Transcription
Forgive my impertinence, but has anybody asked you why you are sometimes difficult to understand? Because I use the right hemisphere when they're trying to use the left. Straight after I get back, I mean, you see that when they—when the people, ordinary ordinary people—are trained to try to follow you and to connect everything you say with what they last heard, they're not prepared to use their widths; they're only prepared to use the idea they picked up the first time and try to connect it to another idea. Television is tall and radio is hot; that's the message. And the medium is Marshall McLuhan.
Good evening, and welcome to the Monday conference, which has often been said to be not so hard. When future historians look back on the 20th century, it's almost certain that one of the statements from this era which they will treasure for posterity is, "The medium is the message." Like most of Marshall McLuhan's statements, it's pithy, apparently simple, and provocative to the point of being outrageous. Another of his propositions is that some media are cool and some are hot.
Marshall McLuhan studies the media as a way of understanding what it is that makes us live in the way we do, as a way of understanding society itself. He's concerned with all media, but he's best known for his work on the electronic media, particularly radio and television. He sees them as the extension of our central nervous system and argues that they're leading to an electrical re-tribalization of the West. If there is a Mr. Electric of the 20th century, it's Marshall McLuhan. More formally, he's Professor of English in the University of Toronto, Canada, and director of the Centre for Culture and Technology there. Among Professor McLuhan's books are *The Mechanical Bride*, *War and Peace in the Global Village*, and, of course, *Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man*.
Marshall McLuhan has been brought to Australia by the Sydney radio station 2SM to address a seminar on the commercial broadcasting and music industries. Earlier tonight, Professor McLuhan gave his address, and now he is ready for questions from the audience, made up of the participants in the seminar and members of the general public.
Well, Professor McLuhan, I think we better deal with "the medium is the message" before it does go into a 21st century. When you say "the medium is the message," does that leave any room at all for criticism of individual, say, television programs or content?
Hmm. You see, it doesn't much matter what you say on the telephone. The telephone as a service is a huge environment, and that is the medium, and the environment affects everybody. What you say on the telephone affects very few, and the same with radio or any other medium. What you print is nothing compared to the effect of the printed word. The printed word sets up a paradigm, a structure of awareness which affects everybody in very, very drastic ways, and it doesn't very much matter what you print as long as you go on with that form of activity.
You've said that television promotes illiteracy. I'm wondering what you think that's a bad thing.
Now, I don't think it promotes illiteracy; I think it creates another form of awareness. How literacy had very strange antecedents, very strange effects on people, and we're only beginning to notice what those effects were now that it tends to be pushed aside. The literacy as a form of awareness is a highly specialist and objective sort of thing. You can stand back, and the literate man can stand back objectively and look at situations. The TV person has no objectivity at all. But does television say promote illiteracy or doesn't it? It tends to create a totally different kind of awareness, which is rather that of involvement. Literacy is objective; TV is subjective, totally involving. In fact, two people who watch a lot of television or listen to a lot of radio—said, do they read more or read less or audio? I think radio people are far more literate than TV people, but…
Rick: No, I listen…
This is a complementarity of the media, but the—I don't—I personally have avoided making value judgments because I long ago discovered that value judgments are so personal that it confuses people enormously.
Yes, but that's—that is a kind of value judgment in itself, isn't it?
Well, not of a media, but of people, and people are very diversified. It's long—it's been known for a long time that a reader, for example—the word "read"—to read means to guess. Look it up in the big dictionary. The word "read" means to guess, and reading is actually an activity of rapid guessing. Because any word—any word—has so many meanings, including the word "reading"—many, many meanings—that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That's why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker, and a good reader or highly literate person tends to be a good executive because he has to make decisions very fast while reading. And so the very nature of reading calls for quick decisions and guessing, and the—the—what the word means—to guess—radar…
One last point for me. You've said that advertising is the folk art of the 20th century. In what sense is an art?
I think it is so—a very great art form. It's not a private art form; it's corporate, and but it is—the concern of the advertiser is to make an effect. Any painter—well, any—any artist, any musician sets out to create an effect; he sets a trap to catch somebody's attention. Any painter, any poet, any musician sets a trap for your attention; that is the nature of art.
