Week 14 - Marshall McLuhan Theory

McLuhan's theory is very interesting to me. I actually felt that it was so interesting that I would have chosen this as my concept for question 3 lol.

I feel that McLuhan has something going when he stated that the channel through which the message is being sent is just as important as the message itself because in a way he is right. When he stated that printed advertisements like flyers use linear logic, a sequence that follows one after the other, and television uses mosaic logic, bits and pieces of information are all over the place and it is our job as viewers to put it together, I felt that he had a point. Then I realized that McLuhan is wrong.

I have noticed so many times in public places and even on the SJSU campus that there are advertisements for everything that are more than just word after word, sequential idea after the other using only linear logic. I have seen collages, elaborate portraits, a simple picture and very little to zero words on it and the advertisement says so much. A picture says a thousand words and artists and creative advertisers have taken printed ads to a new level.

When it comes to television, it is no different. McLuhan states that television advertisement uses mosaic logic, bombarding us with changing bits of information that we must cognitively reassemble. I feel that this is also a wrong statement. TV does not just throw out a bunch of random clips, unordered mixed signals, which leaves us to put together on our own. If anything, commercials, with the exception of the few humorous ones, are very straight to the point. Even if McLulan is referring to older commercials, I still disagree with his statement because even in the 1980's, when Apple first came out with Macintosh, it had scrolling text on the screen as a narrator read it aloud.

I think that McLuhan to an extent is correct when stating that television is a "cool" medium, meaning that viewers must fill in detail. I think even today we all still have to fill in details to some commercials but for most of them, there is almost nothing to fill in. Let's take a look at the newest Old Spice High Endurance Body wash commercials with comedian Terry Crewes. He has so many commercials where he "fights odor" and his comedic skills are what make the message funny. After watching one of those commercials, what detail is there to fill in? There is nothing left up to the viewer to figure out. This is just one example of many out there.

I usually read theories and agree with them or at the very least find them interesting, but I think this is the first time I read one and did not agree with it after assessing it for a few minutes.