Marshall McLuhan – McLuhan’s Wake (Documentary)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: B+ Main Programs: B
Marshall
McLuhan is not well known, but his term “the media is the message” is thrown
all over the place. You might not know
who he is, but the new documentary Marshall
McLuhan – McLuhan’s Wake (2006) seeks to correct that. Joined by two shorts, one of which is like an
intellectual Music Video (with more words than music) of sorts cut from the
main program “The Descent Into The Maelstrom" - bonus short ‘animated’ film
of Edgar Allan Poe's story, the feature argues that McLuhan was a great thinker
of media and deserves to be rediscovered.
This
critic would argue that he was one of the few thinking of and talking about
media at the time and his various catchphrases that sound either contradictory,
like verbal hocus-pocus or occasionally mean something. When all is said and done, it seems many of
them were created in sincerity and are not from idiot pseudo-intellectual
posers trying to confuse and manipulate someone, coming out of an era where
intelligence, progress and brightness mattered.
Some seem naïve and quaint, others unrealistic, but there is a reason he
is not widely quoted or known and that is because there are limits to his
catchphrases.
More
importantly, his ideas have never entered either the intelligent school of
thought on science fiction, futurists or political discourse, though it is a
great set of ideas that started as a niche that has become a discourse on media
studies. Again, not all are perfect and
some hold up more than others, but I think the main show could have been better
if it had avoided the swimming-pool-ocean-as-media motif done to death. That makes it a far from definitive work on
the man and his ideas, but it is a start and the stock footage is the bets of
all.
The 1.33
X 1 image has aliasing and definition issues throughout, making this more
difficult to watch on HDTVs and other large-screen outlets. It only adds to the difficulty in getting his
ideas across without them seeming smartass.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is fine, but has no surrounds and can be
too loud at times. Play with some
caution due to aural roughness. Extras
include Interactive Tetrads -
Exploring technology via McLuhan's Laws of Media, exclusive interviews with
Corinne McLuhan, Eric McLuhan, Neil Postman, Lewis Lapham, Edmund Carpenter,
Gerald O' Grady, Phillip Marchand, Frank Zingrone and Patricia Bruckmann, More
than an hour of vintage McLuhan audio clips, gallery featuring photographs of
McLuhan and some of his mind-bending aphorisms, original music soundtrack
composed by Kurt Swinghammer, Hundreds of pages of DVD-ROM PDF printable text,
including a McLuhan dossier, director's notes and original shooting script and
a study guide for McLuhan's Wake.
- Nicholas Sheffo
