Decoding McLuhan

I realize that this week's reading was another one of those that might have made your head hurt a bit, but I think there are some worthwhile points in there to consider, so it is worth the effort. I should point out that Marshall McLuhan is among the seminal writers and critics on the subject of media culture, from print and advertising, to film, television, and radio. He was a real visionary, and I'm sure if he were still around, he would have plenty to say about the digital age that we now reside in, and of course the influence of the internet.

I think one of the more interesting ideas that he introduces in this piece is that each medium is a rethinking of something that came before it. Television is indebted to radio, as radio is indebted to the telegraph, and so on, and so forth. I think it was rather interesting how he mentions the notion of portable film projectors in our future, keeping in mind that this article was written in the early 1960s, when video tape was still in its infancy, and even that was hardly portable. But in a way, he foresaw today's technology of ipods, smartphones and other portable media devices.

I think that his most salient point is the allusion that he makes to what he refers to as the literate audience. We take for granted certain aspects of film language that we carry with us, just because we have watched so much. But if you take an audience that has never seen a film or never watched television, or perhaps even looked through printed material, we would realize that these skills of interpretation are not innate. Consider the case of the Lumiere short that I mentioned last week, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. This is widely considered the first film ever screened for a public audience, and so one might imagine the fascination and even shock that they experienced beholding this technology unlike anything they had ever experienced. The story goes that upon seeing the projected image of a train moving toward them, many of those seated in front of the screen got up in a panic, running for the exits for fear that it might actually come through the screen and run them over. This anecdote may well be apocryphal, but the point remains that these were untrained eyes that were viewing a new spectacle. 

As McLuhan  points out, these things may well seem obvious to us today when we consider basic film structure and storytelling technique, but can the average person really elucidate why something is shot or edited the way it is? Probably not. But they would likely be able to discern something that is not edited or shot well. So it is important for those of us who wish to make films and to better grasp how to effectively use the medium to really make an effort to analyze and break down what we are looking at, rather than just taking the experience for granted.