Thoughts for the Brain - Sherlock

Apropos of nothing, except perhaps finding out the new series of Sherlock goes into production next month I decided to scan various online theories about the Final Problem, the Reichenbach Fall and how Sherlock escaped death. It also helps because it means after this little blurb comes a list… great.

The mechanics of Sherlock’s faked fall are still unclear, but there is a wonderful section in the middle of this post, which very convincingly unpicks the Final Problem and the origins of Jim Moriarty. It’s not spoiling much (because it’s really excellent detail) to say the headline is Jim Moriarty is the fake identity while Richard Brook is real. It also explains why Moriarty/Brook, a man with very high self-regard, ends up committing suicide on St Bart’s roof.

It’s worth emphasising that show like Sherlock would not have been made 15-20 years ago. It is a product of internet culture, the now instant pooling of popular expertise, and the DVD. Sherlock rewards repeated, detailed viewing and lateral thinking. Video cassettes could not offer the same level of viewer scrutiny. In McLuhanite terms, Sherlock is the medium of television warming up (we are talking here of the dialogue and visual tableau), changing from broad effect to fine detail. Nothing can be taken simply as random. The narrative however cools everything down. We see at the end Sherlock died yet is clearly alive (Schrodinger’s Detective).

The audience is invited to peer deeply at the detail of the show, the norm under modern mass culture, yet is compelled to fill in key narrative details as the story is left unexplained. In a whimsical way it is an example of the mass critical intellectualism engendered by capitalist culture. Whether they write about Sherlock or Doctor Who or David Bowie  or whatever, people are out there examining whole topics, illuminating subjects and doing it for free. The barriers between manual and intellectual labour have long since been removed. There is one enormous obstacle left, namely private property.

  

1. There are two SherlocksWe were all a bit confused when that little girl went mental upon seeing Sherlock in Sunday’s finale. Some people are suggesting that she was actually one of Moriarty’s youngest employees, or that she had been threatened with dire consequences like the jury before her, but some of you are convinced that Sherlock has a doppelganger. The fact that this lookalike apparently co-operated with Moriarty’s plans makes him even more of a mystery, yet it is possible that Holmes talked him round and persuaded him to commit suicide on his behalf.
Likelihood – 2/10 

2. A Sherlock Mask on Moriarty’s Body.
This theory fits in nicely with the idea that the name Rich Brook (Moriarty’s alias) is loosely German for Reichenback and as such the title of the episode falls into place, yet there are plenty of unanswered questions. Most theories hold the delay between Dr Watson seeing Sherlock fall and him reaching the body as crucial, but this one utilises the gap between the point when the Napoleon of crime shot himself and Watson arrived upon the scene. The bus that drove past after Cumberbatch threw down his phone could have been the point when Holmes pushed his dead adversary over in his place, yet it doesn’t explain why the person falling seemed to be alive on the way down.This theory fits in nicely with the idea that the name Rich Brook (Moriarty’s alias) is loosely German for Reichenback and as such the title of the episode falls into place, yet there are plenty of unanswered questions. Most theories hold the delay between Dr Watson seeing Sherlock fall and him reaching the body as crucial, but this one utilises the gap between the point when the Napoleon of crime shot himself and Watson arrived upon the scene. The bus that drove past after Cumberbatch threw down his phone could have been the point when Holmes pushed his dead adversary over in his place, yet it doesn’t explain why the person falling seemed to be alive on the way down.
Likelihood – 5/10 

3. Mycroft Was In On It
Mycroft Holmes is certainly a cold fish, but we thought the reaction to his brother’s demise was dislocated even by his standards. He even looked a bit bored during the scene in which he read about Sherlock’s death in the newspaper. If you also consider the way he completely sold his brother out to his most deadly enemy, something doesn’t quite fit. Maybe Sherlock realised that his death would be inevitable as the scandal rose and enlisted Mycroft to help him out by planting an idea in Moriarty’s mind. But what? And how?Mycroft Holmes is certainly a cold fish, but we thought the reaction to his brother’s demise was dislocated even by his standards. He even looked a bit bored during the scene in which he read about Sherlock’s death in the newspaper. If you also consider the way he completely sold his brother out to his most deadly enemy, something doesn’t quite fit. Maybe Sherlock realised that his death would be inevitable as the scandal rose and enlisted Mycroft to help him out by planting an idea in Moriarty’s mind. But what? And how?
Likelihood – 7/10

