The mode of the TV image has nothing in common with film or photo, except that it offers also a nonverbal gestalt or posture of forms. With TV, the viewer is the screen. He is bombarded with light impulses that James Joyce called the “Charge of the Light Brigade” that imbues his “soulskin with subconscious inklings.” The TV image is visually low in data. The TV images is not a still shot. It is not a photo in any sense, but a ceaselessly forming contour of things limned by the scanning-finger. The resulting plastic contour appears by light through, not light on, and the image so formed as the quality of sculpture and icon, rather than a picture. The TV image offers some three million dots per second to the receiver. From these he accepts only a few dozen each instant, from which to make an image. (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, edited version by W. Terrence Gordon, 2003, p418)
McLuhan, who died in 1980, wrote the above in an era where TV, colorized, was still a small screen with blurred images. Today we have 40-inch (minimum) high-definition screens, but I don’t imagine the power of TV has gotten anything but bigger as a result. It is still a two-dimensional medium, and we literally enter the screen and participate in the programming. McLuhan differentiated this from movies, which were and are highly defined, TV “cool”, movies “hot”. It could be that with the advent of better TV images, the medium is “hotter” now than then, but from what I see, maybe not.
(McLuhan defined all media as hot or cool, with the degree of participation the determinant. He thought TV required a large amount of immersion by the viewer to become totally absorbed by it, as was true when it was black and white and those lines were visible on the screen. Movies, on the other hand, were highly defined, so that the viewer could merely sit back and enjoy without having to make a great effort to indulge in the offering. McLuhan, to my knowledge, is the only one who ever used those terms for media, but he does make sense.
Photography is a “hot” medium, that is, it’s all there and we have very little to fill in. Comic books are “cool,” requiring immense immersion by the reader. McLuhan was a brilliant analyst of various media, and the book I have here lists 27 of them from roadmaps to clothing to telegraph (no longer around) to television, which he called “the timid giant”. He was an acquired taste, a dense writer who labored to make simple into complicated and throwing in obscure references whenever it suited him. (“The medium is the massage” he once said, a play on words that even if we got it, was not terribly amusing.) He was a passing fad, used in his movie Annie Hall by Woody Allen in a breaking of the fourth wall seldom if ever seen in “Best” Pictures. And no, he could not act, but he did appear from behind a movie display placard in that movie to spout his science, which sounded like gibberish. To me.
I have to wonder these days at his distinction between movies and television as being low and high participation media. But for this purpose I am writing only about television, because I think that the McLuhan image of the viewer jumping through the screen to participate still holds. I am still reacting to the Evergreen school shootings, even as I’ve not watched even a second of coverage of it on TV. My impression of the event is taken from those who did view it on TV news. They believe it real, not just incidentally, but rabidly, ferociously, and deeply. TV (and now iPads and iPhones) coverage of the event drew them in, made them participants. My saying it might not have happened as told on TV did not just upset them. It enraged them.
As I see it, the alleged shooter, Desmond Holly, may or may not have been a real student at Evergreen High school. I note that in 1999 at Columbine, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were ghosts, which is why in the 1998 school yearbook they used the class photos of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. (I know, on that point, views differ). If Holly was a real kid, prior to any noise he was most likely carted away hunkered down in the back seat of a police cruiser. He would then be flown off to a new home in a military craft, most likely from Buckley, the place that Lee Harvey Oswald flew into on 11/24/63 or thereabouts.
Then came the fireworks, noisemakers done in a part of the facility with no witnesses but echoing throughout. Then silence and wonderment, the fear filling the hearts of mere children, and then evacuation. None of the students witnessed anything, but they did go home that day and watch it on TV, or their devices, and thus became participants. They too internalized it, as did all of the adults who saw it on the screens. Adults and children alike believe that it really happened.
Note: If Desmond Holly was a ghost, ala Kelbold and Harris, students will, even so, remember sitting next to him in class, and seeing him misbehave in cafeteria. We fill in the blanks in our own minds by power of suggestion.
