home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
mac
/
McLuhan
/
MCLUHAN.DXR
/
06865_Field_TCUM T430.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
935b
|
16 lines
(March 15, 1953): “A woman now, and without having to leave
the country, can have the best of five (or more) nations
hanging in her closet—beautiful and compatible as a
statesman’s dream.” That is why, in the photographic age,
fashions have come to be like the collage style in painting.
A century ago the British craze for the monocle gave to
the wearer the power of the camera to fix people in a superior
stare, as if they were objects. Eric von Stroheim did a great job
with the monocle in creating the haughty Prussian officer. Both
monocle and camera tend to turn people into things, and the
photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the
proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars
and matinee idols are put in the public domain by photography.
They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought
and hugged and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.