinking impractical?
Marshall McLuhan (February 9, 1967, age 55). No!
I had a grand time chatting with U.S. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey when I was invited to a dinner in Washington. I told him that America was losing the war in Vietnam on TV. Unlike newspapers, TV is a totally involving medium. TV coverage of the war, our first TV war, is alienating the American people. He seemed to be listening, but I’m not sure that he really was.
Me (April 2010, age 57). No!
According to Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan’s most recent biographer, the last thing you should look for in the work of Marshall McLuhan is usefulness or practicality. “There are, perhaps, no practical political, religious, or financial applications to Marshall’s work,” he writes. “It could even be argued that it should be seen as a rarefied artifact unto itself, an intricate and fantastically ornate artwork that creates its own language and then writes poetry with it.”
And yet what McLuhan says about TV seems to have a practical aspect to it. If McLuhan is right and TV is a deeply-involving cool medium. Then businesses and politicians need to be careful how they use it. Hot subjects (for example war, strikes, and natural disasters) may well be too hot for TV. You may argue with him, but this is a practical application of his thinking. More on this tomorrow.
What hot subjects are showing up on the TV monitors in the halls where you work?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan, Toronto, Penguin, 2009, pp. 142-43.
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 342.
The environment.
Marshall McLuhan (February 22, 1967, age 55). What you see is not what you are getting.
I have come up with a new idea. New technologies create new environments that reveal the past (the old environment) but leave the present (the new environment) invisible. I have hinted at this with my idea of the rear view mirror. Traveling forward, eyes fixed on the rear view mirror, we see only where we have been. Every age has done this traveling blind to its present and seeing only its past. I imagine you know where this is going, so I will leave you to figure this out for yourself.
Me (April 2010, age 57). Looking past the past.
An idea that rises up in response to Marshall McLuhan’s idea is that if we only see the past not the present, not surprisingly our social plans and policies are designed to deal with a world that no longer exists. Graffiti for example. In a world of private property (the past) graffiti is vandalism, an assault on property. But if our world is actually one of public property, graffiti is the exercise of a common property right. The problem is not that graffiti happens but that we are all not participating equally in its creation.
Have another look at the graffiti around you. On whose property is it most likely to appear? “Public” or “Private”?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 343.
New media are hungry
Marshall McLuhan (August 10, 1964, age 53). Here’s a new idea!
This is an idea that hit me too late to be incorporated into Understanding Media, which I might add – and I will – has been doing ‘vurry’ well at the book stores. New media have a habit of swallowing old media and in so doing transforming them. The newspaper swallowed the book. Film swallowed newspapers and books. TV swallowed film. Film on TV became something quite different from what it was – shlock transformed into a high-class art form. Books when printed serially in newspapers became something quite different, too. Dickens and Conan Doyle ceased to be writers of pot-boilers and became literary masters. Here’s the rule: new medium eats old medium and the old becomes high art while the new is seen as low art.
Me (March 2010, age 57). Does the rule still work?
Let’s see. Are the series ‘Magnum PI’ or ‘Murder, She Wrote’ seen on DVD today different from what they were on TV in the 1980s? Seriously though the rule seems to have two parts:
- new media eat or swallow or contain old media; and
- the new media are seen as low class (kitsch, grade B, cliché) and the old media as high class (art, grade A, archetype).
And the first part is easier to swallow than the second. The cell phone has swallowed the watch. Watches have become chronometers. E-mail has swallowed the letter and the letter has become art. The computer has swallowed the filing cabinet (and a great many other things) and filing cabinets are becoming classy collectables.
What’s becoming art in your home?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p.308