Do you think there are any masterpieces of advertising or radio or television in the sense that they are—
Will know better—he'll know better in what—50 years? What's your guess now? I—well, I know that there are—on the other hand, the ones we might select now as the great ads of the year would probably not get the same vote 50 years from now. But the—remember now, Mr. Shakespeare wrote plays that were considered very vulgar and popular entertainment in his own day, and nobody had any criteria for measuring his greatness at that time. He was a popular artist, and TV is a popular folk art, and we have no criteria for measuring it. The measurements that we do use are the results—bottom line—how many sales resulted from this particular ad. But that's box-office.
Thank you. Now some of the audience—plays—yes.
If the medium is the message and it doesn't matter what we say on TV, why are we all here tonight, and why am I asking this question?
I didn't—I didn't say it didn't matter what you said on TV. I said that the effect of TV—the message of TV—is quite independent of the program; that is, there is a huge technology involved in TV which surrounds you physically, and the effect of that huge service environment on you personally is vast. The effect of the program is incidental.
Please would you show your undoubted enthusiasm by having your hands up? It really does make it much easier if I can see—I'm sorry to be—yes.
Those of us who are—including students—know how clearly you define a problem for us. We also know that very often you point to an answer earlier in your talk this evening. You spoke about the search for identity through violence. I think we'd all agree now—we've—if we ever could afford violence, we can—as weaponry becomes more efficient, we can no longer corporately—you would afford violence. So what do you suggest as alternatives that we offer instead of the search for identity through violence?
Dialogue. The alternative to violence is dialogue, which is a kind of encounter—interface with others—people and situations. But yes, we live in a world in which we have so much power. In the old days, you could fire—pull a trigger on a revolver and hurt people, and—but today, when you trigger these vast media that we use, you are manipulating entire populations, and the kinds of violence that we can now exert collectively are such as to require the situation to cool—to write down—cool, cool, cool. And we have—you know—by means of the overkill, we have created a kind of universal peace in the world. The—the means of destruction are so vast at our command that we—if war becomes unthinkable. So in the same way, people—be—are cooled off by media and by situations which require dialogue rather than just self-expression. Violence is a kind of self-expression, and so that the quest for identity—now, the person who is struggling to find out, "Who am I?"—now, by all sorts of maladjustments, all sorts of quarrels, all sorts of encounters—such a person is a social nuisance, of course—but quest—the quest for identity goes along with this bumping into other people in order to—get that—you find out who—who am I? How much power can I exert? How much identity—can I discover that I possess by simply banging into other people? And so that's what I had in mind when I said that the quest for identity is always a violent quest. It's a series of adventures and encounters that create all sorts of disturbance. I suppose I don't think you have to go very far in literature for examples of it. I suppose Don Quixote is a great popular hero, and Flash Gordon and Superman. But we are now beginning—together—I'm thinking now—this new show, *The Star War*, that is the new Hollywood thing that is based on Flash Gordon comics—the Bionic Man, Bionic Woman—these are vicarious forms of violence in which young people are trying to discover, "Who am I?" I once asked my granddaughter—or one of our granddaughters—who was then six, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And she said instantly, "Bionic Woman." This is a kind of violence that permits one to discover who you are. I was using violence in a rather large sense of simply encounter—abrasive encounters.
Yes, in terms of the figure-ground thesis that you put forward in the classroom, Professor, in what way would the message that you've given us to—not be different if this meeting, instead of being here in the Sydney Hilton Hotel, were, say, in the center of the Sydney Cricket Ground?
Well, cricket is a very organized form of violence. I—I would insist on studying the game of cricket as a manifestation of—the controlled forms of violence in the community. And baseball or football—any kind of sport—is a dramatization of the typical and accepted forms of violence in the business community. And so you can learn an enormous amount about the business community by studying the rules and procedures in cricket or baseball or golf, as far as that goes. These are all—these games are huge ways of discovering—dramatizing what the society—urine—is all about. By the way, without an audience, these games would have no meaning at all. They have to be played in front of a public in order to acquire their meaning. A baseball game without an audience would be a rehearsal only—a practice. The game requires a public, and the public has to resemble a whole cross-section of the community. I'm very interested in games as dramatizing—of violent behavior under control.
