Interview by Tom Snyder, 1976

McLuhan
At the speed of light there is no sequence. Everything happens at the same instant. That's
acoustic and everything happens at once. There's no continuity, there's no connection, there's
no follow through. It's just all now. And that by the way, is the way any sport is. Sports tend to
be like that. And in terms of the new lingo, the hemispheres, it all right hemisphere. Games
are all right hemisphere because they involve the whole man and they are all participatory and
they are all uncertain. There is no continuity. It's just all like a surprise, unexpectedness and
total involvement.

Snyder
Is that okay do you think?

McLuhan
The hemisphere thing?

Snyder
Yeah, I mean the whole thing, no surprise, all spontaneity, no connection just all at one time.
Is that okay for people?

McLuhan
Well okay meaning, is it good for people?

Snyder
Yes.

McLuhan
We live in a world where everything is supposed to be one thing at a time, lineal, connected,
logical and goal oriented. So obviously for that left hemisphere world, this new right
hemisphere dominance is bad. We're now living in a world which pushes the right hemisphere
way up because it's an all at once world. The right hemisphere is an all at once simultaneous
world. So the right hemisphere, by pushing up into dominance, is making the old left
hemisphere world, which is our educational establishment, our political establishment, make
it look very foolish.

Snyder
What do you think is the most, I want to use the word effective, - that's not the right word. I'm
talking about television here. What has the greatest impact on the audience? Is television best
when it covers an event, like a space shot or the Olympics or a baseball game? Is it best when
it tries to entertain with movies at night, when it tries to inform with news programs that have
film of things that have all ready happened.

McLuhan
The advantage of coverage of sports events is they are ritualistic. The group gathered there is
participating in a ritual. Now the Olympics were even more a group ritual than the ordinary
competitive event in the ball game or a single ball game, a single event because they had a
corporate meaning. It was not just local. It was sort of a worldwide meaning. This is itself a
ritualistic participation in a large process. Television fosters and favours a world of corporate
participation in ritualistic programming. That's what I mean when I say it's a cool medium. It's
not a hot medium. A hot medium can, like the newspaper, can cover single events, very high
intensity. TV is not good at covering single events. It needs a ritual, a rhythm and a pattern.
And that’s why a lot of advertising on TV you see is too hot, too specialized, too fragmentary.
It doesn't have that ritualistic flow. But the advertisers are aware of this and they're doing a lot
to correct it. But I think that is the great secret of a thing like the Olympics. People have the
feeling of participating as a group in a great meaningful ritual. And it didn't much matter who
won. That wasn't the point. But I think TV tends to foster that type of pattern in events. Well
you might say it tends to foster patterns rather than events. I was here during the tornado or...

Snyder
Hurricane.

McLuhan
...hurricane and I was amazed at the excitement that generated in everybody, the expectancy.
And it was covered so thoroughly that it dissipated the storm itself. The coverage actually got
rid of the storm. I think that is one of the functions of news, to blow up the storm so big that
you can dissipate it by coverage. It's a way of getting rid of the pressure by coverage. But you
can actually dissipate a situation by giving it maximal coverage. It's very disappointing from
one angle, but it's survival from another.

Snyder
Now don't you get into alarming people?

McLuhan
That's done by rumours, not by coverage, hints, suggestions. But the big coverage merely
enables people to get together and enjoy the sort of a group emotion. It's like being at a ball
game, a big group emotion. But I do think that that taught me that one of the mysteries of
coverage is that it's a way of releasing tension and pressure.

Snyder
What would happen if you could shut off television for 30 days in the entire United States of
America?

McLuhan
It would be a kind of a hangover effect because it's a very addictive medium and you take it
away and people develop all the symptoms of a hangover. Very uncomfortable. It was tried,
remember a few years ago, 2 or 3 years ago they actually paid people not to watch TV for a
few months.
 
Snyder
I don't recall that but I'm sure.

McLuhan
It was in Germany and in the UK. And they discovered they had all the withdrawal symptoms
of drug addicts. And very uncomfortable. All the trauma of withdrawal symptoms. TV is a
very very involving medium and it is a form of inner trip. And so people do miss it.

Snyder
The thought just occurred to me that possibly if you turned off television there would be a lot
of who said, who would say at the end of the 30 day period, we will not permit you to turn it
back on. Do you think that could happen?

McLuhan
A great many of the teenagers have stopped watching television. They're saturated. Saturation
is a possibility. About the possibility of reneging on any future TV? I doubt it. I doubt that
except through saturation. But the TV thing is so demanding and therefore so soporific that it
requires an enormous amount of energy to participate in. You don't have that freedom of
detachment.

Snyder
We're just talking about basic television programs.

McLuhan
Yeah. But one of the effects of television is to remove people's private identity. They become
corporate peer group people just by watching. They lose interest in being individual, private
individuals. And so this is one of the hidden and perhaps insidious effects of television.

Snyder
Have you watched enough of Jimmy Carter during all the primaries to figure out why he has
been so effective with his presentations on television?

McLuhan
Oh I haven't seen a great deal. But his charisma is very simply identified. He looks like an
awful lot of other people. He looks like an all American boy. He looks like all the American
boys that ever were, which is charisma. Charisma means looking like a lot of other people. If
you just look like yourself you have no charisma. So Carter has a lot of built in charisma of
looking like a lot of other guys. Very acceptable guys.

Snyder
How helpful would you be to Mr. Carter or whomever the republicans choose, if they were to
come to you and say, "you know Mr. McLuhan, we'd like to hire you for a specified fee to
advice us on a political campaign?"

McLuhan
I could tell them when they were hotting up the image too much and phasing out that
charisma. The temptation of any campaign manager is to hot up the image until it alienates
everybody and they don't realize when they're doing it.

Snyder
How do you know when the image is getting too hot?

McLuhan
Specialized. The moment it begins to specialize and phases out the group.

Snyder
What do you mean specialize?

McLuhan
It begins to look more and more like one guy. It begins to look more and more like Jimmy
Carter and less and less like the rest of America.

Snyder
Forgive my impertinence, but has anybody asked you why you are sometimes difficult to
understand?
McLuhan
Because I use the right hemisphere when they're trying to use the left hemisphere.

Snyder
Okay well.

McLuhan
Simple. You see, when, ordinary people are trained to try to follow you and to connect
everything you say with what they last heard, they're not prepared to use their wits. They're
only prepared to use the idea they picked the first time and try to connect it to another idea. So
if you're in a situation that is flexible, where you have to use you're wits and perceptions, they
can't follow you. They have preconceptions that phase them out at once. You see that's left
hemisphere. But I use the right hemisphere a great deal which is a world of perception, not
concepts.

Snyder
Got you, got you. And you don't try to connect, you just let the right hemisphere take over and
let it go.

McLuhan
And watch what's happening. So that is the way it is where you don't know what's going to
happen but you follow the crumble.

[end]