McLuhan's Wake

This documentary was about as inaccessible as understanding his philosophy. I am actually in the process of studying The Medium is the Message for another Gallatin class. The documentary we watched in class was a bit hard to understand or follow, but McLuhan apparently wouldn’t care what the message was, because his whole theory is that the medium (the documentary) was the message.

The content of the documentary is another topic though. I really liked all the water imagery, especially in the beginning with the quote from James Joyce. I also enjoyed the whirlpool analogy. I think I would have to see it a few more times to fully understand it, but I liked the animation and it was entertaining. There was a lot of shots of society, and without a previous understanding of McLuhan, the documentary is hard to understand. One of his major points is that the message of the medium is the change of social structure. Perhaps this is showing what the culmination of all the medium’s has created.