First McLuhan, seeing you know so much about cricket, the problem is where to put the commercials. Apparently, when you broadcast cricket, know where to put the—does this mean the game has to change to fit television or—
I have been paying attention to cricket in the last few days while I've been here, but it's a game that I did not grow up with, so I'm not—they account—answer the notion—well, I'm not sure, but the—you say where to put the commercials—they're evil anyway. You mean that it is so convenient garment you—I think it is—say where—sales where I normally put them is the bit where all the theology of the game comes across and all the inner thought—there was a woman—dear speck of things—when the people—right at the back—please—that Center microphone—in the meantime, over here—yes.
Quite some time ago you said that life was very much like driving a car but only being able to look into the rear-vision mirror after you've gone. Who's going to drive the bus?
I made a strange discovery about the rearview mirror. Having accused a lot of people of living in the rearview mirror and having meant by that that they were out of date, that they were 19th-century minds, I then took another look into the rearview mirror on my own. I was not criticized; I did this on my own, and I discovered somewhat to my surprise that when you look in the rearview mirror, you do not see what has gone past; you see what is coming, and the rearview mirror is the foreseeable future; it is not the past at all. The title—the phrase "rearview mirror"—appears to distort the situation. Most people think of it instinctively—from the sound of the phrase, it must be the past—they—in terms of media, of course, the thing that is occupying the foreground in terms of the rearview mirror is nostalgia. Nostalgia is the name of the game in every—and every part of our world today, including the program *Roots*. But nostalgia is not a—well, it's a kind of rearview mirror, if you like, but it's also the shape of things to come. When people have been stripped of their private identities, they develop huge nostalgia. And nostalgia for the jeans and—and Levi's of the young today—our nostalgia for granddad's overalls—his work clothes—have now become the latest costume now. But this is a rather mysterious thing. It—the costumes worn by the young—the fashionable costumes—are really very old hat and nostalgic. And someone called it "international motley"—that the costumes worn by the young today are kind of international motley or clown costume. And paradoxically, the clown is a person with a grievance. His role in medieval society was to be the voice of grievance. The clown's job was to tell the Emperor or tell the royalty exactly what was wrong with the society. He often lost his head in the process, but the clown—the international motley of our time—the clown is trying to tell us his grievance. The beards and the hairdos and the costumes of the young are a manifestation of grievance and anger. You've heard about the streakers—a kind of manifestation of anger about the lack of jobs and goals in our world. In America, we call them "passing fannies," but I understand it has a different meaning here—it's more restrictive.
Yes.
Yes, Professor, I'm asking this question, which I think is very relevant for people today who are looking for an identity, who are searching for a kind of responsible attitude towards the media. Since in the 20th century we're conditioned—hemmed in by the media—should we be teaching our children what value judgments they should really make concerning different programs they should watch on TV or different programs they should listen to on the radio as part of their development of achieving adult maturity?
Answers—yes. But one of the peculiarities of electrical speed is that it pushes all the unconscious factors up into consciousness. This began with Freud and Einstein back in 1900, but the hidden aspects of the media are the things that should be taught because they have an irresistible force when invisible. When these factors remain ignored and invisible, they have an absolute power over the user. So yes, the sooner that the population—or the young or old—can be taught the effects of these forms, the sooner we can have some sort of reasonable ecology among the media themselves. What is desperately needed is a kind of understanding of the media which would permit us to program the whole environment so that—thus—literate values would not be wiped out by new media. If you understand the nature of these forms, you can neutralize some of their adverse effects and foster some of their beneficent effects. This—we have never reached that—never reached this level of awareness. We can never reach that level of awareness. I have been working for that for a long time. The—stir—you may be surprised to hear that the *Finnegans Wake* of Mr. James Joyce is one of the top guides to the effects of media. The work is entirely devoted to that theme, and the—the thunders in *Finnegans Wake* are statements of the effects of particular media. The last thunder in *Finnegans Wake*, on page 424, is television and with all its effects—social consequences—carefully dramatized. *Finnegans Wake* is a drama to play, and the actors in the play are the media themselves. Very few—very few—Jasons know this.
In the forthright McLuhan, up till now, while television may have dominated our minds and our lives, the actual box in the corner hasn't dominated our living room. But large-screen television sets are being developed—screens, say, the size of a living room wall. What effect do you think that will have? Will we tolerate giants watching us?
