Just Finished Reading: The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (FP: 1967)

This is one of the seminal books on modern western culture by one of its most revered commentators. Except it’s less of a book and more of a conceptual art work – it was the late 60’s after all when conventions such as books and the boundaries between art and literature where – well, square man!

Such as it is this is actually a quite interesting work. Despite much of it being very much of its time and place it still manages – between the apparent pretension and ‘pop’ cult artwork – to raise some interesting questions and the odd eyebrow. The idea (which came across to me as rather Marxist in outlook) that the medium – writing or television for example – is not just a way of communicating information but determines or constrains what type of messages can be transmitted. Much like the means of production determine what kind of society can exist the medium of information exchange determines what can and cannot be said or even thought because it shapes the very world view and the concepts within that view which are available to be used to think with. It’s a bold, and no doubt at the time, original idea. I think that it’s worth following up with some other reading on the subject. I don’t know where it might lead but I think it’ll be interesting to find out.

Because of its picture heavy content this is a very quick read. There’s a few gimmicks or toys to play with – a page of mirror writing for example – plus odd changes of font (why stick to convention, man?), juxtaposition of photographs and text in a collage format (why not?) and plenty of pictures that probably meant a lot more in 1967 than they do in 2015 without some research. It is, rather inevitably, focused very much on the American perspective but then again 60’s America was pretty much the cutting edge of western culture back then.

Despite its rather dated, now nostalgic and sometimes cute format this is still worth a few hours of your time to see what all the fuss was about. I do however recommend you get it from a library rather than buy it new. I really didn’t find it great value for money.