Friday, July 23, 2010
Question #2
Marshall McLuhan’s idea that television is a “cool medium” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The idea that television demands viewers fill in detail seems opposite to what is intuitive. It seems to me that if consumers of media are filling in detail anywhere, television would be the least likely of these mediums. Just think of every time you have listened to the radio. Don’t you imagine what the host looks like? Often, I will see a billboard for a radio personality I’ve listened to for awhile and be stunned that they look so different from the person I have created in my head. The mind also must fill in detail when listening to a sporting event, rather than watching it. The mind is working harder to create the visual that radio does not provide, but television does. And this isn’t true just for radio. In fact I often have a visual in my head of what all my fellow student bloggers look and sound like while perusing their entries
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Hi thelittletomatoe,
ReplyDeleteI am also having difficulty understanding how television is a “cool medium,” according to McLuhan. I actually just read through all of our classmates’ blogs in search of understanding and still feel lost. I agree with you that television is the most straightforward form of media that requires the viewer to fill in the least amount of details. Think about reading a book that is later turned into a motion picture. The format of the book forces the reader to engage in the story and develop an understanding of the complexities of the plot and individual characters. In the movie version everything is spoon fed to the viewer, and the effect is a lot more disengaging and unsatisfying (for me anyway). I guess this reinforces the idea that the form of the media is important, but I still don’t get the hotness/coolness theories!