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Topic spans: 1960 - 1980
Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message
He was a man of idioms and idiosyncrasies, deeply intelligent and a soothsayer. He had prescient knowledge of the Internet. Although educated in literature, Marshall McLuhan was known as a pop philosopher because his theories applied to mini-skirts and the twist. For his ability to keep up with the cutting edge, one colleague called him "The Runner." Critics said he destroyed literary values. Today, McLuhan's ideas are new again, applied to the electronic media that he predicted.
10 television clips
8 radio clips
Gzowski interviews McLuhan
Broadcast Date: Dec. 13, 1977
In Peter Gzowski's undergraduate days, freshmen slipped copies of Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride under dormitory doors. The fascination was with the raunchy title, says Gzowski, because the book published in 1951 was more about advertising and less about sex. Gzowski is an adoring interviewer today, having much respect for the professor who is the only academic in the world right now studying the effects of media.They speak about politics and Gzowski attempts to find out whether McLuhan failed grade six.
Gzowski interviews McLuhan
• The title of McLuhan's first book The Mechanical Bride (1951) was inspired by Marcel Duchamp's painting The Bride Striped by Her Bachelors, Even.• Marshall's younger brother Maurice McLuhan told Derrick de Kerckhove, a student and assistant of the professor's, in a 1980 CBC Radio documentary that Marshall had failed grade six.
• At the time of this clip, McLuhan remained a devout Roman Catholic, attending mass daily, though in a 1972 diary entry he wrote: "Cat-gut and cat-calls cum Gregorian. The mass gets longer, limper, lumpier."
• McLuhan converted to Catholicism in university at the age of 25 after a friend asked him why he was not in the Church.
Gzowski interviews McLuhan
Medium: Television
Program: 90 Minutes Live
Broadcast Date: Dec. 13, 1977
Guest(s): Marshall McLuhan
Host: Peter Gzowski
Duration: 6:59
Last updated:
March 5, 2008
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18 clips in this topic . page
Radio
4:09
Dec. 31, 1980
Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist who was always "on the move," has died of a stroke.
Television
11:21
March 2, 1969
Urban planning guru Jane Jacobs challenged the establishment with her ideas about cities and the economy.
Gzowski interviews McLuhan.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: March 5, 2008.
[Page consulted on Nov. 22, 2009.]