Did You Know Marshall McLuhan was in Annie Hall?
Marshall McLuhan. There is such melody in that name. The media message man who wrote the mantra “the medium is the message.” Or, as McLuhan liked to phrase it, “the mess age”, “the mass age,” and the “massage?” Wow… just... such genius. It’s no surprise that McLuhan has appeared extensively in all three of the MCC Core Requirement classes. I mean, the man just had such a way with words and so many ideas! Ideas that were either so general they could apply to all mediums throughout time, or so specific that they are no longer relevant today. These ideas have elevated McLuhan to higher status. Some might even argue that Herbert Marshall McLuhan is like a movie star! (That’s right, in true celebrity fashion, he dropped his bland first name to sound cooler.)
But there is one thing above all his genius ideas, books, theories, and practices, that really elevates MM to a higher, super-cool-guy level. I’m talking the pinnacle of his career, and that is: a cameo. Yeah, like that thing Stan Lee did for every Marvel movie these past ten years (RIP Stan). So you could say that McLuhan actually was a movie star! This brief moment in cinematic history made McLuhan one of the only media scholars to attain some sort of celebrity status (or maybe it was his celebrity status that warranted a cameo). Either way, boy, do the professors at MCC love to flaunt this factoid every time McLuhan’s name gets mentioned. This little tidbit of information is just so juicy, professors would be remiss to not link their lectures to a key piece of pop culture.
The cameo in question was a surprise appearance in 1977’s Annie Hall directed by and starring Woody Allen. Did you know that?! Annie Hall? That’s, like, one of the greatest films of all time! (According to Roger Ebert and most MCC professors). The cameo is hilarious! Woody Allen’s character drags out McLuhan during a fourth-wall break only to have McLuhan bash a pompous media professor who knows nothing about his work and ideas (the irony of that context in relation to this blog post is truly rich). McLuhan promptly shuts him down like the straight-up media god he is, and this one brief appearance can truly be claimed a badass movie star moment.
Look, this post isn’t meant to bash or take McLuhan down a peg (after all, I’m an opinionated student in my twenties, and the man is literally a scholar). In fact, I think it would be pretty cool if more scholars could find a way to integrate themselves into our pop culture. That way, maybe their ideas and higher thinking could permeate into our public mind. However, I do think it is important to point out how MCC misses the point with their scholars, texts, and ideas. All three MCC Core classes I’ve taken have managed to bring up McLuhan and include this “important” highlight, but I find the classes have not taken the time to actually discuss his ideas in a clear and accurate context (Hot and cool mediums? Explain. What is the real theory? Spend more than five minutes.) We seem to brush pass these terms and ideas in favor of little pieces of trivia and history that feed a vague vision, rather than break down the specific context in which these ideas were developed (a problem I think a lot of general Core classes might face). These classes have left me feeling rather like the annoying professor in the little cameo scene, spouting a bunch of general vocab and abstractions, without any sort of idea about what the work actually means and how it applies to media and society. This applies to many of the media scholars we study, whether it is Benjamin, Lippman, Adorno & Horkheimer, or any of the others. Instead of sharing these fun facts or cool stories, please teach me how these ideas flow into a context that I can understand. Then maybe I’ll understand why people like McLuhan truly have the authority and celebrity to make these kind of fun appearances.
