This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is The Massage
International House , March 31 at 8pm
(Dir. Ernest Pintoff, US, 1967, 16mm, 56 mins, color)
Originally broadcast in 1967 as part of NBC’s “Experiments with Television,” this portrait of Marshall McLuhan is far from the typical television documentary. Featuring performances by Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, commentary by Allan Kaprow and Malcolm Morely and a host of pop culture icons, This is Marshall McLuhan innovatively captures the media environment McLuhan so eloquently describes. This event is free to attend. Please RSVP by clicking HERE
RELATED: Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan’s work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries.[1][2] McLuhan is known for coining the expressions “the medium is the message” and “the global village” and predicted the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented.[3] Although he was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, his influence started to wane in the early seventies.[4] In the years after his death, he 
would continue to be a controversial figure in academic circles.[5] With the arrival of the internet, however, there was renewed interest in his work and perspective. MORE
RELATED: The title is a play on McLuhan’s oft-quoted saying “The medium is the message“. The book was initiated by Quentin Fiore.[1] McLuhan adopted the term “massage” to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the “effects” of numerous media in terms of how they “massage” the sensorium. According to McLuhan biographer W. Terrence Gordon, “by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue — the subtitle is ‘An Inventory of Effects,’ underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying.” (Gordon, p. 175.) However, the FAQ section on the website maintained by McLuhan’s estate says that this interpretation is incomplete and makes its own leap of logic as to why McLuhan left it as is:[2]
“Why is the title of the book The Medium is the Massage and not The Medium is the Message? Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter’s, it had on the cover ‘Massage’ as it still does. The title was supposed to have read The Medium is the Message but the typesetter had made an error. When McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, ‘Leave it alone! It’s great, and right on target!’ Now there are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: Message and Mess Age, Massage and Mass Age.” MORE