FREE ESSAY ON MARSHALL MCLUHAN

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Author and social theorist Tom Wolfe once commented on Canadian professor Marshal
McLuhan's mantra, "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 "clever" analogies and plays on words; and describing
the content of a medium was no different. He described it as "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 "made-for-t.v." movies
and newspapers come alive with twenty-four hour a day headlines. Marshall McLuhan noted
this increase in sound and touch and declared that instant communication was a return to
prealphabetic oral tradition. The television connected people in a way that created an
"all at once world" where closed human systems are rare. Suddenly everyone could share
the same experience of watching images on t.v. at the same time with the same effects. To
McLuhan, this meant returning to a single global village where the electronic media
re-tribalize the human race. The whole world is becoming like the small town beauty shop
where rumors and gossip include foreign ministers and movie stars. We all become busy
bodies tracking everyone else's business.
As we live, we search for meaning and the process of watching television is no different.
However, it is the procedure used to compute this meaning that differs. Watching
television "has often been seen as a routine, unproblematic, passive process: the
meanings of the programs are seen as given and obvious; the viewer is seen as passively
receptive and mindless." (Livingstone p.3) This would mean that the television audience
does not have to do anything but stare without thinking, and that the pictures we see do
not leave any space for interpretation. However, we are a generation that has grown up
learning to read television and interpret the conventions of television in order to put a
meaning to the images shown. This creates the notion of "reading" television as natural.
Marshal McLuhan also noted this active participation and in turn, labeled the television
as a cool medium. A Cool medium is a low-definition display that draws a person in,
requiring high participation to fill in the blanks. Although we do not realize all of the
many processes required to view a television program, the watcher is in fact highly
involved because of the low resolution monitor, mosaic screen, and thusly, greater mental
participation. The mosaic of colored dots perfectly placed on the screen encourages
iconic commentary from viewers, who are constantly being challenged to pull the picture
together in their mind's eye.
Because the viewer must actively spend time trying to interpret the image and the message
it brings, viewers are inserted in to the story in an aural, intuitive, and emotionally
involving manner. Marshall McLuhan noted that the ability of television to immerse people
in events, bringing all kinds of places and times together in high-speed simultaneity
meant the dawning of a new electronic age. In this era, television medium is fluent and
at the mercy of time, but also displaying the world in fragments the form of the medium
congeals that. This fosters the belief that all things are connected but causes confusion
because the connections are never articulated. There is a realization that we cannot
capture television, which is like an endless flow, a continuous stream; we just tune in
and become part of an impersonal, silent and invisible audience. When reading a book, the
pace is ours; we can read a sentence over and over again, it will always be there, it is
transitory and does not have a beginning or a conclusion, even though the programs shown
on television do. 
Perhaps it is this strong attachment to the senses that caused so many people to be
completely drawn into the world trade center fiasco. Many described the event as
"surreal" and had trouble comprehending the scene. The perceptual technique of reading
dots requires a high amount of participation to begin with. Trying to process a picture
of a plane flying into a skyscraper is even more difficult. Furthermore, the major
television networks were effective in disguising the event as theater. The media
portrayal of the attack erased some of the horrors of conflict, such as the loss of so
many lives, by treating it as a major television event filled with drama, heroism, and
special effects. In a movie the medium is hot, being highly visual, logical and private.
Everything is already organized for us in a way that we can process the information more
easily. Since we are only used to seeing that kind of violence and destruction in the
movie theatre, it may become too traumatic to process it in a different medium where more
thought must be used. 
On the other hand, others are still glued to their televisions in search of yet another
bite of information to digest. So much energy is used to process the individual faces of
victims on television that we become attached and feel a direct connection as if it were
happening to the viewer as well. For some, television validates existence. Take a single
sled ride down a hill, for instance. The experience is fleeting and elusive. By tomorrow
it will be forgotten and it may as well have never happened. But if it were on
television, countless viewers would share in the event and confirm it. The ride would
become a part of mass consciousness since the impact of an event on television is
determined by the image, not its substance. Perhaps this is why the incident of September
eleventh is so frightening. Because it is so deeply embedded in the minds and senses of
the world. When watching the faces of the on lookers viewers can be alone and yet not
feel alone. There is a deep connection to the image and to the face. Cool media, such as
tv, clarify the surrounding context and let perceivers insert 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, "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.