Page 216 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Conclusion 201
to their culturally damaging qualities – damage that occurs inde-
pendently of society’s wishes. He frequently identified many negative
cultural aspects to their adoption with such unequivocal statements
as: ‘Most media … are pure poison – TV, for example, has all the
effects of LSD. I don’t think we should allow this to happen’
(McLuhan, in Moos 1997: 72) and the equally blunt, but seldomly
highlighted comments such as:

If TV was simply eliminated from the United States scene, it
would be a very good thing … TV, in a highly visual culture,
drives us inward in depth into a totally nonvisual universe of
involvement. It is destroying our entire political, educational,
social, institutional life. TV will dissolve the entire fabric of
society in a short time. If you understood its dynamics, you
would choose to eliminate it as soon as possible.
(McLuhan, in Moos 1997: 77–8)

McLuhan argued that any technology creates a level of auto-
amputative numbness but he placed particular emphasis upon the
particular strength of the media’s autoamputative power instead of
the empowering possibilities Benjamin foresaw in the camera’s
explosive power. In Benjamin’s analysis the traditional artwork
absorbed the viewer in contrast to the masses who absorb the
reproduced work, for McLuhan and Baudrillard, the distance from
which contemplation took place in traditional culture no longer
exists. In our particularly advanced age of mechanical reproduction,
we suffer from the same overpowering fascination with surfaces as
Narcissus but our reflective (not reflexive) surfaces are significantly
more absorbing than a mere pond. Baudrillard’s analysis returns us
to the critical potential implicit within McLuhan and his account of
the transformative nature of the media notwithstanding his standard
reputation as an optimistic endorser of the global village. In both
McLuhan and Baudrillard’s work Benjamin’s positive interpretation
of distraction and its purportedly liberating possibilities is under-
mined and replaced with a much more prosaic reality of a culture
built upon pre-encoded messages intended for tautological transmis-
sion rather than symbolic exchange.

The ideology of one-dimensionality
private space has been invaded and whittled down by techno-
logical reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the
entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased
to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of
introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions.

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