Culture
Inviting, confronting, and ignoring criticism
Marshall McLuhan (July, 1948, age 37). Everybody’s a critic!
Ted Carpenter is a breath of fresh air. With him at St. Michael’s Toronto is getting less parochial with every passing second. Last night he had my darling wife Corinne in stitches at dinner. He was lecturing he told us at the university on the sexual practices of the natives of Polynesia. Apparently he upset the tender sensibilities of one of the more prudish co-eds in the class, and she walked out in disgust. “No need to hurry,” he shouted after her, “there’s plenty of time to book your ship to the islands.” Between giggles Corinne remarked that perhaps Ted was too hard on the girl. I looked over at him. “See Ted, everybody’s a critic.”
Me (February 2010, age 57): Perhaps not everybody. But there certainly were a lot!
Ted Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan met at Toronto in 1948. They became close friends and worked together closely on the study of media in the 1950s and most of the 1960s. Carpenter was known for his volubility, an ability to rub people the wrong way, and a wicked sense of humour – a teacher at a Catholic college he built up according to Phillip Marchand, “the largest collection of books on the devil and diabolism in Canada.” Not surprisingly, he and McLuhan developed a large number of enemies at the university. Anyone who has taught at a university knows this is not hard to do, but Carpenter and McLuhan seemed to have had a gift for it. One of Carpenter’s favorite gambits, for example, was that when an enemy came in the common room and a chair was open beside him he would catch the man’s eye and at the same time, slowly tip the chair over. McLuhan preferred to ignore his critics. “Come on Ted,” he used to say, “if this is what we’re up against, we’re destined for kudos.”
And, of course, they were. (More on McLuhan’s critics tomorrow.)
How do you deal with your critics? Head on like Carpenter? Or forget about them, like McLuhan?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Phillip Marchand. Marshall McLuhan: The medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 124-125.
Merry Xmas, Professor McLuhan!
Marshall McLuhan (December, 1947, age 36). Thank God it’s Xmas
Our fourth child, Stephanie, was born in October, Eric is only now just recovering from a bout with the flu, and I can’t hire anyone to help Corinne with the work around the house for less than my salary, which is the princely sum of $4,200. Still Corinne is glowing and while I find marking end Xmas exams tiresome, you know me, tireless. At present, I have three books on the go: one on Eliot and two on popular culture, Guide to Chaos and Typhon in America.
Me (December 2009, age 57). I agree
It is time to leave Professor McLuhan to his household troubles and work on his books, and meditate on the 12 days of Christmas a period which as McLuhan knew marked the beginning of the year from the 7th century through to the 13th. I will take a short break myself and make my next post on January 7th.
Before I do a few thoughts on the two books on popular culture McLuhan mentions above which eventually became one: The Mechanical Bride, his first book. Bride has presented a bit of a problem for students of McLuhan. Coming before his discovery of media it is far more accessible than his later books, and deals with a subject that would continue to fascinate McLuhan as a student of media, comics and advertising, but in a very different way. Bride looks at comics and advertising for what they reveal about American culture and its values, and in particular for what they reveal about what McLuhan believes is wrong with American culture. For example, Dagwood in the Blondie comic strip is a wimp and represents everything that is wrong with American men: in short they are not real men. And many things readers of the later McLuhan will find familiar are there: for example, Poe’s sailor caught in the maelstrom who escapes through understanding his situation, the idea that the book is not about the subjects or objects, or exhibits it discusses – advertisements and comics – but rather what they reveal about something else, American values and ways of living, a mosaic presentation in which the chapters can be read in any order. Yet it is not the McLuhan that he will come to be. He has not yet discovered his grand theme – the effects media have had on mankind because of the way they work rather than what they contain. Instead what we find is many familiar things being used in an unfamiliar way. Here is McLuhan the literary critic critiquing comics and advertising through close reading of their contents in ways he had learned at Cambridge. For example, in the chapter titled “Horse Opera and Soap Opera” he observes that Westerns (the B movies also known as dusters and oaters) have much to teach us about the importance of the frontier, business, action, the office, and men in American culture while it is to soap opera that you must go to learn about the mainstream, society, feelings, the home, and women. All of which is interesting but not important in the way the later McLuhan’s observation about media are important. Because if you then say about any observation in Bride “Interesting, but so what?” The answer more often than not is, “not much.”