4. MollyBy far the most popular theory is that the often-sidelined Molly helped Sherlock fake his own death. There are two cast iron pieces of evidence for this. First of all, she had a stack of corpses at her disposal and could have fixed any autopsy. Secondly, Sherlock called her back and told her that she was important just before his death. The second part of that conversation should explain everything when it’s revealed. Also she fancied his pants off and would have done anything for him. That’s actually four reasons now we think about it..
Likelihood – 9/10 

5. Sherlock was the bloke on the bike.How exactly this would work is unclear, but a large proportion of the internet community are determined that Holmes was actually the bloke on the bike who bumped into Watson, delaying him from getting to the body. The question of how he got down from the roof break-neck speed (you know what we mean) is another puzzler. Hmm..
Likelihood – 2/10 

6. Dummy from their roomIf you watch the episode again, there are countless references that appear for mere seconds, but could be crucial in the final mystery and one such prop is the mannequin hanging from a noose in Sherlock’s flat. When you remember that it was Holmes who suggested that he and Moriarty meet on the roof of St Barts, it becomes clear that he could have prepared the location in advance with all manner of tools to kid us. Much is also being made of the rubbish truck which was seen hanging around just before his fall and the fact that Sherlock wanted Doctor Watson to “stay exactly where he was!” Obviously his location was vital if he was to believe that Holmes was dead. Maybe Sherlock dropped into the rubbish truck as the bus passed and then Watson saw the dummy falling. Sherlock then swapped places with the dummy as the bike hit Watson. Yet if Sherlock jumped before the dummy – who pushed it off the roof?
Likelihood – 6/10

7. All people on the pavement – including cyclist – were Sherlock’s peopleIf any body-swap/de-masking/dummy-replacement took place then Holmes would almost certainly have needed help from those pedestrians, who could have aided him while delaying Watson from getting to the scene. Why would he trust a load of people and not Dr Watson though? Possibly because he knew that if the Doctor believed him dead then everyone else would as well. Some boffins have also pointed to the squash ball that Homes was playing with and suggested that he could have used the ‘Squash ball in the Armpit’ trick to disguise his pulse from Watson. Points for cleverness.
Likelihood – 7/10 

8. Baskerville Drug administered to WatsonThis theory suggests that Holmes administered the drug from the previous episode to Watson and put the idea of him killing himself in his head. As such Watson was hallucinating when he saw Sherlock fall. Plausible, but it doesn’t take into account the fact that Moffat, Gattiss & Co would consider it the height of laziness to use the same ploy in two separate episodes. For that reason, probably a non-starter.
Likelihood – 1/10 

9. ScotomaScotoma essentially refers to the power of suggestion and the affect it can have over what a person thinks they have seen. Related to the previous theory, many have suggested that when the Beeb give us the big reveal in 2013, it will actually transpire that someone completely different was standing on top of St Barts and we mis-saw him. There are two ways of doing this; with skillful filming and clever editing or by simply showing us the correct thing and then telling us we were mistaken at a later date.
Likelihood – 6/10 

10. Moriarty Is Not DeadWe really hope this one’s true – how good was Andrew Scott? Anyone who has read the books will know that the idea of one of Holmes or Moriarty striking such a winning blow (ie. killing the other) was unlikely to happen, as Conan-Doyle emphasised how closely matched they were. Essentially they were both struggling for an edge, so if Holmes can return from beyond the grave, why not his arch-enemy?
Likelihood – 5/10

I like the cut of Roobin's jib

Especially the Marxist appreciation of Marshal McLuhan. Top notch stuff!

Get on t'internet...

“Comrades need to stop complaining on the internet and bring their concerns to branch meetings”. I paraphrase, but variations on this canard are repeated quite often, sometimes with an addendum along the lines of, “we need to engage with the real world”.

We do need to engage with the real world but moral injunctions about branch meetings are just the opposite of such engagement. Revolutionary socialists advocate direct discussion and open voting against closed meetings and secret ballots, but this fine, hard won principle is not being applied intelligently.

