Editing Marshall McLuhan (section)

=== ''The Mechanical Bride'' (1951) ===
{{Main|The Mechanical Bride}}
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McLuhan's first book, ''[[The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man]]'' (1951), is a pioneering study in the field now known as popular culture. In the book, McLuhan turns his attention to analysing and commenting on numerous examples of persuasion in contemporary popular culture. This followed naturally from his earlier work as both [[dialectic]] and rhetoric in the classical trivium aimed at [[persuasion]]. At this point, his focus shifted dramatically, turning inward to study the influence of [[mass media|communication media]] independent of their content. His famous [[aphorism]] "[[the medium is the message]]" (elaborated in his ''[[Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man]]'', 1964) calls attention to this intrinsic effect of communications media.{{efn|The phrase "the medium is the message" may be better understood in light of [[Bernard Lonergan]]'s further articulation of related ideas: at the empirical level of [[consciousness]], the medium is the message, whereas at the intelligent and rational levels of consciousness, the content is the message. This sentence uses Lonergan's terminology from ''Insight: A Study of Human Understanding'' to clarify the meaning of McLuhan's statement that "the medium is the message"; McLuhan read this when it was first published in 1957 and found "much sense" in it—in his letter of September 21, 1957, to his former student and friend, [[Walter J. Ong]], McLuhan says, "Find much sense in Bern. Lonergan's ''Insight''".{{sfn|M. McLuhan|1987|p=251}} Lonergan's ''Insight'' is an extended guide to "making the inward turn": attending ever more carefully to one's own consciousness, reflecting on it ever more carefully, and monitoring one's articulations ever more carefully.  When McLuhan declares that he is more interested in [[percept]]s than [[concept]]s, he is declaring in effect that he is more interested in what Lonergan refers to as the empirical level of consciousness than in what Lonergan refers to as the intelligent level of consciousness in which concepts are formed, which Lonergan distinguishes from the rational level of consciousness in which the adequacy of concepts and of predications is adjudicated. This inward turn to attending to percepts and to the cultural conditioning of the empirical level of consciousness through the effect of communication media sets him apart from more outward-oriented studies of sociological influences and the outward presentation of self carried out by [[George Herbert Mead]], [[Erving Goffman]], [[Peter L. Berger|Berger]] and [[Thomas Luckmann|Luckmann]], [[Kenneth Burke]], Hugh Duncan, and others.}}

His interest in the critical study of popular culture was influenced by the 1933 book ''Culture and Environment'' by [[F. R. Leavis]] and [[Denis Thompson|Denys Thompson]], and the title ''The Mechanical Bride'' is derived from a piece by the [[Dada]]ist artist [[Marcel Duchamp]].

''The Mechanical Bride'' is composed of 59 short essays<ref>{{Cite web |last=Marcus |first=Greil |date=2012-09-01 |title=TWENTIETH-CENTURY VOX: MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND THE MECHANICAL BRIDE |url=https://www.artforum.com/features/twentieth-century-vox-marshall-mcluhan-and-the-mechanical-bride-200824/ |access-date=2024-04-11 |website=Artforum |language=en-US}}</ref> that may 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 [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] considerations as well as on the implications behind the imagery and text. McLuhan chose these ads and articles not only to draw attention to their [[Symbolic communication|symbolism]], as well as their implications for the [[Corporation|corporate entities]] who created and disseminated them, but also to mull over what such advertising implies about the wider society at which it is aimed. Roland Barthes's essays 1957 ''[[Mythologies]]'', echoes McLuhan's ''Mechanical Bride'', as a series of exhibits of popular mass culture (like advertisements, newspaper articles and photographs) that are analyzed in a [[semiology|semiological]] way.<ref>Gary Genosko (2002) [https://books.google.com/books?id=LquEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24 McLuhan and Baudrillard: Masters of Implosion], p.24</ref><ref>Curtis, J. M. (1972). ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/302057 Marshall McLuhan and French Structuralism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210425084628/https://www.jstor.org/stable/302057 |date=2021-04-25 }}''. Boundary 2, 134-146.</ref>