It's a—I think very important thing to keep in mind—very important question. I am—not personally—I haven't seen those big—big screens. They tend to have them out on the playground—so the play fields—in—in America, they tend to have these great big screens for the game itself, so that you can watch the game on television while the game is in process. This—some—is a kind of situation that—we think it—invites an enormous awareness of actual process—to participate in the kind of replay of the thing while it is still ongoing. Participation in replay is a form of pattern recognition that is new in the media and has—I'd say—rather large consequences—mostly cognitive—mostly consequences that will affect our nature of our cognition and awareness. And I would think entirely—only in the direction of extreme self-awareness. Um, I—I once asked a famous quarterback in American football—on television—once asked him what the effect of the instant replay had been on the game of football, and he said, "We have now to play the game in such a way that the audience can watch the actual process that we're performing. They're not any longer interested just in the effect of the play; they want to see the nature of the play." So they've had to open up the play on the field to enable the audience to participate more fully in the process of football play. It's an unexpected effect. I think it—it'd be an effect that would extend also to our educational world—to the classroom—that the future of education requires that we pay much attention to the media we're employing as forms of study—not necessarily—you know—not necessarily the hardware—and merely the hardware—skill in the use of cameras and of microphones—but awareness of the nature of the operation.
When you said that television uses the eyes and ear, what you mean—
I think it is a phrase of Tony Schwartz in a very interesting book called *The Responsive Chord*. What he means literally is that the image is constituted by our millions of these resonating particles. You have no—there are no pictures on television; there are no—there's no snapshots; there's no—no shutter; there's no camera. There is an outpouring of these small bits of information in patterns that are entirely our active and dynamic, so they resonate. So he was really saying that the television image is primarily not a visual but resonating form of experience.
With the glass—not behind you—so I have to talk—not—alright, I'm sorry—you go ahead then, please.
Look to light—Tessa—McLuhan is still getting the ultimate medium, or is there worse to come? Yeah. You've heard of the hologram? The hologram goes completely around you—television only goes a little bit around you. The hologram is 360 degrees, but it's been anticipated by these—the rock music—in which you have to become just enclosed in a sound bubble. The hologram doesn't—for TV what rock does for auditory entertainment. But the hologram is—is technically here.
Yes. You spoke about us as going out rather for our privacy and coming home for the social aspect. I'd like to hear you comment on that in relation to electronic man's new thirst for meditation—contemplation—mystical experience—whereas being asked about the relation of this inside—outside—on the life of meditation.
Well, as you know, the Transcendental Meditation has become exceedingly popular. All forms of mystic meditation have become very popular in our television age. The East—we have gone very far to the East since television—um—just as an exercise in awareness and so on. Telemedicine has grown—come in very big since television. I'm not—I'm not sure that that is a good or bad at all; it just has happened.
Do you think of it as a—a very significant event in—
I think it is very significant. Yes. It seems to me almost like a nostalgia for a return to that private self without going outdoors to find it—return to an inner union with God—with yourself—which electronic man seems to need and is looking for in this way. Jane Austen, of all people, has quite a big comment on that inside—outside. She said that people go outside to be alone—just to prove their inner resources—that they don't need people—we can make it alone—and that the Romantic movement was based upon this psychic development. Jane Austen has quite a bit to say about that—of all people—I was amazed to come across it in her work a few months ago. But there's another American writer—on Hawthorne—who regarded this American habit of going outside to be alone as an undermining of democracy. He said, "This is sheer aristocracy; this is putting on the airs to crack thing, and it is going to undermine our whole democracy." So Hawthorne regarded it with great alarm. The moralist, by the way, is always a person who never studies effects so much as studies the content of situations—the studies the figure and not the ground. Now, this, I think, is a great concern to advertisers who are here tonight in some numbers. Advertisers tend to study figure—not the ground. They tend to count noses rather than to estimate the pressures under the noses—the form of gnosis. Do we have an advertiser who would like to pick that up or—we haven't heard from—what—now—in the Senate—my question is a little bit about advertising and it changes the course of the conversation slightly, and it's a serious question, Professor. If the world had not discovered your great thinking in your writing, how would you go about creating a demand for it? What would be your advertising campaign? What would be the gist of it, and what section of the media would you use?
