Marshall McLuhan 1968 - The Summer Way with Norman Mailer

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  • čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
  • Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1968
    The Summer Way
    Moderator: Ken Foley
    Host: Paul Soles
    Marshall McLuhan debates Norman Mailer (American writer)
    Concepts discussed: The planet as art form, Violence as a quest for identity, Pattern recognition, The medium is the message, Nature of the artist, Technologies as extensions of man, Moral judgement as alienation
    Transcript:
    [McLuhan]“Violence is essentially the form of the quest for identity.”
    [Mailer]“I don’t really go around punching out guys in the nose - and I try to avoid getting punched in the nose.”
    [McLuhan]“The absolute indispensability of the artist is that he alone in the encounter with the present can give the pattern recognition.”
    [Mailer]“You take for granted processes which I would consider Faustian, tragic, dramatic, apocalyptic, cataleptic.”
    [McLuhan]“Gone into orbit.”
    [Warren Davis]Tonight: a meeting of minds, Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan on The Summer Way. Two of the most remarkable men of this era must surely be Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan. The one, a prophet of hip and the probable conscience of the nation. The other, a prophet of the media and a spokesman for the electronic age. Mailer’s career is studded with literary success and stained with matrimonial failure. It had its early beginnings with The Naked and the Dead, a bestseller that brought him instant fame. Recent years have been lean, but last October he joined 50,000 Americans in a march on the Pentagon to protest against the war in Vietnam. Mailer pushed his way through police barricades to certain arrest. He is now appealing a five-day prison sentence. His account of that skirmish has become what the critics have called his greatest book, Armies of the Night, a modern-day document of dissent. In his latest about-to-be-released book, War and Peace in the Global Village, Marshall McLuhan maintains that violence is really a quest for identity and firmly nails down his prediction that the media will eventually hurl 20th-century man back to tribalism. Well, who or what does he speak for? His followers claim he’s a brilliant revolutionary in his own right who speaks for the future. His critics are less enthusiastic. They see more jargon than genius in his tribal village, rearview mirror, and host of novel slogans that have become his universally acknowledged trademarks. Call him what you will, there’s no doubt that McLuhan’s definition of communication makes him at least a passing master of the media. Two men of our time. Hate them or love them. But you must listen to what they say on tonight’s meeting of minds. Here’s Ken Foley face to face with Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan.
    [Mailer]Look Marshall, we’re both agreed that man is accelerating at an extraordinary rate into a super-technological world, if you will. And that the modes and methods by which men instruct themselves and are instructed are shifting in extraordinary -
    [McLuhan]We’ve gone into orbit.
    [Mailer]Well, at the same time I would say there’s something profoundly autoerotic about this process, and it’s sinister for that reason.
    [McLuhan]It’s psychedelic. When you step up the environment to thosespeeds, you create the psychedelic thrill. The whole world becomes kaleidoscopic, and you go inward, by the way. It’s an inner trip, not an outer trip.
    [Foley]Look, Marshall, you’ve said, among other things, that a novelist like Norman who is preoccupied with sex and violence is mid-Victorian for that reason. What do you mean by that?
    [McLuhan]Oh, I didn’t say that.
    [Mailer]No, you said in that sense I was essentially Victorian.
    [Foley]Centrally Victorian?
    [Mailer]Essentially, I think it was. Essentially? Well what did you mean by that?
    [McLuhan]I don’t -
    [Foley]Well, he’s saying what you said.
    [McLuhan]I doubt whether I said that. But anyway, what was the key to the Victorian period? It was the great triumph of the mechanical age, which is the age of fragmentation and specialism. But just at the peak of that mechanical triumph came the electric circuit, flooding in the whole electric image and world.
    [Concept: The planet as art form]
    For more information:
    mcluhangalaxy....
    www.marshallmcl...
    www.mcluhanonma...

Komentáře • 73

  • @crypto118
    @crypto118 Před 3 lety +36

    Could you imagine such a conversation as this on television today?

  • @denniswinters3096
    @denniswinters3096 Před 4 lety +38

    There was always something endearingly magnanimous about Marshall McLuhan. He never sought to brow-beat his intellectual opponent into submission but always seemed to accomodate them somehow into his overall vision, with a gracious kindness and generosity of spirit . Anyone who debated him always went away richer for the encounter.

