The mechanical bride : folklore of industrial man

Here is the devastating book which first established Marshall McLuhan’s reputation as the foremost (and the wittiest) critic of modern mass communications. This is vintage McLuhan —so aptly illustrated by dozens of examples from ads, comic strips, columnists, etc., that those who have been stung by McLuhan have been hard put for rebuttals. Here is how sex sells industrial hardware ... how Orphan Annie keeps the world on the track ... how an Arabian Nights wonderland of mass entertainment and suggestion makes information irrelevant, and sends us all to bed at night too dazed to question whether we're happy. This brilliant and witty approach to the contemporary scene revolutionized the study of communication theory in our time. Marshall McLuhan's famous pronouncement that 'the medium is the message' is revealed, in this seminal work, by the 'media' themselves--the original advertisements; the contemporary heroes from Tarzan to Superman; the executive gimmicks of 'know how' and 'plain talk' that constitute the folklore of industrial man. Professor McLuhan's penetrating and probing approach has invaluable insights for all readers--general reader or educator, management man or creative writer--indeed, for every consumer or creator in every field. ... Long a famous 'underground' work, The mechanical bride is now obviously the book that pointed the way toward untangling the complicated web of today's communications. Cover Half title Imprint Preface Contents Front Page Nose for News The Ballet Luce The Revolution Is Intact Deep Consolation Charlie McCarthy The Sage of Waldorf Towers Freedom to Listen Book of the Hour Roast Duck with Jefferson Crime Does Not Pay Know-How Executive Ability Heading for Failure Plain Talk The Great Books Galluputians Market Research Emily Post Co-education The Poor Rich Men of Distinction How Not to Offend Lil Abner Orphan Annie Bringing Up Father Blondie The Bold Look From Top to Toe Looking Up to My Son Eye Appeal Woman in a Mirror Husband’s Choice Magic that Changes Mood The Drowned Man The Voice of the Lab Love-Goddess Assembly Line The Mechanical Bride Superman Tarzan The Corpse as Still Life From Da Vinci to Holmes First Breakfast at Home Understanding America Freedom—American Style Cokes and Cheesecake Love Novice The Law of the Jungle Education I’m Tough What It Takes to Stay In Murder the Umpire I am the Bill of Rights The Tough as Narcissus Bogart Hero Pollyanna Digest Money in Comics Corset Success Curve Horse Opera and Soap Opera The Mechanical Bride is unique and composed of a number of short essays that can be read in any order - what he styled the "mosaic approach" to writing a book. Each essay begins with a newspaper or magazine article or an advertisement, followed by McLuhan's analysis thereof. The analyses bear on aesthetic considerations as well as on the implications behind the imagery and text. McLuhan chose the ads and articles included in his book not only to draw attention to their symbolism and their implications for the corporate entities that created and disseminated them, but also to mull over what such advertising implies about the wider society at which it is aimed