Do I put people on? I put them on—putting people on means teasing them—challenging them—upsetting them—befuddling them. Any comic—any comic—puts on his audience—by hurting them. You can't name a comic who doesn't put on his public by hurting them. The technique of putting people on, in my case, consists simply in pointing to the things they have ignored—the things that concern them very nearly but have been totally pushed aside as insignificant. A put-on—a put-on is a—is a sort of situation that I study a good deal. Can advertise it—use it—to a fake—advertising is to a large degree a put-on—yours—and there has to be a certain comic element in a good advertising—comic is always the registration of a grievance. You—the funny man is the man with the grievance—whether as W.C. Fields or Rabelais. What's—what's the grievance of an advertiser? What kind of grievance would it be? Obviously, could vary, but he—you—the grievance, of course, is you're not buying my product—and exercise—they're very simple—see—the new luck—yes—in the glasses this time—the fact that Professor Bruno's book, *The Ascent of Man*, the fact that it was on the bestseller list in America for month after month—it's not a victory for advertising and marketing—or is that a victory for Professor Bronowski's ideals—the message he was trying to get across? I didn't see the—his shows, and of course, *The Ascent of Man* is a—is a popular cliché—also very nostalgic—since that is not necessarily the way things are going. But no—I—I know that the—the bestseller is a mysterious thing that is mainly created—it's not a spontaneous thing. Publishers have methods for creating bestsellers at any time; they have to, and it means investing a good deal of money in a book. Now, his program had many millions of dollars invested in it, quite apart from the book. So a big million-dollar program—a multi-million-dollar program—automatically guarantees the bestseller status for the book of the show.
In the second row here, Professor, getting back to your rearview mirror syndrome and your new definition of it tonight, shouldn't we—some of us—especially politicians—be looking in that same rearview mirror to see what carnage is being left behind?
Well, in the case of politics, it's not too difficult to see what's being left behind—which parties are up and which are down. But one of the peculiar things about the effects of media on…
Politics is that parties and policies become very unimportant, and the image of the politician takes on a tremendous new importance. This is television, at least, and radio politics are a completely different form. Radio politics are completely different; message, but TV politics doesn't—do not—permit very much interest in the policy or the party, but the individual comported candidate must have charisma. Now, charisma means looking like a lot of other people—that is my technical analysis of that problem. Now, piss-poor Miss Richard Nixon looked only like Richard Nixon; he, he was sunk; he had no charisma at all. And to look like a lot of other people means acceptable people, interesting people. Carter, Jimmy Carter, looks like the all-American southern boy, Huck Finn in the White House; he's a big archetype, whereas Jack Kennedy looked like the all-American boy of the more—the Bostonian variety—of the successful, pushy, and aggressive boy. Carter, the southern boy, is not aggressive; whimsical, Huck Finn style. First time that Deep South boy ever entered the American White House. So the Civil War is over.
Did you see Richard Nixon's programs with David Frost? Yes, I did. I was amazed. To ask you, how do you think Richard Nixon woken up? I thought this is the first time in human history that a major actor in history played himself. I'm glad I asked you. Yes, and they—yes, I mean—it's about the power of the nature of the electric media to say that it would be a waste of time for the regulatory authorities to concern themselves with the content of television and radio if it's a wrong interpretation. What particular things do you think they ought to be thinking about controlling? I would hate to regulate the thoughts of any bureaucracy, but the tendency of any—of any medium—is to attract to itself types of content which are consistent with its limits, and so in the long run, the—it's set—just as a people get the government they deserve, so the medium gets the content it deserves, and there has to be some sort of interplay, some sort of harmony between these things. And I would—I would point to the fact that TV is primarily concerned with complex processes, and the kinds of content that best serve it are complicated processes. Radio is far more a package medium, far more concerned with the definite and wrapped-up message and package; it's a hot medium, and whereas TV, with its cool or involving character, is much less able to cope with packages and much more concerned with processes. And so if you watch the—even Sesame Street—you will see the—this grotesque character peeping out at you. And so the processes at Sesame Street is made by advertising men, and they understand—they have learned the nature of this medium very thoroughly—and it is a very much a teddy bear, tactile, playful medium—and the very dramatic one.