In lieu of a question a greeting: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 190-191.
Still more on the critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
I still can’t get Robert Fulford off my mind after what he sad about me in Maclean’s. Me, infuriating and arrogant? Surely he ought to be jesting. But is he? I think not. He thinks so I imagine because he thinks I have something to gain about my argument that electronic media is remaking us in the image of tribal man. I do not. I have no particular point of view. I do not label the changes taking place in our world as good or bad. I am an observer. My task is not to like or dislike what is happening; it is to explain it.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Still more critiquing of the critics
Why does McLuhan infuriate his critics so? Lewis Lapham, in his introduction to the 1994, MIT Press edition of Understanding Media makes the point that McLuhan’s style of writing infuriated people because it is like the world as McLuhan saw it in the electric age – “nonlineal, repetitive, discontinuous, intuitive, proceeding by analogy instead of sequential order.”
Lapham proceeds this observation with the claim that, “Despite its title, the book was never easy to understand. By turns [it is] brilliant and opaque.” And so we meet once more the common complaint “brilliant” and bad. But what precisely does Lapham find “opaque” or bad about Understanding Media?
(To be continued)
Is there anything in Understanding Media that you find “opaque?” Tell me what it is and why it is opaque.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
More on the Critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 2, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
Yesterday I told you what Robert Fulford had to say about me in Maclean’s. I must say the man really does not get me. He is hung up as teenagers say on Euclidian space. It blinds him to the truth of the medium is the message. He says I’m repetitious. But I have to keep repeating myself because he does not get it. That is to say getting it is something he does not get. Get it?
Me (December 2009, age 57). More critiquing of the critics
Let us look now at the criticisms that can be found in the blurbs printed on the covers and dust jackets of the 4 copies of Understanding Media that I have on my McLuhan book shelf. There is more than a hint of criticism to be found there because McLuhan’s publishers knew controversy sells books.
Second printing, October, 1966, Signet Book, new American Library of Canada: “Understanding Media is the book that’s making history and hysteria- with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan is the new spokesman of the electronic age- the oracle whose revolutionary ideas have blasted an explosion of debate from academy to coffee house. [The publisher] “His critics are infuriated by his ideas ….” Richard Schickel, Harper’s.
Third printing, 1968, McGraw Hill, hard cover: “An infuriating book.” Commonweal.
First MIT Press edition, 1994, soft cover: “McLuhan’s theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate. … There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan’s work in the last few years …. Lewis H. Lapham revaluates McLuhan’s work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.”
Critical edition, Ginko Press, hard cover, 2003: “Infuriating, brilliant and incoherent. “ Commonweal Review. “The medium is not the message.” Umberto Eco.
There is a recurrent idea in the blurbs. People are “infuriated” by the book. Why? Among other things Robert Fulford, whose criticism of McLuhan in Maclean’s set off this series of blogs on the criticism of Marshall McLuhan, presumably would say his arrogance is infuriating. (To be continued)
Is there anything in Understanding Media that you find infuriating? Tell me what it is and why it is infuriating.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for the is post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
Critics!
Marshall McLuhan (June 1, 1960, age 48). There’s no such thing as bad advertizing?
