“Art is anything you can get away with…”

Marshall McLuhan’s "The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects" written in 1967, is a graphic novel that explores new-media and technology. McLuhan emphasizes the fact the “electronic technology” as he refers to it, is reshaping our lives. Granted this was in the late 60’s therefore we must keep in mind that there have been a great may changes since the 60’s. McLuhan’s strong ideas and ideals about new-media mirror the author’s of the other articles we have read thus far. For example, on page 6 he said, “It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.” If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that this sentence came from “Critical Media Literacy, Democracy, and the Reconstruction of Education”.

The novel is divided into a number of sections beginning with: you, then your family, then your neighborhood, your education, your job and so on. In each section McLuhan analyzes the role of media in each aspect and when/how it originated. An important notion that he brings up through out the novel is the exchange between old and new environments, which in the end results in confusion and difficulty.    

“We have to find the environments in which it will be possible to live with our new inventions.”p.124 The age of information or the Television generation, which ever you prefer, has in reality made the world a harder place to live in, contrary to popular belief. Are we able to live side by side with these new inventions that are brainwashing our students as well as our instructors? The classroom has become an endeavor to survive all thanks to media.

When I was first flipping (well scrolling) through the graphic novel, I thought all of the drawings, cartoons and different fonts where placed there randomly. Yet, after reading and re-reading sections of the novel some of the ‘medium’ that McLuhan chose was truly connected to the ‘message’ he was putting forth. There was most definitely a thread that McLuhan weaved through his book regarding the images he chose. For example there are multiple Alice in Wonderland references, also there are a couple of pages where the writing is upside down of backwards. Earlier on in the novel McLuhan says the following, “The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear.”p.44 When I read these words I tried to put an image in my mind, but the image was not entirely clear. Finally pages later toward the end of the book, an image appeared and it looked like this:

 

To a certain degree, McLuhan's picture of contemporary society is still relevant in today’s standards. He said, “Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do work of the old.”p.94.I feel that this statement is still true; society comes up with new gadgets and inventions to make our lives easier so that we wont have to lift a finger.