Two victims, unnamed and Mathew Silverstone, were said to have been shot in the street outside the school. Question: What were they doing out and about? Answer: They were set up to be away from the student body so that, again, no witnesses to the shootings.
Then Desmond Holly “shot himself”. In so doing, he foreclosed on any meaningful investigation of the event. It’s over, done, he’s guilty, he’s dead, so kids, take out your blue books … wait a minute, do they still use them? Kids, take out your iPads, describe what happened. You will be graded.
There is method to this madness. The overlords behind these events, operating now in all fifty states, do them with firm purpose. They want us to believe in random terror and terrorists. That belief has the effect of dulling the senses, shutting down inquiry, keeping us in constant alert, aka, State of Fear. I have here in my office two reminders I see daily, seen to the right: One to live simply, the other to think. Participation in television news precludes the latter. All thinking is done, and only reactions are feasible. Mindless reactions.
What can be done? How are we, who sit outside the sphere of action and eat our popcorn and write and comment and discuss the masses of easy marks and stooges, to ever reach anyone with our message: “Relax. It’s not real”?
It cannot be done. They cannot be reached. TV news owns them. Later, movies will be shown on both TV and (if they still exist) in theaters. They will reenact the events, and reassert the premise: The world is populated by madmen, and we have to be constantly on the lookout. We need police everywhere, even in the school hallways and cafeterias, to keep us safe. We need soldiers, and we need them locally to put down insurrection, and abroad to kill bad guys. It’s part of our birthright as Americans, to be secure in our boots, safe from all threatens foreign and domestic, real and fake.
If I ruled the world and wanted to make sure my power stayed strong, that’s what I would do. I would scare the living crap out of my charges, and keep them that way. It’s not new. Paul Revere did not ride, the British were not coming, Pearl Harbor was friendly fire, and 911 was controlled demolition. Abraham, Martin and John were not assassinated.
But if you say anything to a true-believing TV viewer, be sure you have a fast horse.
Piece of Mindful 
An interesting comment, “Pearl Harbor was friendly fire”, and one that has passed my mind before. It’s clearly stated that there were no U.S. aircraft carriers in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor that day of “infamy”
USS Enterprise:
Departed Pearl Harbor on November 28 to deliver aircraft to Wake Island and was still returning on the morning of the attack, approximately 215 miles west of Oahu.
USS Lexington:
Was en route to Midway Island, transporting aircraft, and was located about 500 miles southeast of Midway when hostilities broke out
USS Saratoga:
Was undergoing maintenance on the U.S. West Coast at the time of the attack.
So the three carriers assigned to the Pacific fleet were “Fortuitous” in their absence. An absence that proved crucial to the U.S. response and eventual Allied victory in the Pacific.
Interestingly, and I’m sure just a coincidence, in the 2001 film “Pearl Harbor” was the exclamation by the Navy newsreel photographer who says, “I’m with Navy newsreel and I can tell you one thing- them ain’t Navy planes!” just as they hear the Japanese attack aircraft start the assault.
But, what if they were “Navy planes” from the two prepositioned and available Enterprise and Lexington? A little like the now admitted “40%” of damage done to London during the Blitz originating from friendly anti-aircraft batteries:
“One expert working at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory estimated that half the shells exploded at ground level and that they killed as many people as the German bombs.
If true, this would mean that the British army and their artillery were responsible for over 25,000 deaths in Britain during the Second World War.”
So, who knows?
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Something happened that day. Some old tin cans were blown up. Were lives lost? I cannot know anything like that, but I did take a hard look at Iwo Jima, and oddly Wikipedia openly said that the Japanese really didn’t much care about the place, merely moving operations there to another location after it ended. Did they create that battle out of whole cloth? Were there casualties in the numbers given officially? Again, cannot know. But learning at the end of that supposedly horrid affair that it didn’t really matter that much made me suspicious of that battle, and the entirety of the Pacific Theater. We were told the truth about anything? In war, truth rarely finds its way home.
