Myth and Mass Media

Marshall McLuhan

"articulated concept of myth into the area of media" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 339)

"it is necessary o reconsider both myth and media in order do get at relevant data" (MCLUHAN,
1959, p. 339)

"...the advent of the telegraph, the telephone, moving pictures, radio, and television. These media
have a had the same kind of drastic effect on language and culture..." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 339)

"can be regarded technologically as the development of new languages" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p.

339)

"Gorgon or Cadmus myth..." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 339)

"Oral cultures are simultaneous in their modes of awareness. Today we come to the oral condition
again via the eletronic media, which abridge space an time an single-plane relationships, returning
us to the confrontation of multiple relationships at the same moment." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 339)

• language
• mass medium
• new media
• new language
• new codification of experience collectively
• collective awareness
• macromyth?
• Mythic form?

(MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 339-340)

"Languages old and new, as macromyths..." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 340)

"...new languages as movies or radio can also be considered with preliterate myths as static models
of the universe" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 340)

"languages as macromyths is to say that the medium is the message" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 340)

"...media or macromyths as the phonetic alphabet, printing, photography, the movie, the telegraph,
the telephone, radio, and television, the social action of these forms is also, in fullest sense, their
message or meaning" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 340)

Oedipus myth (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 341)

Gorgon myth (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 341)

"...the role of media in learning and knowing" (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 341)

"Eletronic culture accepts the simultaneous as a reconquest of auditory space" (MCLUHAN, 1959,
p. 341)
"...forms of Western culture... field of awareness... practically simultaneous." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p.
341)

"It is this instantaneous character of the information field today, inseparable from eletronic media,
that confers the formal auditory character on the new culture." (MCLUHAN, 1959, p. 341)