    • @DJ-bj8ku
      @DJ-bj8ku Před rokem +2

      He didn’t browbeat, but he did interrupt annoyingly so.

    • @SeptemberAdam
      @SeptemberAdam Před 8 měsíci

      What are you talking about? WHEN did he interrupt? How often did he do this? And what you call an "interruption",.are u sure it is as such?

  • @MrUndersolo
    @MrUndersolo Před 3 lety +8

    Why had I not seen this earlier? I had no idea that the CBC had this in their archives. Remarkable...

  • @davidgo8874
    @davidgo8874 Před 4 lety +10

    Back when CBC produced quality content. Miss those days.

  • @tonyd7601
    @tonyd7601 Před 5 lety +8

    Interesting program. Essentially Teacher McLuhan and a Student Mailer fairly Moderated. Great direction and demonstrates why we don't need scripts.

  • @patrickmccormack4318
    @patrickmccormack4318 Před 4 lety +10

    This sort of T.V. entertainment was awesometacular. Medium is the message. For me, better than MMA.

  • @ulfnowotny01
    @ulfnowotny01 Před 4 lety +6

    This is just brilliant! Thank you so much for uploading!

  • @clareomarfran
    @clareomarfran Před 3 lety +26

    ‘An electronic world re-tribalizes man.’ -McLuhan, 1968. Hello, world, 2021.

  • @patrickmccormack4318
    @patrickmccormack4318 Před 4 lety +5

    I have observed what Norman Mailer referred to at time code 19:45 - "I say, we will inhabit all these areas...We will not inhabit them well...We will pop into a Hindu village, but we won't know a damn thing about that Hindu village...That Hindu village will then come to...have created for itself a mode of receiving us."

  • @MarkSeibold
    @MarkSeibold Před 4 lety +5

    Imagine if these two geniuses of our culture and electronic technology today, [in 1968,] were invited to a current 2020 presidential debate, to moderate.
    Is there even a modern-day political candidate that could compete with these two giants of linguistics, semantics, and literary mastery?

    • @Althom1990
      @Althom1990 Před 3 lety

      Mailer never moderated anything, least of all himself.

    • @garyspence2128
      @garyspence2128 Před 3 lety

      No one wanted to see a moderate Norman Mailer. They came to see this fierce, combative literary warrior. His writing is brilliant, both fiction and non-fiction. His conversation could piss you off, even if you were a fan. But those were the times. McLuhan is holding his own, though. A real discussion, not just the shouting matches we see today, regardless of the topic.

  • @GeorgeBridgetower
    @GeorgeBridgetower Před rokem +2

    Say, I'd recommend the works of James Poulos, who deeply understands McLuhan and has extended his framework to digital's usurpation of the electronic/televisual. Start with his 2019 article "McLuhanomics The Medium vs The Market"

  • @thomaspenny8360
    @thomaspenny8360 Před 5 lety +3

    BINGO! thanks for posting brother!!

  • @aaronartale
    @aaronartale Před 5 měsíci +3

    Mailer really loves to hear himself talk

    • @jameshughes383
      @jameshughes383 Před 3 měsíci

      so would you if you were as brilliant as mailer.

  • @not2tees
    @not2tees Před 8 lety +19

    I dislike Mailer's definition of an alienated man. Man can be pretty integrated within his own psyche and yet alienated from his culture to a great degree.

    • @TheNeurotichi
      @TheNeurotichi Před 4 lety +2

      If culture is in need of pruning thats a valuable trait to pursue.

    • @jnagarya519
      @jnagarya519 Před 4 lety +1

      Man as a social being is necessarily alienated from his own urges, his own real self. He understands himself in words, but words are not his essence. He can in that sense only observe, not be, what he is.

    • @Vissepisse11
      @Vissepisse11 Před 3 lety

      Yes - today this is more or less obvious.
      However, In 1968 culture and collectivism actually mattered - hence Mailer's poor argument

    • @nuqwestr
      @nuqwestr Před 2 lety

      @@jnagarya519 i am not a social-linguistic robot, or your subjective object, but an individual free agent embodied by past/present, in constant action of making the probable future real.

