Page 108 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of the media 93
which print was effectively deposed from its privileged position, and
interacted ‘horizontally’ with graphic elements. Indeed, from Under-
standing Media onwards, McLuhan’s texts become one factor in a
multimedia profile (a profile that was managed by a public relations
company). This was a strategy that yielded initial benefits but, as with
many who seek the attention of media, it resulted in an equally
rapid fall into obscurity. However, while McLuhan’s later work can
possibly be said to mark an advance in terms of their form,
Understanding Media stands as the most coherent and thorough
articulation of his theory, offering a general theory of modern
media, and close readings of the technologies (for instance, radio,
the typewriter, and so on) which make up the new techno-medial
environment. McLuhan is keenly aware that his anatomy of mass
media is inevitably partial, compromised, and incomplete, since so
much of its environment is beyond his full understanding. Despite
their oracular rhetoric, McLuhan’s analyses were intended primarily
as provocations to further enquiry. He saw all his statements as works
in progress or as ‘an index of possibilities’ and was content solely to
provoke comment and reflection on the nature of the media. To this
extent, McLuhan can be seen to fit quite naturally with the radical
group of thinkers labelled in this book as critical due to the way in
which they seek to interrogate, from a perspective beyond the
conventional, the basic processes of our mediated society.
Understanding Media begins programmatically. The first chapter
‘The medium is the message’ announces McLuhan’s best-known
slogan, and the basic principle of his media theory. As noted
previously, McLuhan’s thesis is that the real import of media
technology is not their apparent content (the narratives, stories,
genres, cultural forms and personalities they present for our con-
sumption), but rather their material presence, as discrete technolo-
gies, and more importantly, the reticulated networks of production
and consumption they create. McLuhan’s undiluted media determin-
ism results in an image of society as entirely defined by its means of
communication. This collapse of message into medium is a polemi-
cal gesture designed to discredit a number of orthodox, and in
McLuhan’s view, reactionary positions. These include:

+ The Frankfurt School’s ideological interpretation of the media, in
which they function as the tools of control and mass obedience
+ Active audience and cultural populism theories that, from a
critical perspective, risk assuming the role of public relations for
triumphant capitalism – they create semiotic interpretations,
which focus on the forms of signification that can be found
within media, without reflecting on the manner in which the
semiotic is itself media determined

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