Any medium is by definition is exclusive. You’re either online or not. You can either attend a meeting or you can’t. There are plenty of reasons why someone might not be able to make regular meetings on a Wednesday or Thursday night, too many to list. It certainly doesn’t make you lazy or devious or your opinions invalid. It can equally be said that electronic communication provides an invaluable resource for people not able to meet face to face. In fact it allows a far greater pooling of experience and information than a geographical branch.

But there’s more to it than this. There is an unacknowledged bias that has been hardened by the misapplication of the idea of direct democracy. Why does a branch meeting count as the real world (when quite often it’s a group of ardent left-wingers agreeing with each other then arranging a paper sale) when online discussion does not?

It is, in part, a residual prejudice of 20^thCentury thought. Using McLuhanite terms, under print media the written word is dissociated and cool, whereas the spoken word is involved and hot. The written word had elevated status because it was recorded, for all time.

Thanks to electronic media the written word can unfold as fast as spoken conversation. There is no going back to the old ways of thinking. The internet not only has an idiom of its own (idiom being a sure sign of intense involvement not cool dissociation) but is affecting language and communication in general.

The party must come to understand electronic media and incorporate them as part of a democratic mix, including print media and public meetings, or it will become irrelevant, and all for the sake of principles transformed into shibboleths. To put it another way, if you don’t like what people are saying online don’t hide away in your branch meetings, get out into the real world, get online.

A note: McLuhan on Marx

All public philosophers have an attitude toward Karl Marx. Ring-wingers regard him as a significant opponent. Lefties (many lefties, though of course not all) on the other hand need to correct him in order to justify the rows of trees felled to propagate their new and vital theories. 


McLuhan was no exception. Two points:


He regularly observed that the United States achieved communism before any of the Eastern Bloc. By this he meant democracy and material plenty. We can easily point out the problems with this idea in hindsight but this was a common opinion in the 50s and 60s. For example, Labour MP Anthony Crosland's famous pamphlet, The Future of Socialism, which suggested:

The characteristic features of capitalism have disappeared - the absolute rule of private property, the subjection of all life to market influences, the domination of the profit motive, the neutrality of government, typical laissez-faire division of income and the ideology of individual rights.

It remained for socialists to worry about better cafes, late licensing, more theatres, etc... cultural matters. 


But we must mention, firstly, capitalism's second belle epoque was not beautiful for everybody. From anti-colonial struggles to the civil rights movement, plenty of people had to fight to be included in the good times. The second point is these good times were not bound to last, capitalism is a dynamic system, it's drive to competitive accumulation upsets the most stable and benign social relations: we know that.


Another significant observation of Marx, from Understanding Media was that Marx's focus on the machine, which fragments the work process, was undermined by electricity and automation, which reintegrates those fragments. Of course, Marx did not study the machine but the capital-labour relation. Media have no extra significance outside of class society. Steam power existed since the time of Anciemt Greece, but no one needed labour saving devices until labour had to be bought on the market.

More thoughts for the brain...

Marshall McLuhan noted that teeangers use(d) the radio to create a wall of sound, allowing them privacy, vital and prized at their stage of development. The modern urban working class in Britain faces long commutes on public transport, especially in London and especially this summer. As digital sound devices have become cheaper and more portable, more and more commuters have resorted to using them while they travel. It creates the same effect. The commuter is sealed off, aurally at least, from the rest of the world. Notes:

1) There is no such thing as music for music's sake, all music is ambience or soundtrack.
2) This is another expression of alienation. You cannot get more insulated from the world, millions of people together alone, short of people travelling to work in a personal plastic bubble.
3) This bodes ill for democracy, however one might define it. Cities are the home of democracy. Democracy relies on large-scale interchange of people, items, ideas, languages, religions, races. In dealing with the shock to the system delivered by late capitalism on a purely personal level, people are shutting down an aspect of themselves and of their society that makes it liveable and enjoyable. Without conscious intervention this process is self-reinforcing. Have you ever tried petitioning a tired worker with a headset on and eight hours of work ahead of them?

Newspapers as ambient prose

Ambient music is music that rewards attention but does not demand it. In fanciful moments I have wondered whether there is such a thing as ambient prose. I think there is. For no good reason I have been watching people read on the bus to work (carefully, mind you), in particular the speed with which they get through a magazine or newspaper. Not long ago I saw a man get from the front to the back of the Metro in (by my reckoning) under two minutes.