    • @jnagarya519
      @jnagarya519 Před 2 lety +1

      @@nuqwestr Congratulations.
      And yet your ego mediates between self and world.

  • @shonufftheshogun
    @shonufftheshogun Před 2 lety +4

    10:25 “Information overload creates pattern recognition”
    I can only imagine what McLuhan would think of modern internet discourse. What a disaster. Also probably our downfall unfortunately.

    • @rhb30001
      @rhb30001 Před 2 lety +2

      You sound like Mr Mailer with the apocalyptic man …. Pattern recognition is not a bad thing

    • @jayo9191
      @jayo9191 Před rokem

      @@rhb30001 ‘our guilt’ is inherent in nostalgic cross examination.

  • @richardjames5147
    @richardjames5147 Před 3 lety +11

    'An electronic society re-tribalises man.'
    You don't say...

    • @kennethmorrison7689
      @kennethmorrison7689 Před 2 lety +1

      Listen to the drum beats issuing from NATO, Ukraine, Russia and all around the world...

    • @rhb30001
      @rhb30001 Před 2 lety

      And that is why global liberalism is dead

    • @MiyamotoMusashi9
      @MiyamotoMusashi9 Před rokem +1

      I was typing this same words as I read it in the background 🤔

  • @reginaldmolethrasher437
    @reginaldmolethrasher437 Před 3 lety +4

    19:46 McLuhan thinks eventually, through accelerated travel, we will "inhabit all areas simultaneously". Mailer thinks that's impossible. I agree with Mailer.

    • @Vissepisse11
      @Vissepisse11 Před 3 lety +10

      Yet here you are inhabiting the comment board simultaneously for everyone for the sole reason of exposing your 'views'.
      Students of McLuhan know the troll playbook by heart. think about it

    • @sanduceroable
      @sanduceroable Před 3 lety

      Simultaneously...
      Mcluhan meant this kind of acoustic space, nonlinear and discontinuous
      m.czcams.com/video/q7X2X7LDFok/video.html

    • @rhb30001
      @rhb30001 Před 2 lety +1

      Yet you happened show up here for us today via your media and yet you wrote your message one year ago.. you are here and you are where you are right now in another place simultaneously

    • @jayo9191
      @jayo9191 Před rokem

      @@rhb30001 capability, potentiality doesn’t imply achievement.

  • @victorburnett6329
    @victorburnett6329 Před 3 lety +1

    No one can discuss coherently what lacks coherence. One cannot compress into a concept the incompressible; the complex. You have to interpret what McLuhan is saying, it has to be perceived as a musical score, as such is also the nature of what he is trying to relate.

    • @nuqwestr
      @nuqwestr Před 2 lety

      I disagree, there's a coherent target to what McLuhan asserts. Our aim at it may not always be steady, and we will occasionally miss the mark, but the intent to hit the mark is a deep part of any organisms nature. Miss the coherent target too often, you die

  • @estellerussell352
    @estellerussell352 Před 4 lety +4

    Structure/agency

  • @patrickmccormack4318
    @patrickmccormack4318 Před 3 lety +2

    As I go deeper and broader with my study of McLuhan, I wish there existed video, or script, of a meet-n-greet/debate between McLuhan and Gore Vidal. How about McLuhan and Kurt Vonnegut. Battle of this sort gets me thinking of Godzilla and Gamera.
    Godzilla VS. Gamera
    czcams.com/video/JgHyt46Ng9E/video.html

  • @ConstantContext
    @ConstantContext Před 7 lety +6

    if anyone watching this has an opinion of it, they've already misunderstood it

    • @rayjr62
      @rayjr62 Před 6 lety +3

      Norman Mailer was such a pompous boor.

    • @impancaking
      @impancaking Před 4 lety

      Unless they have more than one.. ;)

  • @ip-sum
    @ip-sum Před 2 měsíci

    13:03
    HELLO?

