MCLUHAN'S WAKE (TV)
Summary
This film uses documentary footage, animation, recreation, and commentary from colleagues and friends to explore the life and work of pioneering media scholar Marshall McLuhan. In keeping with McLuhan's theories, the program is nonlinear, and images are often accompanied by the disembodied voices of what the filmmakers call the chorus -- wife Corinne McLuhan and son/co-author Eric McLuhan, as well as colleagues and scholars Patricia Bruckmann, Edmund Carpenter, Derrick de Kerckhove, Lewis Lapham, Robert Logan, Phillip Marchand, Gerald O'Grady, Neil Postman, Patrick Watson, and Frank Zingrone. As it progresses, the film weaves in images and words from an Edgar Allan Poe story "A Descent into the Maelstrom," which is central to the ideas explored; in this tale, a mariner caught in a whirlpool survives by observing the patterns of the water, just as McLuhan advises humans to become aware of the media that shape their lives. The program gains some structure by making use of the four properties of the media outlined by McLuhan in his book "The Laws of Media." The first property is enhancement; that is, McLuhan proposes that a medium enhances a human sense or ability (and in turn shapes human senses and abilities). In this section of the program, viewers learn of McLuhan's youth, his doctoral work, his conversion to Catholicism, his courtship of his wife, and his early teaching and writing. The second property is obsolescence; McLuhan asks people to observe what ways of doing and being fade when a new invention or medium arrives. This section explores McLuhan's growing perception that the electronic media and the literary patterns of traditional schooling are incompatible. It also touches on his publication of such seminal works as "The Gutenberg Galaxy" and "Understanding Media" and his struggle to understand the workings of the human brain. The third property is retrieval; McLuhan argues that new media and inventions tend to retrieve lost ways of doing things, giving as an example the idea of television's returning the world to a "global village" in which all residents share information almost instantaneously. This section of the program explores McLuhan's explosion as a media personality himself in the 1960s; he is seen expounding his views in television programs and films with such celebrities as Woody Allen, Hubert Humphrey, Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, Barbara Walters, and Hugh Downs. Viewers learn that although in the 1970s some scholars tried to discredit him, McLuhan worked on a "unified theory" of the media, trying to come up with universals in the book "The Laws of Media." The program moves on to the property of reversal, highlighting McLuhan's argument that a tool or medium when pushed to extremes will accomplish the opposite of its original intention. (One example given is the slowing down of an automobile in gridlock traffic when everyone tries to travel at once.) This section briefly chronicles the end of McLuhan's life, when a stroke rendered this highly articulate man unable to speak, read, or write. The chorus comments briefly on the revival of McLuhan's reputation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Its voices also suggest that McLuhan hoped that by observing and critiquing the effects of the media and modern technology, men and women might be able to keep all of humanity from descending into a maelstrom.
Details
- NETWORK: TV Ontario
- DATE: November 30, 2001
- RUNNING TIME: 1:33:50
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:71376
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Mass media and technology; Scholars; TV - Social aspects
- SERIES RUN: TV Ontario - TV, 2002
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Kristina McLaughlin … Producer, Production (Misc.), Production Manager
- Michael McMahon … Producer, Visual Effects
- Gerry Flahive … Producer, For the NFB
- David Sobelman … Co-Producer, Writer, Conceived by
- Chanda Chevannes … Production (Misc.), Production Coordinator
- Van de Ven, Mark … Production (Misc.), Production Coordinator
- Angela Stukator … Production (Misc.), Creative Consultant
- Kevin McMahon … Director
- Ian T. Kelso … Animation, 3D Animation and Visual Effects
- Justin Stephenson … Animation, Mariner Animation
- John Minh Tran … Camera, Director of Photography
- Peter Harcourt … Writing (Misc.), Script Consultant
- Don McWilliams … Writing (Misc.), Script Consultant
- Kurt Swinghammer … Music by, Music Performed & Composed by
- Laurie Anderson … Narrator
- Eric McLuhan … Cast, the Mariner, Voice
- Andrew McLuhan … Cast, the Mariner and Young Marshall McLuhan
- Woody Allen
- Patricia Bruckmann
- Edmund Carpenter
- de Kerckhove, Derrick
- Hugh Downs
- Hubert Humphrey
- Liss Jeffrey
- Lewis Lapham
- Robert Logan
- Dick Martin
- Corinne McLuhan
- Eric McLuhan
- Marshall McLuhan
- Phillip Marchand
- Gerald O'Grady
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Neil Postman
- Dan Rowan
- Barbara Walters
- Patrick Watson
- Frank Zingrone