The Video McLuhan is an adroitly edited, six-video collection of Marshall McLuhan's public pronouncements, entertainingly anchored by Tom Wolfe. McLuhan was a fabulous trickster, and in these tapes his talent for putting on an audience is fully visible. Many segments are from vintage television talk shows, and it is as interesting to note the wandering pedantic, nicotine-addled style of this once-gentle genre as it is to watch McLuhan explain the disappearance of the unconscious amid choking clouds of cigarette smoke.
McLuhan is often intentionally oblivious to points his interviewers are trying to make, and we frequently find ourselves bobbing helplessly in a stream of references and definitions. Through it all, however, the professor brings a loquacious integrity to his style and his discoveries. Part of the fun is watching him resist the blandishments of various luminaries as they try to water down his message. When Tom Snyder challenges him at one point to explain why he is so hard to understand, McLuhan tells him straight out that it is because people are not accustomed to using their wits.
Wolfe vigilantly follows the shifts in McLuhan's thinking through the '60s and '70s and gives advance warning about what to look for in the interviews. Still, frequent use of the rewind button is required. McLuhan constantly changes gears, alternating between exhortations to appreciate the profound shift in human culture caused by electronic media and statements of his opposition to this shift. The tapes present an especially good portrait of McLuhan's intellectual influences: his Catholicism, his mysticism, and his strange brand of conservatism. My favorite quote: "I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change. But I am determined to understand what is happening, because I don't choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me."
The Video McLuhan is guaranteed to become a hardy perennial of media studies syllabi, and at US$595 for the series, the best place to watch it will be at the library.
##### The Video McLuhan: US$595. Video McLuhan Inc.: +1 (416) 484 6378, on the Web at www.videomcluhan.com.
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