Examines certaiin of McLuhan's ideas related to media theory

1. Lecture 7:
The wacky words of Marshall
McLuhan
Or
“The Medium is the Message”
MS 2900 Exploring Media Theory
University of Winchester
Dr Marcus Leaning

2.  This week we are going to
look at the work of the
Canadian media theorist
Marshall McLuhan.
 McLuhan is very famous
and his work has been
influential in Media Studies.
 While McLuhan‟s work lost
ground for a number of
years, since the advent of
the internet it has gained in
popularity again.
Marshall McLuhan 1911-1980

3.  Even though he died
before it got going
McLuhan‟s work prove
to be amazingly
prescient regarding the
internet and new media.
 He foresaw and
predicted many of the
changes that we have
seen in recent years.
 Moreover his work
seems to offer great
insights into the power
of media technology.

4.  McLuhan is a „Formalist‟.
 Early media theory was strongly concerned
with media technology - does specific
technology cause change in a society?
 As the field developed interest shifted to the
„meaning‟ of texts – not technology but what
(and how) texts mean that is significant.
 We can broadly divide media studies into:
◦ Those who think the type of media technology is
important – „Formalists‟
◦ Those who think the content and how meaning is
made is important – „Culturalists‟

5.  The formalist approach, focussing upon the
qualities of the media, finds its strongest support
in the work of Mcluhan.
 McLuhan‟s ideas informed a broad swath of
theories within the embryonic field of media
studies.
 Culturalist approaches see culture as more
important.
 They came to dominate media studies for a long
time - media and cultural studies became linked.
 But the Formalists, using McLuhan and later
Baudrillard have mounted a fresh attack.

6.  Attended University of Manitoba, got BA in 1933 and
MA in 1934, both in English Literature.
 Went to Cambridge and got another BA in 1936,
started doing graduate work but got a job as a
teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin.
 Got his PhD from Cambridge in 1942.
 Had lecturing jobs in
◦ St Louis,
◦ Assumption College in Ontario,
◦ University of Toronto – key figure in the Toronto School
 Married in 1939 had 6 children.

7.  The Mechanical Bride (1951)
 The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962)
 Understanding Media (1964)
 The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of
Effects (1967)
 War and Peace in the Global Village (1968)
 From Cliché to Archetype (1970)
 Laws of Media (1988) (published
posthumously by his son).
 Started the journal Explorations.

8.  Converted to Catholicism in 1937.
 Studied under the psychologist and theorist
I. Richards and the literary theorist F.R. Leavis
at Cambridge.
 Worked with Harold Innis at Toronto.
 All these aspects can be considered to have
influenced his work.

9.  His work is a little bit odd.
 It does not read like normal academic
text, he used what he called “the
mosaic style” short chapters that can
be read in any order – a bit like a
hypertext.
 His work is full of pithy little
statements such as “the medium is the
message” and later “the medium is the
massage” that make sense in the wider
body of his theory but which seem to
lack much rigour.
 It is very much of its time, wacky 60s
counter culture.
 McLuhan was very popular and a key
figure in US popular counter-cultural
life and was visited by many leading
cultural figures, the Beatles and he had
a cameo in the Woody Allen film Anne
Hall.

10.  McLuhan started out in English literature, he
followed F.R. Leavis‟ lead and started to
examine not only literary texts, the traditional
subject of study but also other media texts,
like adverts.
 His first major book, the Mechanical Bride
was on advertising, the first time anyone had
studied adverts as texts.

11.  From this position he the 'content' of a medium
developed the idea that
is like the juicy piece of
it was not the content of
meat carried by the
media that is important
but the form or burglar to distract the
technology of the media, watchdog of the
he turned inwards. mind...The effects of
 He began to argue that technology do not occur
technology and at the level of opinions or
specifically media leads concepts, but alter sense
to great cultural ratios or patterns of
changes. perception steadily and
without resistance. (1964)

12.  McLuhan proposed a schema that divided
human history into four distinct
technologically orientated „ages‟ or epochs;
◦ an oral/primitive age in which the dominant
sense was aural,
◦ a literate age in which the visual sense gained
some importance as visual artefacts rose in
importance,
◦ a print age which the visual sense dominated,
◦ an electronic age in which other senses begin to
play a greater part.

