Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06998_Field_TCUM T563.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 934b | 16 lines

of mechanism taking over life-values as the key to the
ludicrous. To see a man slip on a banana skin is to see a
rationally structured system suddenly translated into a whirling
machine. Since industrialism had created a similar situation in
the society of his time, Bergson’s idea was readily accepted. He
seems not to have noticed that he had mechanically turned up
a mechanical metaphor in a mechanical age in order to explain
the very unmechanical thing, laughter, or “the mind sneezing,”
as Wyndham Lewis described it.

     The game spirit suffered a defeat a few years ago over
the rigged TV quiz shows. For one thing, the big prize seemed
to make fun of money. Money as store of power and skill, and
expediter of exchange, still has for many people the ability to
induce a trance of great earnestness. Movies, in a sense, are
also rigged shows. Any play or poem or novel is, also, rigged to