Session Eight: Marshall McLuhan

This week I'm going to try something even more different, but perfectly in tune with the themes discussed in last weeks session on 'Counterculture' (which, as you will recognise, is not quite the same as 'revolution' and certainly miles away from Le Corbusier's remarkable call of the 1920's 'Architecture or Revolution').
So we are going to deflect ourselves for one week only from 'readings' to 'browsings' in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan. You are asked to browse YouTube for material on McLuhan's 'media is the message' (even clips from 'Annie Hall'), Reyner Banham's love of Los Angeles and William Burrough's paranoia. Spend about an hour doing doing this, and select your favourite clip so that when we discuss this arena further in the class, you can contribute by saying 'look at this!' I tried it this morning and it was amazing how much interrelated material came up, from Norman Mailer ranting about Clinton's 'sexgate' to Hunter S Thompson interviewing Keith Richards. I started somewhere, but I ended up somewhere else that was somehow in the same field.

Our aim is to:

a) get some kind of grip on what the hell Marshall McLuhan was talking about
and
b) ask the poignant question 'what if he's right?'

I suspect this is an ever more important task for our age.

Please note: We shall be returning to real books (two novels) for the next sessions. You might like to think of buying them cheap on abe books.com or eBay. They are:

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
USA by John Dos Passos.