13.  McLuhan is understood to argue that the
system of media technology that dominated
each age, auditory, textual, print and
electronic played a considerable part in
structuring human experience.
 Media technology operates as the „prime
mover‟ in structuring human interaction and
experience of the world.

14.  Of the various ages it
is the „print age‟ with
which McLuhan has
the greatest
reservations as the
sensory lives of
individuals living
within it were
fragmented and
impoverished.

15.  The electronic age is understood to offer
salvation as it offered a new more diverse and
multi-sensory environment.
 We use more of our senses with „multi-
media‟ than we did with any other singular
media form.
 And using more senses is good, it makes us
more true to our natural state.

16.  Against this rather spurious historical
framework McLuhan developed various other
theoretical ides.

17.  The idea that all media borrow;
◦ systems,
◦ techniques,
◦ styles
◦ social significance
 from previous forms of media.
 All media is essentially remediation, new
combinations of old things.

18.  At Toronto McLuhan worked with the economic historia
Harold Innis.
 Innis argued that some media are related to time, they
are time based, clay tablets, vellum, - they last a long
time but only reach a limited number of people because
they are hard to transport while others are space based,
newspapers and other ephemera – don‟t last long but
move through space and reach many people.
 McLuhan worked from this idea that media work in
different ways.
 Indeed media work with the senses or functions of the
body.
 Media extend these functions of bits of the body.

19.  The notion that all technologies in some way seek
to extend the capabilities and senses of humans.
◦ “ All media are extensions of some human faculty-psychic
or physical… The wheel is an extension of the foot. The
book is an extension of the eye...clothing, an extension of
the skin...electric circuitry, an extension of the central
nervous system.” Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, The
Medium is the Massage,
(NY: Bantam) 1967, ps. 26-41.
 McLuhan proposes that the „extension of senses‟
radically changes the experience of the world and
accordingly culture of those involved.
 Thus developments in technology bring about
changes in cultural form.

20.  McLuhan proposes that rather than focus
upon the content of media attention should
focus upon the „form‟ in which it is
delivered.
 It is the form of media rather than its
specific content that has the power to
structure relations and human action.
 New forms of media bring about new forms
of interpersonal interaction and it is this
that McLuhan contends that we should be
focusing upon.

21.  With the shift from visual to electronic media
societies will change.
 We will lose the individual fragmented nature
of print culture and enter a new age of the
Global village – a shared group mind.
 But this is not a good thing as systems of
control will be deep seated in the world.

22.  Various ways McLuhan ahs been criticised.
 He is not empirical, no real evidence, just
theory.
 His work is very un-provable and un-testable.
◦ How do we know media are the extensions of man?
◦ What experiment could prove this?

23.  His account of the development of media is
completely at odds with verifiable history.
 Seems nice but takes lots of liberties with
historical data.
◦ Is it universal?
◦ Do all societies follow this path?
◦ Just western ones?

24.  Problems with his theory being „normative‟
it takes certain conditions and says they are
how things „should‟ be.
 Heavily criticised by disability theorists, are
we lees of a person for not having all the
senses?
◦ Are blind people not as „human‟ as the rest of us?
 Based on rather questionable ideas – related
to his faith – talks of soul and the idea of
perfectibility is deeply woven into his work.

25.  Does technology really determine our society?
 Does it do it because it extends a sense?

26.  McLuhan is a very interesting figure and his
work has been re-evaluated after some years
of neglect.
 Has had a significant effect – new formalism
an interesting development.
 But it‟s of its time and very wacky, while
interesting it is hard to really evaluate.
 Has some rather problematic issues at its
core.