Medium is the Message

“The Medium is the Message.”  If you want to start a fight among a group of scholars, start by quoting Marshall McLuhan, the 20^th century Canadian scholar of media[1].  His most commonly remembered observation, the quote at the start of this paragraph, has far more interpretations than the number words it contains.  There are partisans who believe it to be the most profound statements about communications that has ever been made. There is a second crowd, equally ardent in its beliefs, that claim it is balderdash.  

The exact truth of the statement is not for us to judge.  We will merely accept that it suggests a connection between the way a mode of communications is organized and at least some of the ideas that it presents.  The general truth of this interpretation can be seen in relatively quick look at several forms of communication.  

Consider, for example, the American education system (or indeed the educational system of any industrialized nation.). While this system teaches many lessons that are independent of its structure, such as algebra, the conjugation of the verb “to be” and the date of the Gettysburg Address, it also teaches the fundamental lessons of mass production through its very structure.  

The educational system is an institution of mass production.  It is designed to impart a common body of knowledge to the largest possible number of students at the least possible cost.  To do this, it divides its product, the students, into uniform rules by age and skill.  It uses fixed rules for advancement, utilizes standardized materials categorized by standardized subjects, and has fixed procedures for operating during the day.  Furthermore, it employs industrial methods of quality control that are renamed “assessment”.  

It is so thoroughly seeped in this process that most of its graduates believe that it is the natural form of education, even though they also know that some of their deepest lessons were learned outside of the classroom, in unscripted ways and often serendipitously.  Ultimately, most will remember more about the structure of their education than the content.  The day they first walked into high school will be remembered with more true feeling than the Shakespearean sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.”

The theatre shares with education many of the connections to industrialism.  A theatre might produce 4 or 8 or (if it has an adequate audience) even 48 uniform presentations of a single play.  It must follow a fixed schedule, minimize costs, and generate the maximal revenue.  Its partisans claim that it is a collaborative, egalitarian activity, but a cursory examination of any theatre, large or small, reveals a division of labor as finely described by Adam Smith in “Wealth of Nations,” and as brutally enforced.  Even revolutionary theatres, such as the 1930s Group Theatre in New York, were caught in this context.  While participants may have a better change of remember the play that the theatre presented, they will also remember the organization that created the play, even if they did not observe all the details.  

The extent to which the “Medium is the Message,” is the underlying work of this blog.  It queries the extent  to which the artistic message of a theatre a reflection of its organization, its division of labor, and society in which it is embedded.  It doesn’t claim that the connection is preordained, that theatres are only conveying a message that comes from unchangeable social forces.  But it does ask if there is a new way of engaging in the performing arts that can probe ideas that are beyond the scope of our current sense of theatre.  

[1]McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, MIT Press, 1964

“The Medium is the Message.”  If you want to start a fight among a group of scholars, start by quoting Marshall McLuhan, the 20^th century Canadian scholar of media[1].  His most commonly remembered observation, the quote at the start of this paragraph, has far more interpretations than the number words it contains.  There are partisans who believe it to be the most profound statements about communications that has ever been made. There is a second crowd, equally ardent in its beliefs, that claim it is balderdash.  

The exact truth of the statement is not for us to judge.  We will merely accept that it suggests a connection between the way a mode of communications is organized and at least some of the ideas that it presents.  The general truth of this interpretation can be seen in relatively quick look at several forms of communication.  

Consider, for example, the American education system (or indeed the educational system of any industrialized nation.). While this system teaches many lessons that are independent of its structure, such as algebra, the conjugation of the verb “to be” and the date of the Gettysburg Address, it also teaches the fundamental lessons of mass production through its very structure.  

The educational system is an institution of mass production.  It is designed to impart a common body of knowledge to the largest possible number of students at the least possible cost.  To do this, it divides its product, the students, into uniform rules by age and skill.  It uses fixed rules for advancement, utilizes standardized materials categorized by standardized subjects, and has fixed procedures for operating during the day.  Furthermore, it employs industrial methods of quality control that are renamed “assessment”.  

It is so thoroughly seeped in this process that most of its graduates believe that it is the natural form of education, even though they also know that some of their deepest lessons were learned outside of the classroom, in unscripted ways and often serendipitously.  Ultimately, most will remember more about the structure of their education than the content.  The day they first walked into high school will be remembered with more true feeling than the Shakespearean sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.”

The theatre shares with education many of the connections to industrialism.  A theatre might produce 4 or 8 or (if it has an adequate audience) even 48 uniform presentations of a single play.  It must follow a fixed schedule, minimize costs, and generate the maximal revenue.  Its partisans claim that it is a collaborative, egalitarian activity, but a cursory examination of any theatre, large or small, reveals a division of labor as finely described by Adam Smith in “Wealth of Nations,” and as brutally enforced.  Even revolutionary theatres, such as the 1930s Group Theatre in New York, were caught in this context.  While participants may have a better change of remember the play that the theatre presented, they will also remember the organization that created the play, even if they did not observe all the details.  

The extent to which the “Medium is the Message,” is the underlying work of this blog.  It queries the extent  to which the artistic message of a theatre a reflection of its organization, its division of labor, and society in which it is embedded.  It doesn’t claim that the connection is preordained, that theatres are only conveying a message that comes from unchangeable social forces.  But it does ask if there is a new way of engaging in the performing arts that can probe ideas that are beyond the scope of our current sense of theatre.  

[1]McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, MIT Press, 1964