McLuhan's application of Medium Theory

”In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message.” - Marshall McLuhan, ‘The Medium is the message’ from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964) in Media and Cultural Studies: Keywords, ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner (Malden, Mass. ; Oxford : Blackwell, 2006), pp.107-116

This blog post is dedicated to Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of the medium theory and it’s applications in the media today. McLuhan believed that the vision of media technologies being a driver of historical change is an instance of technological determinism. McLuhan ultimately see’s the change in media as a negative advancement. He believes that the media will supplement people’s thought processes with their own intervention and ultimately cause viewers to turn passive.  McLuhan’s view of media technologies as a propellant of historical change is an example of technological determinism. Ultimately, it destroys human and social agency and establishes a society that is passive to their own opinions.

“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered” - Martin McLuhan, (M and Fiore, Q 1967, p26)

McLuhan’s thoughts can be seen as an example of ‘medium theory’, a term coined by Joshua Meyrowitz in 1985. Medium theory is very much focused on the technological aspects of the media and how certain advancement can drive social transformations in psychology and culture but often in a negative manner. There are many modern examples of this as it is arguable that we are currently living in McLuhan’s predicted future. An example of applied medium theory can be found in McLuhan’s global village theory.

“Television has transformed the world into an interconnected tribe he calls a "global village." There's an earthquake and no matter where we live, we all get the message. And today's teenager, the future villager, who feels especially at home with our new gadgets -- the telephone, the television -- will bring our tribe even closer together.” - CBC Archives, Interview with Marshall McLuhan (Explorations, May 18, 1960)

McLuhan details how the world is forming into a global village.A global village where we do not necessarily live in harmony, but where we all overly obsessed with the business of others. An example of this can be seen through the popularisation of the website Facebook. Facebook began as a communication tool focused on finding old classmates or acquaintances. However, its popularity turned it into a global social network which details each and every one of your interests, hobbies and even thoughts. Essentially, Facebook is one of the primary examples of the global village. We are more concerned with the personal drama’s of an individual and the constant novelty of comparison and gossip that we begin to quickly overlook the communicational capabilities of Facebook and begin to feed our own insecurities and inadequacies through the experiences of others.

Marx's application of ideology to modern media

”The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.” - Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, section on ‘Ideology’, The German Ideology (London : Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), ed. C.J. Arthur, pp. 46-48

I would like to focus this week’s post on the manifestation of Ideology in the media and how certain capitalist ideologies contribute to media obsessed with production and therefore audience consumption. Karl Marx, a very famous 19th-century German philosopher is an excellent example of this cycle of consumption. Marx suggested that those who are in/have power in our society create and establish dominant ideologies and these ideologies are often designed with a heavy focus on economics. 

“The concept of ideology as false consciousness was important in Marx’s theory because it appeared to explain why it was that the majority in capitalist societies accepted a social system that disadvantaged them”. - Phillip Rayner, Peter Wall and Stephen Kruger, ‘Ideology and Advertising’, Media studies: the essential resource (London and New York : Routledge, 2004), p.81

To Marx, a socialist regime was almost inevitable for the future. Marx theorised that the workers of a capitalist society would eventually triumph over their capitalist overlords to create a new kind of society. It is clear that Marx very clearly opposed the structures and Ideologies set at the time of the industrial revolution,a period which triggered a gigantic economic growth. However these principles and ideologies can be seen even more clearly today in a society obsessed with production and consumption.

An example of this can be visualised clearly in the gaming industry. Video games are sold at face value for an consistently increasing, already large price and are often untested, unfinished and incomplete. New marketing models have been introduced which promote quick production output and excessive consumption at a high price. Most major game companies heavily root the relatively new feature of downloadable add-on content, known colloquially to gamers as ‘DLC’. Originally these features were designed to add more to the original game and keep keen players occupied and engaged even after the original game had been completed. This almost revolutionary idea which came with the introduction of the internet to gaming consoles, quickly snowballed into a business plan which revolved around the exploitation of players. Games are split up into segments, and sold to the player to maximise profits for the producers. 

(Image by disqus.com)

This can be seen as a modern example to Marx’s understanding of capitalist ideology. The game companies create and adapt different/new ideologies to continuously exploit players and inevitably, dissatisfy them.

Baudrillard's Hyperreality - Simulacra and Simulations. The deconstruction of reality in modern media

”Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.” - Jean Baudrillard, ed. Mark Poster, ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, Selected writings (Cambridge : Polity, 1988), pp. 166-172.

