EUGENE GOODHEART
91
Media
(1965).
I don't recall having read them through when they came
out, but I do recall the excitement that McLuhan generated as a pres–
ence on the cultural scene. There was a sense that his charisma exceeded
his achievement in print-a fitting coincidence, since McLuhan pre–
sented himself as a critic of the limitations of print culture. Having read
the books with some care in recent months, I can occasionally glimpse
the reasons for the excitement at the same time that I share the disap–
pointment many of McLuhan's most astute readers felt.
His liveliest and best book, in my view, is
The Mechanical Bride
(195
I),
a tour de force survey of the advertising culture of the time, in
which he displays an uncanny instinct for the movements of the
Zeit–
geist,
written in language that crackles with a quirky energy. Like
Roland Barthes's
Mythologies,
it is filled with sharp satiric
aperr;us
about commercial culture, many of them striking and even original for
their time, some of which have retained their freshness; others have
become the common coin of the realm, and still others now seem hyper–
bolic and not always convincing.
An ad for Lysol, accompanied by an illustration of a young woman
immersed in the water of "doubt, inhibitions, ignorance, misgivings,"
with arms raised and "crying out in anguish," elicits the comment:
"Closely related to the combination of moral fervor and knowledge is
the cult of hygiene.
If
it is a duty to buy those appliances which free the
body from toil and thus enable housewives not to hate their husbands,
equally urgent is the duty 'to be dainty and fresh.'" (McLuhan fails to
note the subtext: it is a subliminal ad for contraception. Perhaps he
noted it, but couldn't say it in
1951.)
An ad for a
1949
Buick Road–
master entitled "Ready, Willing and Waiting" draws the obvious rhetor–
ical question: "Has the car taken up the burden of sex in an increasingly
neuter world?" Superman represents
the psychological defeat of technological man. As a third-rate
reporter whose incompetence wins him the pity and contempt of
the virile Lois Lane, his hidden superself is an adolescent dream of
imaginary triumphs. While Clark Kent can't win even the admira–
tion of Lois Lane, Superman is besieged by clamorous viragos.
Superman accepts a self-imposed celibacy with the resignation of a
stamping forge, while Kent is merely resigned.
This is McLuhan at his counter-intuitive best. The virile female and the
emasculated male also appear in his treatment of Blondie ("She has 'poise
and confidence,' know-how and drive") and Dagwood ("a supernumerary
