McLuhan, Massage, Film
October 21, 2016 3:21 PM   Subscribe

This Is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is The Massage [54m] is a well-done little-known film put out in conjunction with his well-known book The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory Of Effects [pdf page includes download link] and the cult album The Medium Is The Massage: with Marshall McLuhan [41m].

Bonus viewing: McLuhan's Wake [1h33m], narrated by Laurie Anderson, is a grand overview of McLuhan's theories.
posted by hippybear (27 comments total) 68 users marked this as a favorite
 
sideways hat tip to the Arno Schmidt thread for mentioning Poe's Maelstrom which got me thinking about McLuhan's Wake which had me discover this film I'd never seen before
posted by hippybear at 3:22 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wonder if Woody Allen will come into this thread?
posted by Chrysostom at 3:56 PM on October 21, 2016 [7 favorites]


God. I've been referencing and thinking about his primary message (massage?) a lot lately but hadn't realized til viewing this again ( i first saw it in a Media class in art school in the 90's) how much he presages Adam Curtis.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 3:57 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wonder if Woody Allen will come into this thread?

You know nothing of his work.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:13 PM on October 21, 2016 [11 favorites]


Wow, saw this in a media class back in '83 (maybe).
posted by octothorpe at 4:14 PM on October 21, 2016


Has anyone else noticed that some of the McLuhan headshots resemble Max Headroom?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 4:27 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Message, message, message. The medium is the message. It most certainly is not the massage. Can someone please fix this atrocity?
posted by scalefree at 4:43 PM on October 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


Why is the title of the book “The medium is the massage” and not “The medium is the message”?

Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter’s, it had on the cover “Massage” as it still does. The title was supposed to have read “The Medium is the Message” but the typesetter had made an error. When Marshall saw the typo he exclaimed, “Leave it alone! It’s great, and right on target!”

Now there are four possible readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: “Message” and “Mess Age,” “Massage” and “Mass Age.”

- Dr. Eric McLuhan
posted by TwelveTwo at 4:46 PM on October 21, 2016 [20 favorites]


Ha, OK. If it was good enough for McLuhan then it's good enough for me. Carry on!
posted by scalefree at 4:49 PM on October 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


scalefree: "Message, message, message. The medium is the message. It most certainly is not the massage. Can someone please fix this atrocity?"

Did you watch it? The name of the film is The Medium is the Massage.
posted by octothorpe at 4:50 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The name of the film is The Medium is the Massage.

The name of the film, the name of the album, the name of the book that started it all....
posted by hippybear at 4:52 PM on October 21, 2016


Did you watch it? The name of the film is The Medium is the Massage.

I started to but it was so obviously, embarrassingly wrong I had to express my irritation. The rest is history.
posted by scalefree at 4:56 PM on October 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Seen the movie, have the book. Didn't know about the album (though, who knows, I might have acquired it at some point and it might be sitting around - can't go through all my vinyl at the moment though).

Also recommend "The Gutenberg Galaxy" and McLuhan's writings on "Finnegans Wake".
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:48 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


How is he doin'?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:01 PM on October 21, 2016


How is he doin'?

He's still dead.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:34 PM on October 21, 2016 [7 favorites]


The name of the film, the name of the album, the name of the book that started it all

The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads
posted by Chrysostom at 6:37 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you like this kinda thing, you might also like Close Personal Friend, which is Douglas Coupland's early 1990's re-interpretation of that McLuhan style of video.

(I'm a big fan of the Marshall that strode into the lawless town and brought an integrated media theory, but his ideas and writings often range fairly loose and wide. For a basic introduction to his work, I'd recommend Philip Marchand or Douglas Coupland writing about him;)
posted by ovvl at 8:06 PM on October 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


We built a CMS at work and named it "Marshall" after Marshall McLuhan.
posted by awfurby at 11:48 PM on October 21, 2016


thank you for this
every now and then I need to remind myself of the McLuhan view -- more relevant than most.
posted by philip-random at 12:38 AM on October 22, 2016


Should old Aquinas be forgot (and Marshall too) -- requeiscat in pace.
posted by temporicide at 8:30 AM on October 22, 2016


It makes me unusually happy to recall that McLuhan's grave marker text is partly in Data 70™, aka that font.
posted by scruss at 11:43 AM on October 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Nice! Thanks for posting. I love his metaphor of "stenciling on brain pans" for the Victorian-era educational paradigm.
posted by XMLicious at 12:07 PM on October 22, 2016


Great post!
Personally, I'm conflicted about McLuhan - there is no doubt he understood something about our extremely mediated world. However, there is also something off about his thinking that I have never been able to pinpoint. I still can't find it, but watching the video gives something completely different from reading the book.
posted by mumimor at 4:55 PM on October 22, 2016 [1 favorite]



How is he doin'?


Back in '77 I was reading some linguistics quarterly, I think, and amidst all the sesquipedalian article titles was this gem: "Marshall McLuhan and What He's Been Doin'". It still charms me.
posted by Chitownfats at 12:27 AM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Marshall McLuhan and What He's Been Doin' [not a link to the article, just proof that it exists]
posted by hippybear at 3:45 PM on October 23, 2016


Personally, I'm conflicted about McLuhan - there is no doubt he understood something about our extremely mediated world. However, there is also something off about his thinking that I have never been able to pinpoint.

It might be because he sometimes comes across as flaky and frivolous. I like McLuhan because he can be interesting and insightful, but his approach was not always very thorough or rigorous, especially later in his career, and he was often criticized by contemporary academics because of this.

His essential goofiness comes across in the audio recording of 'The Medium is The Massage' linked above. Excerpts of this recording were often featured in SubGenius-esque irreverent sound collage mixes on experimental late-night open-format 80's/90's College Radio programming that I sometimes listened to (or was involved with...).
posted by ovvl at 5:06 PM on October 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Back in '77 I was reading some linguistics quarterly, I think, and amidst all the sesquipedalian article titles was this gem: "Marshall McLuhan and What He's Been Doin'".

It was probably referencing the same Laugh-In quote that I was.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:27 PM on October 24, 2016


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