How to Build a Better Monster

The Medium, the Message, and the Manipulator

When studying Marx and Engels’ “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas,” Dr. Arnzen and I discussed how machinery gained an almighty power during the industrial revolution. As machinery replaced the human worker’s role in the factory, people were driven from their work and therefore blamed the machine for their loss. As human presence in production became less necessary, the machine acquired more power, eventually coming to occupy a God-like rule over the workers who feared they’d been replaced by the machines. This week I read “The Medium is the Message,” an excerpt from Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, written in 1964. I enjoyed this selection because I thought McLuhan was quick to debunk the view of the mythic machine as a living god in order to show that machines (or any object, for that matter) have no power of their own. Machines actually lack an intended use or purpose. The object itself is useless; its purpose (good or bad) is decided by people. Only when the human mind claims an object must we fear. It’s impossible to predict what effects our manipulation will bring.

McLuhan includes several examples of mediums that have no “message.” An electric light, for example, has no message. Nor does an apple pie or firearms. However, when manipulated in various ways, these mediums acquire messages. The electric light could be in the headlight of a deep-sea vehicle investigating wrecked ships, or the light bulb could rest in the lamps at a baseball stadium. The light itself has no message; but when manipulated, it gains new significance. Apple pie is neither good nor bad. When eaten, pie could fill an empty belly, and its purpose would be good; but when used as hair conditioner, apple pie isn’t beneficial.

Those are silly examples, but I think that they illustrate McLuhan’s point well. While reading the rest of the essay, I tended to fill in “medium” with words like “television,” “radio,” and “Internet.” McLuhan is inviting us to critique how we respond to our own uses (and abuses) of media.

I think most people would say that television is “bad.” Even people who are glued to their television sets usually still say negative things about TV. The attacks against television are many and varied. Some people have claimed that our devotion to TV has weakened familial interaction, decreased physical activity in people and increased the occurrence of obesity, and perpetuated violent behavior, thus contributing to growing crime statistics. People are quick to criticize television for causing these things, but TV does not actually CAUSE these problems. But even though people are ultimately responsible for their own actions, we still point the finger of blame at naughty television.

TV itself is not bad, but it’s possible that its messages are harmful. Now my question is: what other messages could TV hold? As McLuhan pointed out, apple pie can have different messages. We normally eat apple pie, but that doesn’t mean that apple pie has to be used that way. Avant-garde artists have used untraditional materials in their work and the message or meaning of those materials changed in its new context. For Jackson Pollock, an ordinary stick became a fantastic new paintbrush. The Dada artists used pieces of trash in their “nonsense” art, and despite their best efforts to make anti-art, their garbage did indeed become art.

These revolutionary artists saw past the tried and true conventions of the grand masters; they saw a new way to use materials around them, and then they brought new purpose to these objects. Similarly, television could be given a new life or purpose, but I have no idea of the possible purposes that could be discovered or created.

Currently, TV has a variety of purposes or messages. It provides filmed shows for viewing; some are “for entertainment” and some are informational, such as the news. But, TV is deeper than that. TV presents cultural views and it omits cultural views; from these discrepancies, we shape our understanding of our environment. TV is more than just images flickering on a screen; it’s programming that programs us! It conditions our minds to think and see certain things. And what we don’t see on television is as important as what we do see.

Posted by Kate Cielinski at February 27, 2005 4:46 PM