This is a function of mass literacy combined with a lack of an outlet for it. The printed word is a hot medium, requiring attention and patience, encouraging detached and sequential logic. This clearly does not mesh with the reality of life for half-sleeply Londoners on their way to work. There is a problem if newspapers are experienced not as a collection of stories supported by facts but a series of flickering impressions, over in two minutes.

Newspapers were born of bourgeois culture, between the town cryer and the radio station. The medium is shaped by the needs and prejudices of the bourgeoisie (who, amongst other things, have ample time to sit and read). The existence of a socialist newspaper is an example of the working class beginning to master bourgeois culture.

If newspapers cannot fulfil what's considered to be their function, bringing current affairs to the general population, it's time they were replaced (along with the social relations that gave rise to them). Of course that's easier said than done.

More about icons

There are two types of fear abroad in our capitalist democracy, fear regarding the control of information and the resulting manipulation of public opinion. First is that the rigid, hierarchical structure of the mass media means results in information being tightly controlled, the meaning of events strictly determined from above. The second fear is that people are swamped by information, meaning is only broadly defined, the mass of people are allowed, nae, positively encouraged to indulge in fantasy and counter-logic (you can prove anything with facts...).

It doesn't take too much braingrind to realise these two modes of manipulation are closely related, in practice they are intertwined. Rigid control of information is reinforced by exaggeration and fantasy. Fox News is Exhibit A in this case; it turns out no news is better than Fox News.

It's important to recognise neither of these modes of manipulation are not more oppressive or more insidious than the other, though the former might be more obvious. The latter method is icongraphy, broad outlines within which people can determine their own meaning to some degree. Walter Benjamin called it the aestheticisation of politics, which he saw as specifically fascist.

Adolf Hitler was a case in point. Hitler the man was a particular individual, no special talents nor redeeming features; not exactly an aryan superman (not even a vegetarian). Hitler the politician was a deliberately sculpted icon. He may not have been a ruined shopkeeper, impoverished lecturer or disgruntled officer, but a great many of the petty classes, whose lives were crushed the depression, could see an aspect of them in him; one which recovered their dignity (it goes without saying at the expense of others).

Benjamin's response to the aestheicisation of politics was to call for the politicisation of art. More generally this means the continual feeding of the class point of view into each aspect of everyday life (this we take as a practical, as well as intellectual job). Rooting out the material origin of icons demystifies them. It robs them of their power.

Fantasy, abstraction and reality...

The age of electronic media has broken down linear, sequential space and, therefore, made linear, sequential thought obsolete. We live in an age of integral consciousness and to live integrally means to live mythically.

That is a rough summation of McLuhan-ism. We need not take it literally to see the value in the statement, value in terms of politics, culture and ideology. To explain:

Politics

The predicament of the bourgeois liberal outlook was summed up quite neatly by the philosopher, one F Mercury:

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.

Which is not bad, I think. The reality we directly experience is alienated and atomised, a thin sliver of the general context. Yet we cannot understand even that smaller section of reality without access to the greater context. Any attempt to build up a picture of reality piece by piece might seem oh-so objective, but is of course doomed, by the restless changes in social context if by nothing else.

We have to think in terms of archetypes, in terms of abstractions. One of Marx’s most crucial insights was establishing through his critique of political economy the existence of objective points of view within capitalism. There are the bourgeois and proletarian points of view, and there are bourgeois and proletarians with points of view. One is measured against the other, the critical renovation of consciousness described by Gramsci.

Without this abstraction, this ‘myth’, we would lose our link with the greater context; reality becomes a landslide, something which happens to us.

Art ‘n’ stuff

One of the difficulties with direct realism in art is it's partial and one-sided, or else it’s unreal. The non-ideological work is merely the most ideological. Its assumptions are taken as self-evident. Fantasy, magic-realism, elastic reality (as it’s called in The Simpsons) are much more truthful, realistic methods.

Recent interest: the fascination with vampires. Vampires are strongly associated with aristocracy. They are also associated with sexuality. This has become much more pronounced in recent pop culture. Vampires are now pretty much benign. Take Edward Cullen from the Twilight series, or Bill Compton from True Blood: they are a strange combination of potency and rigid self-denial. Pop culture is trying to work out conflicted notions of sexuality through vampirism.

