McLuhan prints a really old advertisement then gives his opinions on it on the same or opposite page. The ads are hideous, the opinions trite, and the book worthless.

McLuhan admits in the preface that he is not doing art criticism but rather politics dressed up as art criticism. So not only is he misusing art but he is doing what he accuses mass media of doing - trying to force his opinions on others under the disguise of them being what the others want.

No. No thank you, we are fine thanks and do not need your wares.

As I was reading this book one thought accompanied me throughout reading almost all of it: was this really published 1951? The author's ability to unravel the mysteries of the human psyche in our modern time was truly amazing!
Highly recommended!

In interesting contrast to McLuhan's later works which often seem more relevant now than in his own day, this, his first book, is firmly rooted in its time. The ideas McLuhan would become famous for are undeveloped or at least unexplored in this volume and instead what we have here is a collection of essays, reviews, articles, all over the place and all examining pieces of advertising and pop culture with a style emulating the same and blending in with the newspaper articles and commercials so that it is easy to get lost between McLuhan and newspaper articles and ads, all being relics of the past in their own way. It is a very interesting book, but for often the precisely opposite reasons than McLuhan's other works and it is surprisingly difficult to read for the very same reason it was probably easy to read and a hit in its own day.

"The Vanguard Press (1926–1988) was a United States publishing house established with a $100,000 grant from the left wing American Fund for Public Service, better known as the Garland Fund."
Self-explanatory. Don't pick up this book expecting anything less than the most painful 157 pages of wretched, petulant leftist claptrap you'd find outside of a community college. Honestly delivered more of a headache than Sorrel's Reflections on Violence, which I'd consider a major accomplishment.

A frightening book about tv, radio, print and other ads, ones that change our goals, alter the neighborhood, and elect our presidents. It's impossible to measure precisely how ads affect our lives, but this book tries. Let's face it, from now until the day we die, morning, noon and night, seven days a week, we're going to be bombarded by mind numbing ads. Escaping the effects of ads is tough if not impossible. This book might make you think more about it. That's a good start.

among the best of the mechanical ladies what got married books I ever did read.

McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride is dated yet fascinating due to the media McLuhan preserves in this book's pages. Readers approaching this to understand modern media or industrialization that manifests in folklore will likely be disappointed, but readers who approach this book from a historical perspective may find McLuhan's scattered thoughts an insightful glimpse into mid-century American suburban/cosmopolitan culture.

I understand that McLuhan isn't much read anymore. My friends in their 30s hardly even know his name, and that's a shame because much of this book is still very much on topic today. I'd read UNDERSTANDING MEDIA a couple of times back in Com school and remember, with some aggravation, trying to sort through exactly what made a medium cold or hot. I also read THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE, but without having read MECHANICAL BRIDE, I definitely missed a lot.

In this inaugural tome, McLuhan sets out his premises and goals -- mass media reflects the fundamental "folklore" of midcentury America and it is imperative on anyone who wants to understand the world to learn how to recognize not only the ostensible content of media but its deeper purposes and larger meanings. The book is a series of "exhibits" accompanied by insightful and playful analyses of the messages embodied in their form and content. Advertising is the main target but the author gets around to Superman, Humphrey Bogart, Crime Does Not Pay, and plenty of other pop culture artifacts. His focus, as the title suggests, is often on the replacement of sex with a kind of machine worship and the reduction of women to "parts" and inhuman objectification. I never realized what an influence McLuhan must have been on Pynchon's V!

Apart from the impact MM had on thought in the 50s and 60s, and his fingerprints on writers like Pynchon and Gaddis, much of what's here has passed so thoroughly into mainstream thought that it seems self-evident, and from that familiarity, I think, has grown a certain acceptance of manipulation, indifference to the message, and antipathy to the messenger.

It is hard for me to see how someone as brilliant as the author, as keen in his analyses, could ever have become a devout Catholic, since religious doctrine seems like the ultimate manipulation of opinion, but MM is also inherently conservative in many of his opinions, which may have lead to some of the backlash against his work in the 80s. The bottom line though is that the book is still thought-provoking and a lot of fun and I'm glad I happened onto a copy and picked it up.

It’s exactly what I signed up for.

3.5 stars.

This was a book of short essays about the roles media & advertising have upon our collective consciousness. McLuhan states in his preface:

The various ideas and concepts introduced in the commentaries are intended to provide positions from which to examine the exhibits. They are not conclusions in which anybody is expected to rest but are intended merely as points of departure.

and then later:

The Western world, dedicated since the sixteenth century to the increase and consolidation of the power of the state, has developed an artistic unity of effect which makes artistic criticism of that effect quite feasible.

I wonder what McLuhan would say, if he were here in 2022, about the prevalence of Federal advertising in the USA directed at taxpayers, being paid for by taxpayers. All while amassing a spending deficit near $30 trillion.

These government ads - like this one from healthcare.gov which presents viewers with a potential price tag of $0 premiums per month, avoiding the use of the word "free" because of the political implications - are every bit as exploitative of intellectual fallacies as any curative cream or lotion sold in the marketplace. If ever there was a greater warning about the potentially harmful effects of being trapped inside a mechanistic, scientific arena of social engineering brought about by monopolistic impulses run amok, I can't think of one.


McLuhan's commentaries have proved to be prophetic in many areas. What I find interesting today (based on my reading of other reviews) is the Rorschach utility of a book like this to make uncomfortable anyone who chooses to read it from a political perspective. Most choose to see a critique of "capitalism" that frankly isn't there. Others try to insinuate a "conservative" perspective about social mores that also isn't there. I suppose, a decade later, it would finally become clear that "the medium is the message."

Excellent!

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