Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06571_Field_TCUM T136.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 943b | 16 lines

magic rituals are his means of “applied knowledge.” Instead of
translating nature into art, the native nonliterate attempts to
invest nature with spiritual energy.

     Perhaps there is a key to some of these problems in the
Freudian idea that when we fail to translate some natural event
or experience into conscious art we “repress” it. It is this
mechanism that also serves to numb us in the presence of
those extensions of ourselves that are the media studied in this
book. For just as a metaphor transforms and transmits
experience, so do the media. When we say, “I’ll take a rain-
check on that,” we translate a social invitation into a sporting
event, stepping up the conventional regret to an image of
spontaneous disappointment: “Your invitation is not just one
of those casual gestures that I must brush off. It makes me
feel all the frustration of an interrupted ball game that I can’t