  • @michaelwoodsmccausland915

    Intuition

  • @otterside100
    @otterside100 Před 3 lety

    23:01 These types of moral judgements

  • @ip-sum
    @ip-sum Před 2 měsíci

    17:56

  • @reginaldmolethrasher437
    @reginaldmolethrasher437 Před 3 lety +2

    At one point (about 13:40) Mailer is interrupted and says "No let's follow this through", to which McLuhan replies "I don't want to". I find McLuhan patronising and dismissive. But part of that impression might have to do with the editing, which seems to have the effect of making it seem that both men are ignoring each other and always starting a new thread in the conversation (which consequently doesn't always sound like a conversation).

  • @TheTTBT
    @TheTTBT Před 4 lety +3

    McLuhan is always spread eagle.

    • @BazookaTooth707
      @BazookaTooth707 Před rokem

      They don't even want us men to "manspread" anymore.

  • @JackSaturday
    @JackSaturday Před 8 lety +11

    I often get the sense that McLuhan is not engaging in conversation, but constantly trying to find some way of presenting his pre-packaged tropes - like Dylan, who said "people who live in the past are losers' - then goes onstage to perform something that occurred to him at age 30. Mailer can do spontaneity, McLuhan is too stiff, he just carries a
    bag of memorized coins.

    • @Frisenette
      @Frisenette Před 8 lety +19

      That could be said for anyone. It's called personality. McLuhans answers are very carefully synthesized though, showing great understanding and sympathy. He can answer difficult and or critical questions like a true artist, like no one before or since. He also elevates mundane or stupid questions to something interesting.

    • @nuqwestr
      @nuqwestr Před 2 lety +1

      McLuhan continued to search and question up to his embodied end. He not only saw the Global Village of the Internet coming, he invented many of the words we use for it, including "Global Village" and did 30 years before the first HTML page was coded.

  • @acavsdbfdbdb744
    @acavsdbfdbdb744 Před 3 lety +2

    La era cuando la televisión tenía calidad con producciones bien elaboradas y de una estética de buen gusto pero anulada más adelante con el torrente de anuncios con la cual el medio fue colonizado

    • @kennethmorrison7689
      @kennethmorrison7689 Před 2 lety

      I go far enough back to a time(late 50's -early 60's) when the CBC would not allow advertisements on TV. The CBC today is just a huge embarasment.

  • @estellerussell352
    @estellerussell352 Před 4 lety

    Group

  • @MitchTavares
    @MitchTavares Před 13 dny

    27 minutes 43 seconds of Norman Mailer missing the point.

  • @reginaldmolethrasher437
    @reginaldmolethrasher437 Před 3 lety +3

    18:30 McLuhan interrupts with a meaningless reference to "travel/travailler". "Yes. Thank you," says Mailer. Lol.

  • @reginaldmolethrasher437
    @reginaldmolethrasher437 Před 3 lety +1

    21:08 Increasingly irritated by McLuhan's pomposity. Both men are inclined to make categorical statements, but McLuhan's are more often than not expressed with a condescending half-smile, as if Mailer has said something absurd. McLuhan is brilliant, obviously, obviously - but I don't like him.

    • @nuqwestr
      @nuqwestr Před 2 lety +1

      I'm having fun with him, it's humor, not pomposity, he likes to have fun, and why he appeared in Woody Allen's movie, Annie Hall.

    • @rhb30001
      @rhb30001 Před 2 lety +2

      He just realizes that Mailer uses only his left hemisphere when engaging in this conversation that is why he smiles …the intellectual gets supplanted by right hemispheric dialogue

  • @lpjewkes
    @lpjewkes Před 3 měsíci +1

    Mailer is particularly insufferable here

  • @williamhird4770
    @williamhird4770 Před 4 lety

    Painful to watch ! One good reason you shouldn't put artist (Mailer) together with a scientist ( Mcluhan) and expect the audience to walk away with a clear understanding of what either one has to offer the world in terms of a coherent insight into the human condition. They spend almost the whole interview talking past each other because they come from two different worlds.

  • @reginaldmolethrasher437
    @reginaldmolethrasher437 Před 3 lety +1

    21:00 McLuhan: "To select is to distort" (quickly tries to move on, as his comment is beyond debate). Always dismissive, constantly patronising.