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There is a constant need for pulling in the bullies and the roughnecks to be police and law enforcement, so that they beat up and rob the poor and not the rich. Like in the film Clockwork Orange, where the Droogs go from the worst hoodlums to cops. I see ads for ICE, promising a $50K bonus for signing up. ICE agents are the lowest form of life, bounty hunters who prey on immigrants and harass anyone they encounter – and boy have I had a few encounters with these stooges. Bottom feeders.
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Nice. The Cavendish is my favorite. Rite behind dem Berkeley hustlers of course.
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I had an interesting incident at the Philly airport today. Was eating lunch and the fire alarm went off. Was through security, and in the food court. The voice kept droning over and over again on the alarm – find the nearest exit, evacuate, evacuate. It was very surreal. Only about 25% of the people seemed to be taking notice. I selfishly was most worried that we would have to evacuate the airport and i would need to find alternative transport home. So what i did was run to my terminal and gate as fast as possible. And the fire alarm faded in the background.
My point is when you hear the whoop, whoop alarm and everyone is running you have no idea what the hell is going on. And it creates a sense of panic in everyone, especially children who have been “drilled”. In my day if we heard an alarm we assumed one of us pulled it as a prank.
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A search informs me that Luhan is related to the Sanskrit word Lohan meaning “enlightened being” or Buddha.. “light” in general very appropriate for the analyst of TV and other “light” media. Marshall..? Well we’ve got the MM thanks to that Mc.. mar= Ram, Ramses? Ram shall enlighten? A marshall is what in the military.. leading the parade? I don’t know, just messing around.
I tried to read him once but didn’t get very far, for the reasons you describe. Seems to have been a sort of faddish, celebrity intellectual of the day, a bit goofy and a scold that the educated classes could agree with while also laughing about and disregarding maybe. He could himself be absorbed and turned into entertainment, as in the Woody Allen movie. (Who just did an interview with Bill Maher, pretty interesting for anyone interested in Allen, now 90.)
Neil Postman was in a similar vein of media critic, but much more down to earth and readable. Another name that looks scripted.. or Christopher Lasch, ditto, and oy vey for that name.. but more of a general social critic.
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The Woody Allen movie with McLuhan won best picture that year, and just by coincidence I ran across an article a couple of days ago still decrying the injustice of that award, listing four other pictures that were far more worthy. Woody Allen, like McLuhan himself, is an acquired taste, a well developed sense of humor and a penchant for making quirky motion pictures serving his private ego, and having success at it. He’s going to die soon, and I will mourn his passing, just as I did Tommy Smothers, another underappreciated comic delight.
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Like many things, those awards have been fixed forever.
I do like good movies though.
Long before I knew these things were fixed, I watched and was pissed off that Paul Newman had NOT won for The Verdict and then was handed the award the next year for the piece of shit Color of Money. I really detest drunks but Mr. Newman there, yeah, a real actor.
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Stories about him, real and false abound. In one, a woman entered a coffee shop in a small town in CT, where he lived, and ordered an ice cream cone. He was sitting at the counter. She freaked, and left pretending not to be aware of him. She got outside, realized she did not have her ice cream, gathered her wits and went back to get it. It was not there. Their eyes met, he laughed and said “You put it in your purse!”.
Another I know to be real, a friend of our in Bozeman once lived in CT and was at a country club one day when Newman was there. Not wanting to be a moronic fan, she asked her granddaughter to approach him and ask for an autograph. He smiled at her and said no, “I’m just a regular guy today.”
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Serving his private ego? Not to quibble, but isn’t he just an artist serving his muse, negotiating between personal expression and the needs of a commercial medium.. ie repay the film’s backers? Sure he’s in a unique position of more creative control than most, but they aren’t vanity projects, he does have an audience that appreciates them. Once in a while they hit with a wider audience too.
I meant to say about McLuhan too, he did seem to have some genuine useful insights, just that he may have been a way to put them out there while simultaneously neutralizing them.
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He rose to tenured professor, wrote books that made lists, appeared ad infinitum on the talk show circuit.Allen on at least two occasions, maybe in that movie, used players who could not act for shit, thereby making it a less worthy picture … McLuhan and Paul Simon. Watching Simon “act,” recite his lines as rehearsed, you realize right away why some get awards for that profession … making it seem real. Right away, watching him doing his best, I lost WSOD, willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe he left the set that day and went home and wrote Faking It.
