FILM: McLUHAN'S WAKE IS AWAKE
by Gerry Fialka
McLUHAN'S WAKE is a new documentary by
Kevin McMahon on Marshall McLuhan, one of the most provocative thinkers and
poets of the information revolution.
The 94 minute film weaves all forms of media
together to construct a visually dazzling, structurally innovative and
profoundly poetic portrait of this consummate author. Grounded in McLuhan's
illuminating Laws of Media (the Tetrad), the film leaves us with a mosaic of
ideas and images. Narrated by Laurie Anderson and supported by thought-provoking
commentary from non-failed McLuhanites like authors Edmund Carpenter (THEY
BECAME WHAT THEY BEHELD) and Frank Zingrone (MEDIA SYMPLEX), McMahon features an
animated reenactment of Edgar Allen Poe's A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. This
illustrates McLuhan's emphasis that we must study the effects of what we invent;
study the "vortices created by our media" and learn how to escape their deadly
effects.
"What haven't you noticed
lately?" McLuhan's endless array of probes continues to enlighten us. "I don't
explain, I explore." By applying Tetrad management, one can acquire
pattern recognition and view the big picture (comprehensive awareness). We CAN
observe the real effects of invisible causes: what media do, not what they say.
McLuhan stressed the importance of pertinent observations on what media is doing
to us. He liked Pascal's quote: "One does not show his greatness by being at one
extreme, but in touching both extremes at once, and in filling in all the
intermediate space." Look around to see what's happening and
why!
McLuhan proclaimed in Newsweek
(Feb 28, 1966): "FINNEGANS WAKE is the greatest guidebook to media study ever
fashioned by man." Its author, James Joyce discovered "that all social changes
are the effect of new technologies (self-amputations of our own being) on the
order of our sensory lives. It is the shift in this order, altering the images
that we make of ourselves and our world, that guarantees that every major
technical innovation will so distrub our inner lives that wars necessarily
result as misbegotten efforts to recover the old images." Since October of 1995,
the MARSHALL McLUHAN-FINNEGANS WAKE READING CLUB (web: jesgrew.org/wake) meets
on the first Monday of each month (6-8pm) at the Venice Public Library (info
310-306-7330). Of the 53 WAKE groups worldwide, this is the first and only one
that blends McLuhan and the WAKE. So it is quite appropriate this new film is
called McLUHAN'S WAKE and the LA premiere takes place in our community.
Coincidence or syncronicity? Marshall called this kind of occurance "complex
clairvoyance."
McLUHAN'S
WAKE screens at 9:00pm on December 7 at Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third
St Promenade in Santa Monica, 310-393-2923, free admission, as part of the
series DOCUMENTAL. The 7:00pm show that evening will include:
INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME - Lynne Sach's 45 minute experimental documentary
portrait of the Catonsville Nine war resisters (including the still active
Berrigan brothers), the disparate band of resisters who chose to break the law
in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience. "This film provides a potent
reminder that some Americans are willing to pay a heavy price to promote
peace."- Baltimore City Paper.
Also Gordon Winiemko's ART STRIKE'S
BACK - in the summer of 2000, San Francisco artists, faced with a de facto
"strike" brought on by the rising rents and rampant development accompanying the
ersatz "new economy," decided to strike back. This colorful 12 minute short
chronicles the ensuing dance, theater, music and mayhem that took place on the
streets of one of culture's last and most endangered strongholds, The Mission
district in San Francisco.
Posted: Fri - November 1, 2002 at 06:32 PM