True Blood is an example of elastic reality at work. It is a magical melodrama. As well as vampires it has fairies, shape-shifters, maenads and such like, existing as if normal in the modern United States. This flexible reality is also a means of talking about civil rights, particularly LGBT and ethnic minority movements. It gets to the core of such subjects, I think, much more quickly and easily through fantasy than direct realism.

Marxism and McLuhan - pt 4 challenge and collapse

Marshall McLuhan is an interesting intellectual figure. He is best remembered for his connections to the 60s counter-culture. He is considered to have coined the slogan Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. His legacy, if it is anything, is a techno-evangelism, in part an offshoot of the counter-culture (McLuhan was also the first person to use the word “surf” in its modern sense); computing will save the day the internet will broaden our minds, liberate information and the geeks shall inherit the Earth.

One very modern off-shoot of this philosophy is the argument (distraction in my opinion) over the role of social media in popular rebellion. Does the application of Twitter to 21st century society result in occupations, riots and strikes? It's certainly a more comforting conclusion than admitting people over the world are tired, poor and fed up with living under their rulers.

But McLuhan was not a member of the counter-culture. He was a professor of English Literature, a public intellectual who appeared an adverts and movies. He was a practising Catholic. He may have been friends with Timothy Leary, but he was also on close terms with people like Wyndham Lewis.

But he was an educator, an educator with a very keen sense of the crisis in education, which arose out of post-war society, its contradictions, and came to be known as the Generation Gap.

Capitalism needed an educated, skilled workforce more than ever. Educational opportunities grew. Millions of young people growing up in the core capitalist countries for the first time had the chance to go into Higher Education and so reap the rewards of a better life. At the same time the rigorous application of capitalist norms to a formerly artisan-like HE system generated conflict, conflict between the new mode of intellectual production and the relations of production. The lecturer was slowly proletarianised. The student, promised intellectual liberation, was subjected to fusty, paternal supervision and backward rules. For example: the student struggle in France 1968, which set off the great strike in May, began as a struggle over the right of male students to visit female dorms overnight.

McLuhan was a lecturer during this period of change. He experienced the shift when he began teaching. Though only a few years older than his students, he felt an insurmountable gap between him and them. The difference, he thought, was in the mode of understanding. He was steeped in the literate, sequential and disinterested mode of thought. His students were saturated by modern media and its effects. Their understanding was post-literate, non-linear and deeply involved.

He saw this as the root of the conflict, the crisis of education (and of society at large). It was this he studied. His solutions were humane, intellectual and appropriately utopian – more designed to provoke debate rather than resolve it. His answer was critical reflection, we had to understand the changes we were going through as a society in order to cope with them. Cutting edge thought, and in particular art were to lead the way.

The Marxist response is clear. Firstly, culture is ambiguous. For human history so far every document of civilisation has also been a document of barbarism. In order to have Socrates you also had to have slaves. The prevailing culture of any class society is determined by that society's ruling class, their prerogatives, their preoccupations. An obsolete way of thinking does not simply give way to critical reflection, which brings us onto the second point, Consciousness has its basis in material reality. As Marx pointed out in his Theses on Feuerbach, criticism of heaven takes place on earth.

I want to conclude with two quotes, from Challenge and Collapse, the final chapter of the opening section of Understanding Media, one which Marxists should find intriguing:

Perhaps the most obvious “closure”... of any new technology is just the demand for it. Nobody wants a motorcar until there are motorcars, and nobody is interested in TV until there are TV programmes.

This is a close relation to the Marxist observation that a society does not create problems for which it does not already have solutions. There is no solution to bad weather therefore it is not a problem. There is a solution to poor harvests, to food speculation and starvation. These things are problems. While McLuhan's solutions may be technocratic, we can accept what he is saying here. But, McLuhan continues:

The power of technology to create its own world of demand is not independent of technology being first an extension of our own bodies and senses. When we are deprived of our sense of sight, the other senses take up the role of sight in some degree. But the need to use the senses that are available is as insistent as breathing - a fact that makes sense of the urge to keep radio and TV going more or less continuously. The urge to continuous use is quite independent of the “content”of public programmes... It is ridiculous to talk of “what the public wants” played over its own nerves... Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we really don't have any rights left.

This is a vital point, that we can all agree with. However you define 'the media', broadly or narrowly, they are our mode of existence, alienated from us and used against us. We take them back under our control in order to emancipate ourselves.

