The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man

The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1st Ed.: The Vanguard Press, NY, 1951)^[1] is a pioneering study by Marshall McLuhan in the field now known as popular culture.

His interest in the critical study of popular culture was influenced by the 1933 book Culture and Environment by F.R. Leavis and Denys Thompson ^[2], and the title The Mechanical Bride is derived from a piece by the Dadaist artist, Marcel Duchamp, titled The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even.^[3]

Like his later 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Mechanical Bride is unique and composed of a number of short essays that can be read in any order – what he styled the "mosaic approach" to writing a book. Each essay begins with a newspaper or magazine article or an advertisement, followed by McLuhan's analysis thereof. The analyses bear on aesthetic considerations as well as on the implications behind the imagery and text. McLuhan chose the ads and articles included in his book not only to draw attention to their symbolism and their implications for the corporate entities that created and disseminated them, but also to mull over what such advertising implies about the wider society at which it is aimed.

Examples of advertisements

• A nose for news and a stomach for whiskey: McLuhan analyzes an ad for Time Magazine in which he likens a reporter depicted as a romantic character from a Hemingway novel and asks "Why is it [his] plangent duty to achieve cirrhosis of the liver?"^[4]
• Freedom to Listen - Freedom to Look: An ad for the Radio Corporation of America depicts a rural family doing their business with the radio on. Earlier in the Bride McLuhan notes "We still have our freedom to listen?" and here "Come on kiddies. Buy a radio and feel free - to listen."^[5]
• For Men of Distinction - Lord Calvert: An ad for Lord Calvert whiskey depicts nine gentlemen holding a glass of their whiskey, while McLuhan notes the lack of non-artists amongst them; "Why pick on the arts? Hasn't anyone in science or industry ever distinguished himself by drinking whiskey?"^[6]
• The Famous DuBarry Success Course: An ad for beauty creams complete with female model in a swimsuit hawks itself as a "success course" complete with "tuition", to which McLuhan asks, "Why laugh and grow fat when you can experience anguish and success in a strait jacket?"^[7]

Notes

1. ^ reissued by Gingko Press, 2002 ISBN 1-58423-050-9
2. ^ Marchand, Philip, Marshall McLuhan: the medium and the messenger : a biography, MIT Press, 1998. Cf. especially p.40
3. ^ Theall, Donald F., The Virtual Marshall McLuhan, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 2001. Cf. p.5.
4. ^ The Mechanical Bride, pg 9
5. ^ The Mechanical Bride, pg 21
6. ^ The Mechanical Bride, pg 56
7. ^ The Mechanical Bride, pg 152

Further reading

• "The Mechanical Bride" in McLuhan, Marshall; McLuhan, Eric; Zingrone, Frank, Essential McLuhan, Basic Books, 1995. Cf. especially pp.21-34.