COMS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Georges Perec, Marshall Mcluhan
17 Sep 2016
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WEEK 1 = intro
WEEK 2: September 7, 2016
Georges Perec “Approaches to What?” 1973
I. What speaks to us:
A. the spectacular, scandalous etc - for example, trains are only relevant when speaking
about train accidents and deaths not for their functionality
1. the media only speaks about the scandals
B. we don't question what is habitual but that is what we should be questioning instead of
becoming blind to everyday events
C. the infra ordinary - things that take up our time without us paying attention to them
1. What is happening when nothing is happening?
II. The media:
A. made up of multiple mediums (newspapers, TV etc) making up one
TYPES OF MEDIUMS
B. Medium:
1. an agency or means of doing something
2. saying something, words, can create relationships and events (weddings, declaring
war etc)
3. explicit content: the way in which something is communicated can create something
else, for example, children listening to songs with swearing could lead them to being
more aggressive or believing the aggression in fiction is normal
4. Encoding and decoding is not guaranteed to work - when someone speaks it is not
guaranteed the message will be received like how they meant it to be
a) there are different situations that allow for messages to be delivered differently
(1) an image can produce different reactions: a picture of a cat is cute to some
but scary to others
(2) “The medium is the message” McLuhan —> how are societies organized
around mediums
(a) A medium can change how leisure time is spent and alters the way in
which things are set up: a TV makes the whole physical setup of the living
room change
(b) Sometimes the content doesn't matter, statistically, violent video games
prevent crime by having people stay inside playing as opposed to actually
committing crimes
5. The intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed
6. what makes up the medium of everyday life? Over time things unfold, the rhythms
unfold and build up by intervening with others
7. A particular form of storage for digitalized information, such as magnetic tape or
discs: mediums to contain information, speech, writing etc —> the content of writing
is another medium (speech)
8. A person who is in contact with spirits and the dead
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