Marxism and McLuhan - pt 3 from narcosis to awakening

McLuhan’s best known writing is more about aphorism and argument than precisely laid out research. This is particularly the case with the opening chapters of Understanding Media. There are two chapters, which run together smoothly, The Gadget Lover and Hybrid Energy. McLuhan begins his argument by retelling the myth of Narcissus.

The myth is generally understood as a warning against self-love, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. According to McLuhan this is not quite the intention of the story. Narcissus was transfixed by his reflected image and so became numb to all other stimuli, a closed circuit.

All media are extensions of particular human aspects; the wheel is an extension of the foot, the lever an extension of the arm, clothing an extension of the skin, and so forth. Human invention is a response to need generated by discomfort; the wheel relieves the burden of moving objects, the lever the burden of lifting them, clothes keep us from being cold (or sunburned).

Any new invention is a greater or lesser shock to human relations. A neat illustration, from Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital:

In districts where natural economy formerly prevailed, the introduction of means of transport – railways, navigation, canals – is vital for the spreading of commodity economy… The triumphant march of commodity economy thus begins in most cases with magnificent constructions of modern transport, such as railway lines which cross primeval forests and tunnel through the mountains, telegraph wires which bridge the deserts, and ocean liners which call at the most outlying ports.

The latter chapters of the Accumulation of Capital are a meditation on the various media used to establish a commodity economy in various colonies, including the medium of ballistic weaponry. Colonialism is a rather sharp example but the point stands, changes in the medium of human existence require changes in the way people relate to each other.

On an individual level the shock of change leads to numbness, what might have been disturbing to your ancestors you have to take in your stride. Imagine, for example, your journey to work. You would never get there if you had to regard every single advert trying to catch your attention. This shutting down of the senses blinds us to the effect of various media. Back to the original example, ideology; we do not recognise mainstream ideology as such. Even so the supposedly non-ideological person is in fact the most ideological.

We only recognise a medium for what it is when it is either hybridised or superseded. An example from art is the journey from painted portrait to lithograph to photograph, to moving image, to synchronised sound, to Technicolor. Each invention cried out for the following one. As each medium was superseded it was transformed, the obvious example being after the rise of photography artists began painting concepts and feelings, rather than literal objects.

Another example: we now know that novels are in fact movie scripts. Every successful novel is touted to movie producers as a sure-fire hit (that or it’s cherished as an unfilmable novel). Movies are not novels, however. They almost never make the journey backwards. If anything movies are becoming role-playing computer games, judging by the number of spin-offs that have been made.

Relating this back to the point about ideology; we overcome our numbness to bourgeois ideology, see it for what it is, through its supersession (or, perhaps, hybridisation if we take reformism into account). This of course happens through practical action, class struggle, combined with the critical renovation of consciousness; the interaction, I would argue, between movement and party.

Marxism and McLuhan - pt 2 Hot and Cold Media

Hot and cold media are important concepts for McLuhan. ‘Hot’ and ‘cold’ are slightly misleading names. The basic opposition is between high definition/low participation and low definition/high participation media. It is, say, the difference between a live action film and a drawn animation. With live action the visual detail is fairly rich, leaving little room for the viewer to fill in/interpret. With a drawn cartoon (a good example being Matt Groening cartoons) there is minimal visual information, few lines, few surfaces, and wide room for viewer inference.

Why should hot and cold media bother us? I think, firstly, because it is a useful way to track cultural development. Ruling classes attempt to develop culture appropriate to its rule. This means that culture is a site of conflict in class society. In Understanding Media, McLuhan cites the example of the waltz (a ‘hot’ dance) versus the twist (a ‘cool’ dance).

Dance is an expression of sexuality. The waltz, a formal dance, where the information is largely filled in beforehand, was consistent with early capitalism and its attempt to mould sexuality to the nuclear family and capital accumulation. The twist is an informal dance, with room to improvise and, most dangerously of all, does not require two closely locked partners. The twist and related forms of dance were consistent with a period of affluence and immanent sexual liberation. They were consequently terrifying to authorities committed to the capitalism and sexual propriety. Let’s not forget the added bourgeois horror of mixed race social dancing. It may seem unbearably backward and strange now but American cops used to attack Ray Charles concerts for precisely this reason (brilliantly evoked in Mike Davis’s writings on post-war youth riots).