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He “broke the rules” using amateurs in his movies? Okay, not sure if that’s supposed to be some kind of broader indictment of his incredible body of work.. it’s a choice he made at the time, celebrity cameos are part of the “entertainment” of movies that many people enjoy. They aren’t all great masterworks for the ages, some are just of their moment, a fun flick (or not).
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I like Allen, didn’t mean to come off as a critic. The Sopranos used Frankie Valli, E Street’s Steven Van Zandt, and it worked. It didn’t work when Johnny Carson appeared on Get Smart, and Conan O’Brien on some Will Arnett project that did not fly … maybe talk show hosts are too well known. When they enter the set, WSOD is gone as they are so well known in our living rooms.
That was one thing that McLuhan or someone mentioned about TV, that it is a cool medium and so anyone on it has to project friendlies or face a career halt. Lorne Michaels told Conan he would succeed eventually as a late night host because he was a nice guy, and that matters.
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The Arnold Horseshack/Screech syndrome. Where there first character made a splash that labeled them as that person forever in the public mindset. Didn’t happen with Tom Hanks, or Travolta. Same happened with the Seinfeld characters, but not as much, Jerry wouldn’t have went over in the movies. I guess with a sitcom that’s seen everyweek it puts those faces in stone.
James Gandolfini was in other movies but didn’t go over, as he was forever Tony Soprano. Steven Van Zandt had such a different look and personality that any cross over woulda worked for him
Music is the same, how could a guy like Willie Nelson start having bg success as a glam rocker or in heavy metal…Yet I think glam/hair metal Bon Jovi could have became Country artist.
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Haing S Ngor, best supporting actor winner for The Killing Fields (1984) was one of two amateurs to win an Oscar, the other being Harold Russell for Best years of Our Lives. Ngor was allegedly murdered in 1996 but the whole case reeks like spoiled herring. Ngor was from privilege etc. and was probably repurposed back to the old country. His performance seemed well guarded by the editors of the film.
I have a conservative friend who years ago worked for a radical publication in Berkeley. He’s an affable sort and got along just fine with the commies on the staff. He was in school and needed a paying gig so he was the office manager. He found the friendly discussions enlightening, though he was never convinced left wing ideology had any place in a rational society. Anyway, one day The Noam Chomsky came by for an interview and he took the staff to lunch. There he explained that the whole Pol Pot led Cambodian genocide never took place. Now to my friend’s way of thinking, Prof. Chomsky might have embodied his worst nightmare, but he told me in all sincerity that he was convinced- the Cambodian genocide never happened.
I digress, but let’s face it- a major motion picture to my mind always signals shenanigans, and we know many people have never acknowledged the 6 million pound gorilla in the room, and with compelling reasons. Was Chomsky telling the truth for once?
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I have heard that the Khymer Rouge was BS also from a couple of credible sources. One was a French ex-patriate, who dates a relative in Thailand, and who lived in Cambodia several years, and lives in Bangkok now as a French teacher. He told me the massacre was wildly exaggerated. And someone else I met, can’t remember who, who had traveled Southeast Asia said something similar.
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Would not surprise me but I have a hard time understanding why.
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Off the top of my head I’d say it was a cover up of what western forces did in Cambodia- blame it on a local madman. Replace him with a vassal government and the spooked locals won’t resist if they believe it, too.
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Below are a couple of graphs on Cambodia population:
These are taken from Wikipedia, so buyer beware. However, I think since it is established that Pol Pot did this, and not Western forces, that we may be looking at an accurate representation of the tragedy. According to these graphs, something really bad happened, and the Langley writing staff was called upon to misdirect us from the actual source.
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The French guy i knew also said he knew an American Patrician type when he was there who was CIA. Guy settled down in Cambodia with a huge compound and native wife. Maybe it was just the CIA taking the country for its own personal fiefdom, and turning it into a sweatshop for the world to boot, like they did in Vietnam. Southeast Asians wouldn’t mindlessly kill millions of their own people its not in their nature.
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