That’s what they say, but having read what Robert Fulford had to say about me in Maclean’s, I’m beginning to have doubts. At the very least Fulford’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s actually amazing, as I told him myself, that he gets anything at all out of Understanding Media because he obviously doesn’t Understand Me. I have a theme that governs everything I write, namely that for 5,000 years western man thought in the way print taught him to. Splitting things up. Fragmenting the world. Analyzing. Putting things in order. Being logical and rational. Now, with the advent of the electric age, all this has changed. Welcome to the re-tribalized, acoustic, global village.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Critiquing the critics
Robert Fulford wrote that Understanding Media was “arrogant, sloppy, repetitious and brilliant.” A view which is both right and wrong headed. This perception of Understanding Media as a large dollop of error and held together by a drop of brilliance was a common response to McLuhan in the 1960s. (Around the same time, Richard Schickel wrote in Harper’s “his critics are infuriated by his ideas … but some think he has one of this continent’s most brilliant minds and that his theories foretell our real future.”) But it is not Fulford or Schickel’s 45-year old responses I want to talk about.
Let us consider some of the current critics of McLuhan, beginning with the writer of a recent blog, who I will not name. This critic wrote – I paraphrase to protect their anonymity- that 99 percent of what McLuhan wrote is bullshit, and the remaining 1 percent is pure genius. And that is all. They do not give an example of anything in McLuhan’s cannon they think is bullshit and explain why it is bullshit. Nor do they give an example of an idea of McLuhan’s that they think is brilliant and explain why it is brilliant. Remarkably, or perhaps unremarkably, this type of criticism of McLuhan is not unusual. In fact this is a fairly typical response to McLuhan on the internet: gossipy, intellectually lazy, and insulting.
(To be continued)
Can you give me an example of something you think is bullshit in Understanding Media and explain why it is bullshit. Also, and more challengingly, can you give me an example of one thing in the book besides “the medium is the message” or the world is becoming a “global village” you think is brilliant and explain why it is brilliant.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, p. 300.
More on education at high speed
Marshall McLuhan (February 1960, age 48). The adolescent has been replaced by the teenager
Teachers are failing to teach because they insist on treating teenagers as if they were adolescents. (See Edgar Friedenberg’s fine book The Vanishing Adolescent.) Adolescent means the stage between childhood and adulthood. That stage no longer exists. Electronic media have abolished the adolescent. What we are left with is the teenager. An adult aged 13 to 19. I should know, several of them are underfoot at home. To paraphrase the familiar anecdote, take my teenager, please.
Me (December 2009, age 57). McLuhan underestimated the size of the problem
In The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman argued that the electronic age has not only abolished adolescence it has robbed children of a great deal of their childhood. In the middle ages children were treated as adults as soon as they could speak with fluency, say, age 6 to 8. The print revolution caused childhood to be extended and adolescence added on because of the extra demands learning to read placed on young people in addition to learning to speak. Today, Postman argues electric media have undone the work the print revolution did.
What does this mean for the understanding of schooling? Basically, the problems of the teenager – disaffection and disengagement with traditional class room teaching, dropping out, illiteracy - will be found increasingly among older children.
Why do people keep on insisting that children and teenagers be book-learned in the age of digital and social media? You can try to keep twitter out the classroom but can you keep the classroom out of twitter?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Neil Postman. The End of Education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Vintage Books, 1995; 1996.
Speed up!
Marshall McLuhan (May 1959, age 47). Producers are now consumers
I just got back from Winnipeg. Didn’t have time to visit my first alma mater, The University of Manitoba, as I was too busy informing the Winnipeg Ad and Sales Club about the new business rules in our electronic age. Here’s the short version, everything is moving so fast in our electric age that the only way to get ahead is to speed up. The alternative is obliteration. Winnipeg was shaking its head in collective dumbfoundment. Can’t really blame them. Looking around on the corner of Portage and Main, I’d be tempted to draw the conclusion that the world is slowing down not speeding up! Sometimes not seeing is believing.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Marshall McLuhan on how to speed up
The great speed the business world is moving at is an idea that everyone in business today agrees with and without hesitation. Even, I would hazard a guess in Winnipeg. Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about speed are still worth thinking about today not because McLuhan offers a brilliant solution as to how to live at hyper speed. His solution is to trade places with your complement. Whatever role you perform there is a complement. For example the complement of teacher is student. The complement of producer is consumer. The complement of writer is reader. By switching roles you are in effect moving at very high speed. For example, by becoming consumers, producers are able to anticipate shifts in demand.