But there’s a second point of interest. In McLuhan’s scheme new media cause a shock to our system. In order to overcome this shock, so we aren’t sent reeling every time we walk down the street or glance at a TV, we numb ourselves to the medium’s effects. One way of doing this is by cooling down the medium.

The printed word is visually hot. Spoken word on the radio is aurally hot. They each take particular senses and fill them out. One thing you will not have missed is the rise of right-wing demagogy in the internet and talk radio. These are cooling media that allow for greater participation; but this participation is as a kind of reflective surface in an echo chamber. Slanders become rumours and rumours become facts, as host and audience goad each other.

This can create false notions that are very difficult to dispel. An example: after the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes the Metropolitan Police put out a number of statements that simply weren’t true: he jumped the barrier, he was wearing a suspicious device, he challenged the police, he looked like Hussein Osman, etc. These claims were recycled through public forums and consequently longer in people’s minds even after they were disproved.

What is ideology, the medium itself; hot or cool? As far as the question is relevant I would suggest it is a cool medium, participatory. For example: The Conservative is a key outlet for bourgeois ideology. But the party cannot win general elections on the vote of its social base, the bourgeoisie, alone. There is a Conservative Party for big capitalists, but there is also one for small business people, there is even a party for a minority of conservative workers. This can only be achieved by incorportating the concerns, the points of view of other groups into the broader bourgeois perspective of the Tories.

The point here is not to suggest hot, cold or cooling media are better, worse, beneficial or pernicious, but to understand them so we are not taken by surprise by their effects.

Marxism and McLuhan - pt 1 The Medium is the Message

Start with a quote:

It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

It is not exactly an aphorism, but it is a neat segment of Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy with an important implication. Ideology is reasonably defined as a collection of ideas based around a distinct point of view. The argument here suggests ideology is the medium of class consciousness.

In the clash between forces and relations of production, the basis of class struggle, people can achieve things which are contrary to the ideas they hold. This was something Antonio Gramsci dwelt upon in his Prison Notebooks repeatedly. The achievements of the Biennio Rosso were not capitalised upon because there was not sufficient critical renovation of ideas; long story short, the workers rebellion was not translated into a workers state.

Ideology is the medium of class consciousness and, as we know, the medium is the message. The key benefit of Marshall McLuhan’s media studies was the spotlight he shone on the media themselves, media as physical objects, and the effects they have. For example, (in this case David Sarnoff, pioneer American broadcaster) people often advise that the “products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way that they are used that determines their value”.

Suppose we were to say, “Apple Pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way that it is used that determines its value”. Or “the Smallpox Virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way that it is used that determines its value”. Again, “Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way that they are used that determines their value”.

A useful point for consideration, the ideology of Protestantism helped found capitalism. Not because of some supposed work-ethic, plenty of harsh toil had been carried before anyone pondered the nature of a personal god, but because its dispute with Catholicism over humanity’s relationship to the divine was in effect an argument over the individual’s relationship to authority. “No King But Jesus” is a roundabout call for a republic.

But why does this matter? One of the crucial points about ideology, specific ideologies, is why do they arise when they do. As Frederick Engels pointed out, early socialism was utopian because:

What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.

So, Protestantism didn’t just happen to rise up during the feudal era to attack it, it arose out of the feudal era, part of it but against it (and eventually to be supplanted by more advanced articulations of bourgeois ideology). There is no debate about a personal versus an impersonal god without print technology and the beginnings of mass literacy. There are no ideas apart from the means of articulating them.

We exist in a state of media saturation, to the point where we do not regard the effects such media have upon us. We live in the medium of Earth’s atmosphere. We do not notice it because our bodies are evolved to live at around sea-level pressure; we live at the very bottom of an ocean of air. You can only get a handle on this when you climb a large mountain, get into a submarine or a spacecraft.

We tend not to notice the dominant ideology, the collection of ideas based around the point of view of the dominant class in our society. It is only when we are outside that medium that we see it for what it is. The recent public sector general strike in Britain, baby step thought it might have been, was amongst other things an important blow struck against the prevailing ideology, a temporary exodus transporting millions of people (not just the strikers) out of neo-liberalism, austerity and atomisation.

