Commentary:
In The Mechanical Bride, McLuhan writes “… an Arabian Night’s of entertainment in which a thousand and one astonishing tales are being told by an anonymous narrator to an equally anonymous audience.” Before I had read his article, I had taken some time to read a few of articles from the newspaper that preceded it. I had found myself doing just that! A deep news caster like voice had rung out in my mind as I read each and every word.
Throughout the rest of the article he compares the newspaper to “… a collective work of art, a daily ‘book’ of industrial man…” (McLuhan). He draws connections from the front page of a paper to the works of Picasso, Margaret Mead, and James Joyce. When talking about the layout of the page he is connecting to the works of Picasso. There are big, bold, eye catching headlines, set between columns. Theses are followed by small articles referring to one event or another. Several of the are strewn about the page in organized chaos. Margaret Mead is used to reference the multi-cultural articles from around the world. You could read about some local even and then read about something similar in another country. The parallels between cultures can often be astounding. James Joyce is famous for is literary writing style. He has written several books in a stream-of-consciousness style. This style of writing is very disjointed. In the same way, most articles in a newspaper are often broken apart on to two or more pages. This can lead to reading portions of several articles before finding them on other pages and finishing them.
Key Terms and Main Ideas:
Discontinuity: Lack of continuity or cohesion. (Merrium-Webster)
- Used to describe the page layout of a newspaper. Many articles are represented, none of them are complete.
Solidarity: Unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards. (Merrium-Webster)
- When local, national, and global news are all presented within a newspaper, it promotes global unity through human-interest stories.
Industrial Panorama: The architecture of the space around us, in buildings, art, and media.
- The world around us is often overlooked. Taking some time to study things in our everyday lives could lead to astonishing insights.
Summary:
The Mechanical Bride describes how a modern newspaper has influenced how we interpret and present our daily news. Marshall McLuhan, the author, compares the front page of the New York Times, to abstract art. He describes how the discontinuity of the front page looks like chaos. But, the chaos is actually a well orchestrated and visual masterpiece. The newspaper displays several articles, from all over the world, in a glance. While these articles are rarely complete, they offer a rundown of several major events. McLuhan argues that these events, being told from around the world, lead us to a more unified human race.
McLuhan talks about how most of the population is oblivious to the impact that the layout has been on our daily lives. He tells us that unless we take the time to look around and consider the bigger picture, we will remain ignorant. “This inside point of view would coincide with the practical point of view of the man who would rather eat the turtle than admire the design on its back. The same man would rather dunk himself in the newspaper than have any esthetic or intellectual grasp of its character and meaning.” (McLuhan)
Cranial Notations 