Yes, I was disappointed that Professor McLuhan's address didn't confront more serious technological issues, nuclear energy in particular. And I'd like to ask him if he'd agree that nuclear energy represents mass suicide—the ultimate expression of the death wish—or more in line with his terminology—the last ditch fight to the death of the left hemisphere world of the military-industrial complex and he claims that the world is moving towards—so look, we really can't hear very clearly, and—and secondly, do you think you could relate it a little bit more to the mainstream what we've been talking about—don't exclude it, but just not—the fessing Professor McLuhan claims at the world—I don't know—we've heard that—we've heard that—no, this is—this is the second—hardly claims the world is moving towards the software world—not the brains right hemisphere—but the other side now seems to have such an upper hand in terms of big money and media control that I'm curious to know how he thinks they're going to lose. Thank you. It's their whole bundle of questions there, but the main development in the—of these electric media—is the loss of private identity. Mass man means man as related to all other men simultaneously. So the nuclear world is a kind of ripoff as far as private identity and private values and goals are concerned, and just how that relates to the atom bomb and so on it would take a little while to develop, but these forms have a kind of inner logic and inner dynamic which can be traced and which can be discerned and patterned and recognized. Yes, right—the back father's first data—I guess you're right. So McLuhan, I'd like to ask you, do you think that media will always be commercially based? And if it will be always be commercially based, de Sade getting any more responsible or—or otherwise? I—I appreciate the issues you meant—you raised—but the commercial sponsor of the media is naturally more sensitive to the audience than anybody. The commercial sponsor is going to demand a kind of rapport between his investment and the show which will ensure a great deal of popularity and representativeness to the show. If you can think of a sponsor or who ignores the audience, maybe the CBC in Canada instead—that makes it a bureaucratic organization which feels it's quaint—it—above the needs of the audience—and so it creates a great many unpopular shows. Mmm, I wouldn't say they're especially interesting; they're just unpopular. To what extent the BBC is in the same boat, I don't know, but you may—you might be able to comment. I'm going to—I'm going to have to sneak off and have a p50.
You're talking earlier about how the new brain research has opened up new avenues in perception—about the left hemisphere being more towards the logical aspects and the right towards the intuitive—can you enlarge on the parallel you use between how this is related to the Eastern Western cultures? Yes, the—the people of the West developed their visual point of view and their acuity of vision along with Euclidean geometry. No other country in the world ever had Euclidean geometry except the country of the phonetic alphabet. Without a phonetic alphabet, you don't have Euclidean space. Ow, in the—there's no Euclid in the Orient. Now, the—there's neither is there any individual identity—private identity—in the Orient, but the—the kinds of left and right hemisphere things correspond pretty well to East and West, since the lineal nature of the left hemisphere is very visual. Visual space is the only space that is lineal and connected. Acoustic space is not lineal or connected. Cous teak space is a sphere. Who we hear from all directions at once. Acoustic space is a sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose margin is nowhere—that is a simultaneous sound which creates that kind of space. It is the space of the sound bubble in rock music. But right hemisphere is simultaneous, acoustic, and this is very favorable to the corporate identity of Oriental man—people who play it by ear as opposed to those people who have a strong bias of point of view and who play it by the eye and by logical connected estimates—bottom line—quantity—and so on. This is all left hemisphere, but the right hemisphere has no bottom line and is interested only in quality, not in quantity. And so the other wilderness—the non-world—the Orient with its interest in the way of life rather than in the amount of product—you might say Polynesia—how various attempts have been made to organize the Polynesians into dynamic and producers of this—of that—and they remain completely indifferent to such performance. They're very acoustically oriented people, very right hemisphere. But the right and left hemispheres affect both of us to some degree—there—it's not just a plain either/or—we are both—have—we use both hemispheres to some degree, but in some cultures the one or the other gets much stress—much play. First McLuhan, I'm afraid we've come to the end of our message, if not the end of our medium. Thank you very much for talking with us tonight. Thank you everyone else too for joining us. I'd like to thank the organizers of Radio 78 and to SM for having us with them. It's there and our gesture to the Eco medical movement—at least—broadcasting lies of another Monday conference next week—till then, good night. Tonight's Monday conference has come from the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel Sydney. Our special guest was Canadian media analyst Professor Marshall McLuhan.