Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06814_Field_TCUM T379.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 941b | 16 lines

film, and radio into a comic-strip world by simply featuring
them as overheated packages. Today the ten-year-old clutches
his or her MAD  (“Build up your Ego with MAD ”) in the same way
that the Russian beatnik treasures an old Presley tape obtained
from a G.I. broadcast. If the “Voice of America” suddenly
switched to jazz, the Kremlin would have reason to crumble. It
would be almost as effective as if the Russian citizens had
copies of Sears Roebuck catalogues to goggle at, instead of
our dreary propaganda for the American way of life.

     Picasso has long been a fan of American comics. The
highbrow, from Joyce to Picasso, has long been devoted to
American popular art because he finds in it an authentic
imaginative reaction to official action. Genteel art, on the other
hand, tends merely to evade and disapprove of the blatant
modes of action in a powerful high definition, or “square,”