Hot and cold running media
The medium is the message?
The message is the medium?
The medium is the massage?
Massage is the message?
THE HUMANITIES JOURNAL
™ & All Rights reserved 1986
Publications Inc.
That newspaper spoke too slowly for you. The editorials gave all the facts in one, two, three order. You want to immerse yourself in a picture flickering on the blue screen instead.
Too hot to handle? You put the newspaper down on the table and wander over to the cool tube.
Print is "hot" and television is "cool," says Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media.
When Americans watch the "cool" television set they can actively involve
their whole personality in the event they are watching. A chance for maximum participation in the events of the day, he says.
But when the citizen reads "hot" print, the thinking has already been done for him. If he makes a response, it is a secondary reaction, not a direct involvement in the action.
When he views the "cool" television image,he is right in the thick of it. He lies on his beige carpet,a can of beer in his hand,with the blinking blue of
his television screen six feet from his face. Richard Nixon is talking to him. Judge Hoffman is talking to him. Senator Harris is talking to him.
The voter then makes a primary response. He puts down his beer can, mulls over the events and words he has just experienced, and says, "Nixon should speed up the war," or "Those hippies are nothing but dumb kids," or "Let's have peace now!" He doesn't have to lean on the gentle guidance of the editorial writers of the Kansas City Star or the University Daily Kansan.
Joe McGinniss' book on the Nixon campaign reflects this sort of media-view—the man who has mastered the television media can grab the emotions of 60 million voters at the same time. James J. Kirkpatrick wondered this week in his syndicated column if TV alone could elect a political candidate, merely because of his sophistication in dealing with television techniques.
Is this "television supremacy" view of the media an adequate representation?
Certainly, television is the best way to reach certain segments of the voting population. In many homes where newspapers are used only to kindle fires in the wood stove, the flickering vintage TV set in the corner is the focus of life. Homes of tin and cardboard often stagger under television antennas. The crumbling brownstone walk-up apartments in Detroit, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and other large cities, sprout forests of antennas.
"The poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" don't read the editorial columns of newspapers, but they watch television.
Speaking about newspapers, Nelson W. Polsby and Aaron B. Wildavsky contend in Presidential Elections that the press is not even trying to be partisan any more. Political controversy "tends to make enemies rather than
friends" and is believed to be "bad for business," so the newspapers play down editorial opinion. Newspapers today are "bland," they charge. The only function of the press is to inform the electorate, and to reinforce opinions already held by the readers.
Communications experts and newsmen are surrendering to television. They say that people don't respond to a printed discussion of ideas the way they used to. Tom Paine time is over. No longer will large numbers of persons debate and argue and create action over a printed tract such as they did over Paine's Common Sense.
The times have changed too much for modern editorial writers to play at being Tom Paine, say critics of the press. Living in the world of the 1960's is like working a pinball machine. There's no time for debate and analysis and the writing of opinions about the situation. You've got to shove those levers fast if you want to make points.
There is little time for policies and platforms. Conditions change. Basic premises disappear. Foundations for action crumble each time a news event occurs. The voting bloc is disappearing. Instead, each voter acts independently, in direct response to his experiences, including television viewing, instead of responding to what he reads in the newspapers.
So this page you're reading is obsolete. And because you are responding to what appears in these linear, sequential lines of type, your mind is also a relic from an earlier age. And I, the author, am functioning in an archaic tradition.
Victory in defeat
It's getting awfully "hot." Yet I hesitate to turn on the television set and "cool" off.
I may be obsolete, but I'm enjoying myself.
Joanna K. Wiebe
15y HOWARD PANKRATZ
Kansan Staff Writer
As the train neared every village, one or two of the soldiers in the milling crowd in the corridor would peer out the open window. After three years in a hell-hole called Algeria, a familiar church on top of a gentle rise in the rolling French countryside or a country lane with its hedge row would induce excited cries of recognition and sometimes tears to the eyes of the young soldiers from the region.
As the train continued to slow, the soldiers would break into a sad and moving song, a farewell to a comrade they'd probably never see again and a soldier France would never call back to duty.
The young soldiers would jump from the passenger cars and walk bashfully toward their parents—normally older peasant couples—and embrace them. Then, as the train began to move, they would dash toward the extended arms of their mates and grasp them and shout their final good-byes.
France had been defeated in Algeria; a defeat to the extent that Charles de Gaulle, driven by the thought France had suffered enough in a war that sapped France's money and morale, had recalled the troops. France was dissembling her armies and the boys were coming home.
To an observer, what was sad was
the fact that the waiting crowds contained few wives or girls for these men to return to. In the spring of 1961, to the men that had survived Algeria, "where have all the young girls gone" could well have been the theme. To the village boy, his three years in the service of his country had cost him the chance to win his village love.
By the time the gendarme-guarded streets of Paris were reached, hardly a soldier remained and the two or three that did disembark were not met by anyone. With duffel bags over their shoulders, they made their way through the cavernous station in the early evening chill and hailed a taxi. For them, and for France, the war was over and the final curtain to France's long colonial history was quietly closed.
Charles de Gaulle was a man who believed in the greatness of France and what France could achieve. To the patriotic Frenchman, this World War II leader seemed like the last person in the world who would order withdrawal from Algeria.
From one of the world's proudest men and one of the best strategists of World War II, the United States could learn much if it would heed what this man taught the French people about pride and the Oriental concept, very prevalent in this country, of saving face.
But De Gaulle knew what alied France, what made her economy sluggish and her people dispirited and indifferent. It was a war without moral justification and a war against a people determined to win their independence. To achieve a better country, a country with pride in itself and a country which would become a force to be reckoned with in Europe, the French President ordered the troops home.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Courageous could be the only word to describe that order. It was commonly assumed that most Frenchmen supported the French settlers—the French families who had been in Algeria for over 100 years—and the French generals fighting the war. When the order came, an assassination attempt and a revolt—resulting in a terrible massacre in Algiers—would be the French President's initial reward.
Americans in Paris would stay in close contact with the American embassy and would come within hours of being evacuated. To those of us living on the fringes of the Bois de Bologne,
Paris' huge park, there was little doubt that any invading paratroopers would land in the vicinity for a final thrust at the heart of the capital.
But De Gaulle was tough. He dispatched hardened troops, personally loyal to him, to Algiers; and the French generals surrendered. In only a matter of months, the troops would be coming home, France would begin to prosper and the French people, after their initial outburst, would find themselves happier than they had been in years.
It is not an easy lesson for proud nations to learn: to learn they are unwanted and unappreciated in some parts of the world, and that a war, despite their tremendous resources and manpower, can strangle their very soul. It took a proud patriotic Frenchman, a Frenchman whose patriotism and military genius couldn't be denied, to show France that her policies were bankrupt.
Let us hope that as a nation we can learn this same lesson quickly.
GRIFF AND THE UNICORN
Griff & the Unicorn, Copyright, 1969,
University Daily Kansan.