McLuhan Essay -- Art

McLuhan Author and social theorist Tom Wolfe once commented on Canadian professor Marshal McLuhan’s mantra, â€Å"the medium is the message† saying: The new technologies†¦radically alter the entire way people use their five senses, the way they react to things, and therefore, their entire lives and the entire society. It doesn’t matter what the content of a medium like t.v. is†¦ 20 hours a day of sadistic cowboys caving in peoples teeth or†¦ Pablo Casals droning away on his cello. How is it that violence and the arts are effective in the same manner? Wouldn’t the content be the most important factor in analyzing a television program? To understand Marshall McLuhan’s theories the reader must not be concerned with the symbolic content of what is being said or the cosmetic interpretation of the actual show but rather, look deeper into the whole infrastructure of the medium itself. McLuhan was prone to thinking up â€Å"clever† analogies and plays on words; and describing the content of a medium was no different. He described it as â€Å"the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.† We are the content of our media because the way we live life is largely a function of the way we process information. That information is presented and made available by way of a certain medium. In turn, each medium delivers a new message and a new form of human being, whose qualities are suited to it. The same words spoken face to face, printed on paper, or presented on television provide three different messages simply because of the different senses used to perceive it. McLuhan thought primary channels of communication change the way we look at the world around us. The dominant medium of any age governs people and reconnects modes of relationships with the world based on which sensory motor apparatus is being activated. Dominant epochs spring from the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and the telegraph, which were turning points in society because they changed the way people thought about themselves. To understand how and why people are affected by television, one must first become familiar with McLuhan’s idea of the electronic age. With the advent of television, the power of the printed word is decreased significantly. Books become â€Å"made-for-t.v.† movies and newspapers come alive with twenty-four hour a day headlines. Marshall McLuh... ...ert themselves into the story. Perhaps this is one piece of an elaborate mosaic of cultural activity that works toward a unified ideological end, whether intentional or not. With cameras and televisions enhancing our eyes, satellite dishes increasing the sensitivity of our ears, and computers and the Internet augmenting the power of our brains, the human body has finally become fully extended through communication technology. In these respects, McLuhan was on to something. Unfortunately, one could not overlook McLuhan’s often abandonment of the linearity and order that he claimed were the legacy of print technology. His truths were enigmatic and seldom woven into a comprehensive system; at times he implied that chosen words are irrelevant while other times he declared the significance of the symbols were a matter of degree. His leaps of faith were a major hindrance to taking him seriously. Near the end, he was accused of selling out by Stuart Hall, fellow media theorist. But, as Kenneth Boulding in McLuhan: Hot and Cold stated, â€Å"It is perhaps typical of very creative minds that they hit very large nails not quite on the head.† Maybe we should give Marshal McLuhan another swing.