McLuhan’s strength is that he looks at the effect of technology on consciousness. It is easy to accept that electronic media creates almost instant global communication, and thereby bridges the gap between cause and effect, core and perhipery in the public mind. You can extrapolate from this. We have lived through a period of growing gated bourgeois communities, increasingly militarised policing, the enclosure of more and more public space, and so forth. The mass media batters away, the poor are dangerous, deracinated and, look, they're living among us. It’s all very logical.

But there is one clear problem with techno-determinism. Take something like the Canary Wharf Complex in East London. To the bourgeois Londoner it is a sleek monument to their power. The working class Londoner would be forgiven if they found it a cold, bewildering and unwelcome place (built upon the ruins of a former trade union stronghold let’s not forget). Technology, mass media live inside the greater medium of class society; that is the message they carry to us, everywhere, all the time.

Discussion on Marshall McLuhan

Listen here. Below is a neat summary of the significance of media forms. It is, of course, lacking the class dimension of understanding media. Our media, our way of experiencing the world, is owned by someone else. That ownership affects what is produced, how it is produced and for what end. None the less it is an excellent jumping off point for discussions about the clash of base and superstructure, media, society and change.

The medium, or process of our time – electric technology – is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing – you, your family, your neighbourhood, your education, your job, your government, your relation to "the others." And they're changing dramatically.

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication. The alphabet, for instance, is a technology that is absorbed by the very young child in a completely unconscious manner, by osmosis so to speak. Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways. The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media.

The older training of observation has become quite irrelevant in this new time, because it is based on psychological responses and concepts conditioned by the former technology – mechanization.

Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our "Age of Anxiety" is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools – with yesterday's concepts.

Youth instinctively understands the present environment – the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth. This is the reason for the great alienation between generations. Wars, revolutions, civil uprisings are interfaces within the new environments created by electric informational media.

Marshall McLuhan, 'The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects' (1967).

Sideways stuff about DVDs, Victorians and Hegemony

I am the kind of person who watches DVD extras. Given digital technology allows you to load practically unlimited amounts of information onto a disc it's surprising more artists don't make creative use of this. The BBC DVD of the recent Sherlock series has an interesting 'making of...' section.

Sherlock, the series, is not as literary and refined as first it may seem. It is what the original books were, a very good genre production. It is at least a cut above other pretentious, prime-time pantomimes like Merlin and Robin Hood. It emphasises the Other London aspect of some of the original stories. Well-to-do Victorians had a turbulent attractive/repulsive relationship with the cities they'd built. It is, of course, the attractive/repulsive relationship between capital and labour; as classes, as ideas embodied they can't live with our without each other.

One of the series producers commented in the documentary that Sherlock showed a side of London she never knew existed; exotic locations you pass every single day, blazing signs you never notice, babble and slang you can never hope to understand.

The first point to emphasises is this is a normal aspect of urban life. The city is a medium for living. Each new medium is a powerful shock to our (individual and collective) system. If you walked down the street and paid attention to each and every bright, shiny thing thrust in front of you, you would be left paralysed. Numbness is essential day-to-day survival (though it is a threat to active citizenry).

An aside: our political/ideological struggle has to overcome this numbness, numbness of course suits the status quo. There are two ways to overcome numbness. First is sensationalism. In culture there is an arms race, akin to an addiction (with all the accompanying debilitation); sensationalism leads to numbness, which leads to greater sensationalism and greater numbness. Sensationalism is roughly parallel to movementism. There is no political change without a political impulse, a collective urge to right a wrong. But movementism has to lead to organisation, counter-hegemony.

The second way to overcome numbness is ambience. Ambient music is music built into an environment. Counter-hegemony is roughly equivalent to ambience, a network of organic intellectuals incorporated into the wider working class movement. Ambient music does not demand attention in the same way as, say, a pop song, but it insinuates itself so much more into the mind and mood of the listener. Revolutionary politics is not top down or one way, transmitter and receiver, but collective criticism, bringing practice up to the best levels of theory and theory up to the levels of best practice.

Back to the point: the other thing to say about the notion of Other London is, of course, why should there not be several Londons? Cities are peak communities. Human life proliferates in so many forms there. The fact that this can be new and novel shows how much the working class (as opposed to 'chavs', the 'white working class' or other ruling class inventions) has been excluded from public life for so long. No wonder the working class presence goes unnoticed, until, of course, it starts striking and demonstrating; then it gets less exotic, more fearsome.