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Understanding McLuhan
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Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
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07119_Field_TCUM T684.txt
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1996-04-10
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That is another way of getting a view of the film medium
as monster ad for consumer goods. In America this major
aspect of film is merely subliminal. Far from regarding our
pictures as incentives to mayhem and revolution, we take them
as solace and compensation, or as a form of deferred payment
by daydreaming. But the Oriental is right, and we are wrong
about this. In fact, the movie is a mighty limb of the industrial
giant. That it is being amputated by the TV image reflects a
still greater revolution going on at the centre of American life. It
is natural that the ancient East should feel the political pull and
industrial challenge of our movie industry. The movie, as much
as the alphabet and the printed word, is an aggressive and
imperial form that explodes outward into other cultures. Its
explosive force was significantly greater in silent pictures than
in talkies, for the electromagnetic sound track already forecast
the substitution of electric implosion for mechanical explosion.