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Marshall McLuhan

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man Paperback – January 1, 1967

by Marshall McLuhan (Author)

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The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (View amazon detail page) ASIN: B000KXMW6M

Print length

157 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Beacon
Publication date

January 1, 1967
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000KXMW6M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon; Second Paperback Printing edition (January 1, 1967)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 157 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #5,254,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 21 ratings

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4.6 out of 5

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Emma

Great Quality - Exceeded Expectations

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

I was very impressed by the quality of this product. I wasn't sure what to expect with "Facsimile" in the product description - I guess I expected something like a course packet from undergrad. This is a very high quality book with more of a coffee table book feel. I definitely recommend for someone having trouble getting their hands on a clean print of McLuhan's book at a reasonable price.

4 people found this helpful

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Michael G. SchomakerTurtleHawk Enterprises Inc.

Our Inheritance.

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2014

Verified Purchase

This book is a most excellent and of the highest quality replication of the original and I for one am grateful that it has been republished in the style and care that it has. The content is historical now but it is chilling and accurate in what it is pointing to and it is relevant to now as a marker of a historical precursor to what is happening daily in the "global village".

6 people found this helpful

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Joshua Leeger

Mind explosion

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2015

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It takes time to read...you're wrestling with a poetic probe of the present that references an historical-construct-encyclopedia of Western thought at every step.

5 people found this helpful

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BethJean

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Delivered as described and on time. Thank you.

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William B. Fankboner

An Incisive Critique of American Culture

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2013

The premise of The Mechanical Bride is that the American dream is shot through with pathological wish fulfillment in the form of trashy delusions perpetuated by the film colony, manipulative advertising, the false promise of mechanistic technologies (popular science, modern know-how, and market research) to hoodwink unsophisticated consumers.

He describes a number of corrupting influences, e.g. "the notion of distinction and culture as being a matter of consumption rather than the possession of discriminating perception and judgment," "the automatic leveling process exercised by applied science" that has equated the sexes, "the supremacy of technique at the expense of nutriment," the belief that success is measured by purchasing power, that the ultimate happiness consists in the acquisition of material goods, that culture is conferred upon those who purchase expensive and refined products, that the race to the top is so dehumanizing that the winners "arrive in a nude and starving condition."

For McLuhan, popular culture is an open book of all the unconscious or accidental motivations of the American people. They are unconscious because they are environmental, i.e. they are the unchallenged a priori principles and assumption that drive the American lifestyle. But all is not lost. If we stand back and contemplate this phantasmagoria with rational detachment rather than participate in mindless conduct, we will derive solutions to bring it under control.

McLuhan's genius and originality consist in applying the techniques of Freudian dream analysis to the social, cultural and economic spheres insofar as they evoke exhibits of the "American dream," and he did so with a consummate command of language, satirical wit, and the authority of unimpeachable scholarship.

15 people found this helpful

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Vinay Varma

Modern-day myth-making turned on its head

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2005

This is McLuhan's first book, originally published in 1951 and has been long out of print. It precedes his second book and cult classic 'The Gutenberg Galaxy', by a decade and a half. This is also quite unique in that it has no relationship with McLuhan's more famous theoretical ramblings.

In this book, McLuhan takes on myth-making in US society by showing how film posters, comic strips, advertisements, magazine covers, newspaper layout and articles etc., try to persuade people into something, and yet a close observation of their inherent contradictions allows you to escape their machinations.

The book celebrates deliberate misreading of commonplace things like advertising to show how the persuasive trap of mass culture/consumer culture can be escaped.

All articles in the book follow the format of article/poster/ad, its analysis and some sharp witty aphoristic observations in a boxed area that serve as liberating repartees against the messages that these products of consumer culture intend to send.

The philosophy of the book is derived from McLuhan's premise (borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe's story 'The Maelstrom') that to escape a maelstrom you need to study things going down and things that resurface and align yourself with things that resurface.

In this respect, it can be considered a jargon-free precursor of latter-day deconstructive literary and cultural criticism. And it is much more liberating and enlightening to a lay reader than jargon ridden discussions or purely vehement denuciations of the power of mass culture which don't help laymen liberate themselves anyway, because of their highly inaccessible prose.

28 people found this helpful

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Jules Henry

For People In The Know

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2005

The "modern gal" knows that "getting ahead" means being the first on her block to articulate the ways her body and cultural practices are transformed into parts and routines -- she reads The Mechanical Bride to "stay in the know" regarding the ways that reflection on the discourse of her body can be used to advance her academic career! And "guys on their way to the top", in academic circles ranging from media history to cultural studies, tune into The Mechanical Bride to find out the latest "swinging styles" in everything from discourse analysis to popular tropes for identity production. Keep it in mind, all you Sirens and Sages of the Academy: When it "comes to success" there is "deep consolation" in knowing that the "cream of the crop" always "rises to the top" because it never "falls out of step" with the latest critical styles -- in a liberal era and place, such as our own, this really is Freedom "American Style"!

3 people found this helpful

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Vargr

This book could have been written in 2004

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2004

Although it was published in 1951, the critical analysis of advertising saturation that McLuhan presents in this book applies equally in the 21st century. Although the mechanisms of media delivery have changed, the message that they deliver has not. Although the once-contemporary references may require additional research on the part of a younger reader, the book does not suffer overtly because of them. This is an essential work for students of media and sociology.

14 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

jpel

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

A must for the student of media and the lover of experimental writing - theory meets poetry meets vision.

Graham Harris

an icon of the fifties and most people interested in adverts and the great consumer culture thing will be interested

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is, of course, an icon of the fifties and most people interested in adverts and the great consumer culture thing will be interested. The only problem I have is understanding quite what the author, McLuhan, is getting at. I am not sure if he was criticising the fifties culture , or promoting it. And it is, sometimes, difficult to quite follow what he is actually saying. T'is a problem I have with many American pundits!

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The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man Paperback – January 1, 1967

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