Following nicely from last weeks input, I would like to place this week’s focus on Jean Baudrillard and his famous text ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ which explores the distortion of reality and how it is deconstructed through modern media. Baudrillard’s ideas actually completely invert Plato’s hierarchy of the forms and metaphysical philosophy. For Baudrillard, the media ultimately acts as a rather ironic barrier between reality and a certain hyperreality. To Baudrillard, hyperreality is a creation of the media which details the filtered truth which we, as an audience, receive. To him, images seen on the news or magazines are mere reincarnations of real life events. They have been edited, cropped, blurred and ultimately obfuscated as their purpose is to appeal rather than inform. Ultimately, the hyperreality bears no significance to any reality. It is it’s own simulacrum.

“If you look hard enough you can find the contrapositive, underside or opposite of any event. These multiple interpretations don’t make the world more accessible. The explosion of information, of events; makes the ability to understand the world nearly impossible.’ Wisecrack, ‘Can We Trust the Media? (Baudrillard) - 8 Bit Philosophy’, 0:48-1:05 (YouTube : Internet Source, 2015)

Baudrillard is obsessed with the seemingly obsessive filtering of images that the modern media practices. His primary ideologies heavily question the line between media designed to inform and media designed to profit from. Taking the nightly news for example; the theme of conflict seems to have monopolised the viewing agenda to the point that it could feature primarily as a core category in any broadcaster’s narrative structure. The conflicts acts as a juxtaposed proximity between our boring, monotonous lives and imminent, dramatical doom somewhere in the middle east. 

Although ultimately Baudrillard’s idea conflicts that of Plato’s hierarchy of the forms, comparison can be made through the audience’s viewing input. If the audience are compelled and conditioned to the world of forms existing inside their television screens, then they are also subscribing to the carbon copied forms of reality which have now manifested themselves as a hyperreality. Either way the audience is receiving something false, corrupted and deconstructed. The audience has a dysfunctional relationship between the television screen, and their understanding of events.

Similarities can be found between Baudrillard’s thoughts and the ‘hypodermic-syringe model’, a theory relating to the media of the 1940’s and 50’s. This theory proposed that the media had an explicit, immediate and powerful effect on their audiences. 

“The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.” - University of Twente, ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’ (Web source : https://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory/)

Alike Baudrillard, this theory also suggests that the media filters and constructs/deconstructs images to promote a certain message. That message, however, according to Baudrillard; completely destroys the media’s credibility as a source of information and rather than exposing reality, it deconstructs it and replaces it with a reincarnation.

Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave' and it's relation to modern media

“I want you to go on to picture the enlightenment or ignorance of our human condition somewhat as follows. Imagine an under-ground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open to the daylight and as wide as the cave.” - Plato, ‘Book 7 - The Allegory of the Cave’, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (Penguin : London, 2007), pp.241-245

This week in contextualising practice we begun to look at some of Plato’s core teachings and ideas. We began by looking at Plato’s most notable book ‘Republic’. Plato’s Republic is a Socratic dialogue which was written around 380 BCE. The historical context of the book is between 428 and 348 BCE. The book’s message is communicated through various characters who discuss the rules of representation about various things in society and ultimately, it is Plato’s attempt to link theory and practice together. 

The most noticeable of his ideas proposed in the republic is ‘the allegory of the cave’ (514a–520a). The allegory of the cave is an especially interesting idea for those concerned with the ideas of representation in the media like myself. In short, 3 prisoners are situated in a cave underground. There is a light which portrays shadows of different things on the wall facing them. As far as the prisoners know, there is nothing more to the shadows. These things, according to Plato would be mere representations of a form, the lowest possible position on Plato’s hierarchy of importance. It is only when one of the prisoners escapes, that he can see reality for what it is. The sun is real and is higher on the hierarchy than the light source from within the cave. When the prisoner returns to inform the others, they are uninterested by his findings as they have conditioned themselves comfortably with mere representations. The story is concerned with the purpose and placement of representations of a form and how the cave dwellers slowly begin to prefer the representation of a form over the true and ultimate version of the form.

Plato refers to these representations as ‘mimesis’ which is a synonym for imitation.

Another interesting concept which supports this idea of different forms is ‘One and three chairs’; a piece of artwork produced by Joseph Kosuth in 1965. It features a real chair, a picture of a chair, and finally a dictionary definition of a chair. It is an excellent example of Plato’s hierarchy portrayed in artwork.

This idea can be very easily applied to modern media and the different forms of distortion which the media can create. In society now, it is difficult to understand what is true and what is an imitation. We can see this best demonstrated on mainstream television with the construction of shows which focus on delivering distant content to the audience, such as travel programs or the manifestation of war in the middle east shown in the news. As a mainstream audience, the majority of us will have little to no experience with society in the middle east. The only knowledge we have about the middle-east is fed to us through mediums (the media). Eventually over time, alike the prisoners in the cave, we become comfortable with the mimesis, and when presented with reality, we react differently and are placed in a situation of culture shock.