Geo Barcan: Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan - UNDERSTANDING MEDIA (part II), case study

McLuhan begins this chapter by pointing out that in England, the movie theatre used to be called “The Bioscope, because of its visual presentation of the actual movements of the forms of life (from Greek bios, way of life )”.

This opening statement shaped my understanding of the chapter, as I believe that there are reverberations of the idea of the Bioscope in our contemporary times. Unfortunately, McLuhan died before seeing how much visual media will penetrate our lives, from the internet, to interactive street ads, to billboards and so on.

So I would like to argue, from a contemporary standpoint that the Bioscope is a more appropriate name for cinema nowadays than for the moving pictures of the early 20th century. Hence today, name of the Bioscope does not only extend to the use of the film medium for scientific, anatomical purposes, as it did in its early ages, but it reflects the transfer of the skin of the film onto us. The moving image is present in our daily lives to the extent that it defines who we are, as a Western society. It is present on the bus, in the toilet, in our beds, at the dinner table and so on.

The Bioscope is our current biological habitat.

In an earlier chapter, McLuhan states that media generates other media.
He furthers this idea by stressing that there are similarities in the reactions they generate between printed media and the cinema.

“The reader in projecting words, as it were, has to follow the black and white sequences of stills that is typography, providing his own sound track. He tries to follow the contours of the author's mind, at varying speeds and with various illusions of understanding. It would be difficult to exaggerate the bond between print and movie in terms of their power to generate fantasy in the viewer or reader.” (p. 285)

In this sense, both of these mediums serve as a form of escapism, of generating fantasy.
Hence, our ability to accept the film form, hence the sequencing, is due to the pre-existence of the printed word.

All one need do is to imagine for a moment a film based on newspaper form in order to see how close film is to book.” (p. 286)

He demonstrates that natives, who did not have as much contact with the literary form, will find it difficult to accept the tropes of film or simply to suspend their disbelief, as one does when accepting the “illusions” of cinema.

McLuhan stresses that at the core of the cinematic form is sequencing, which orginated in the “typographic fragmentation”.

Sequencing has extended to the fragmented perception we have of the events in our lives.
Today, sequencing is scrolling through Instagram or looking at Youtube recommendation, it is opening too many tabs in your browser.
In this sense, our bodies had to adapt to this scattered, erratic abundance of media. See for example, how our eyes move when looking at a screen or an editorial page in a magazine.

The widespread nature of cinema has changed the course of other media as well. MuLuhan gives the example of literary forms, in the sense than a writer no longer has to express what a film can do. => symbolism

He also mentions the relationship between theater and the cinema, saying that the illusions of theatre are less believable than the ones created by film.

However, I would like to mention that in the beginning, cinema was very much like theatre. It is also interesting to think about how the moving image influenced theatre today.

“The stage and TV can make do with very rough approximations, because they offer an image of low definition that evades detailed scrutiny.” (p. 288)

Thoughts are like editing, like cuts and jump cuts, like POV shots.

“Yet film and the stream of consciousness alike seemed to provide a deeply desired release from the mechanical world of increasing standardization and uniformity.”

But film editing has also give new possibilities to the human mind, such as the bird’s eye view, extreme close-ups, and the possibility to see things from impossible perspectives to the human body.
Cinema has expanded and changed the possibilities and perceptions of the human body

McLuhan, in his visionary theories anticipated that the movie theatre and the TV will be constantly present in our pockets…

“At the present time, film is still in its manuscript phase, as it were; shortly it will, under TV pressure, go into its portable, accessible, printed book phase. Soon everyone will be able to have a small, inexpensive film projector that plays an 8-mm sound cartridge as if on a TV screen.” (291)

McLuhan did point to the fact that TV and cinema will merge, anticipating the boom of streaming programs. He did mention however that TV had a lower quality than the movies, providing realism rather than dreams.

He observes that Hollywood is selling the American dream, bringing the capitalist lifestyle to places it has not been thought of before, implanting dreams of a fake lavish lifestyle (see page 291).

“It is, therefore, not accidental that the movie has excelled as a medium that offers poor people roles of riches and power beyond the dreams of avarice.” => similarities with Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Simple Life, Youtube stars allowing the viewer into every minute of their life, Instagram stories.

Due to the circulation of movies and the growing Hollywood industry, “(…) the American way of life was exported to the entire world in cans.”