Core Response #1 (Devin Glenn)

One element I found particularly interesting in our reading was McLuhan’s characterization of TV as “a cool medium” which “rejects the sharp personality and favors the presentation of processes rather than of products” (341). As Understanding Media was published in 1964, the question has to be asked, does this description still hold true? Perhaps in some contexts it does, but in others, I personally feel it does not. The amount of people I have met who have told me they consciously do not watch or read the news anymore because “it would only upset them” (or some similar sentiment) is alarming. This directly contradicts Robert Stam’s claim that, “No matter how ‘bad’ the new might be. . . watching the new is pleasurable” (23). Could this, in part, be viewed as the result of TV—or at least televised news in the US—becoming less of a cool medium through systems which increasingly promote polarized partisan politics? Or has this always been the case?

Perhaps some feel that turning the news on in their homes, especially when violence or contention could be featured at any moment, constitutes an invasive intrusion into their domestic safe haven, but is not wanting one’s living room to be turned into a voting booth (to borrow McLuhan and Fiore’s metaphor) an adequate reason for remaining blissfully unaware (22)? The overwhelming majority of the people I am describing would self-identify as conservative, and their behavior seems to correspond with what they might describe as “traditional conservative values” which favor “the self-sufficient family home” over the “mobility” offered through being up-to-date on current issues (Williams 18). Such a phenomenon calls into question whether or not conservative individuals see a need at all for mobile privatization in the form of televised news broadcasts. While this outright rejection may be preferable to those same individuals actively seeking out right-wing networks which would only encourage them to be more extreme in their views, the idea that someone would deliberately cut themselves off from a major source of knowledge-based mobility remains an object of great concern.

Yet another example of how TV or society has evolved since Understanding Media’s original publication can be seen in the way some of McLuhan’s words do not hold up particularly well today. One of the most obvious instances is when he writes, “TV will not work as background. It engages you. You have to be with it” (344). In a day when people often watch shows on their phones as they work, clean, cook, get ready for bed, or do any number of tasks, TV can (to a certain extent) work very well as background noise, or at least can help transform a task itself into background noise. But I suppose determining the contemporary applicability of McLuhan’s claims depends on how one classifies what is and is not TV, a topic Feuer explores at length in her chapter.