How fast does your life move relative to your parents and grandparents? What do you do to deal with the speed of change at which you live? What is your complement? Can you put yourself in the position of your complement?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 252-255.
Speed Limits, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 20 May to 8 November 2009
Reading Marshall McLuhan’s cards
Marshall (November 15, 1968, age 57). Playing at creativity
Eugene Schwartz is in charge of selling DEW-LINE newsletter. Here’s a game I had him make up for you to try. DEW-LINE of course refers to the Distant Early Warning system, Canada’s contribution to the heating up of the cold war. When the Russians fly their bombers over Falconbridge headed for Washington, Canada is to use its electronic eyes and ears to locate the Russian force and shout out to Uncle Sam that the nuclear payload’s on the way. That’s my job, metaphorically speaking, in the electric age with respect to the new electric media.
The game is played with a special deck of playing cards: the DEW-LINE Deck. Each card has written on it one of my probes or a favorite quotation. For example: 7 of clubs, “The silicon bosom is the thin edge of the trial balloon;” 5 of spades, “Propaganda is any culture in action (Jacques Ellul);” 3 of spades, “Fulton’s steamboat anticipated the miniskirt: we don’t have to wait for the wind any more.”
Here’s how you play. Step (1) Think of some personal or business problem. Step (2) Draw three cards from the deck. Step (3) Read what’s written on each card and see what ideas pop into your head. Top DEW-LINERS get their breakthroughs in thirty-seconds or less.”
Me (December 2009, age 57). Okay, Let’s play
Last Thursday night I paid a visit to Montreal’s Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA). The occasion was a party to celebrate the opening of a new show, Intermission, which is about speed and technology in the 1960s – Sputnik, NASA, the skateboard. Many interesting short films. Yet I could not then resist examining and now resist talking about McLuhan’s playing cards which were not part of the show but happened to be on display in a case near the entry to the show.
One of the cards displayed was the 9 of spades with the line about the silicon bosom. This remark was stimulated by a topless fashion show McLuhan saw in San Francisco in 1965. The show took place at the “Off-Broadway” in North Beach [Marshall McLuhan's sexual adventure]. He watched the show with Tom Wolfe, who was writing a profile article on him, Herb Caen, a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, and two PR men Howard Gossage, and Dr. Gerald Feigen, who were determined to make McLuhan famous, which they did in part with this outing. According to Tom Wolfe, after the show was over, McLuhan called out to the mistress of ceremonies, who was fully clothed, that he had a line she could use in her spiel, the restaurant having just won a test court case in an obscenity suit. “You can say, [McLuhan said] … The topless waitress is the opening wedge of the trial balloon.” According to Caen what McLuhan said was “To mix a metaphor, it [the trial] was the thin edge of the trial balloons.” And Caen went on to comment “I’m sorry to report this, but it’s a fact that he [McLuhan] tittered at his own remark.”
What role Marshall McLuhan actually played in the development of the DEW-LINE deck and game is not clear. Philip Marchand, says that McLuhan wrote “the text” printed on each card. But whether McLuhan selected each text or simply okayed the end result, as he did for example in the making of the Medium is the Massage, is unclear.
No matter. Let’s play the game. My problem. How to end this post. My solution: Move to the questions, one for each card noted above.
What is the propaganda in action in cultures with topless lunches?Was McLuhan a legman or a breast man? If the topless waitress is the opening wedge in the trial balloon, where to further mix the metaphor does, and has, the slippery slope led to?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: the medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 227.
Tom Wolfe, “What If He’s Right,” reprinted in The Pump House Gang. 1968, pp. 163-166.