A dictionary of Marshall McLuhan’s quotations

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance. But environments as such have a way of being inaccessible to inspection. Environments by reason of their total character are mostly subliminal to ordinary experience. Indeed, the amount of any situation, private or social, verbal or geographic, that can be raised and held to the conscious level of attention is almost insignificant.
McLuhan's Introduction to Subliminal Seduction by Brian Wilson Key (1973), reprinted in Theories of Communication with Eric McLuhan, 2011, p 112
Year: 1973
Chapter: Advertising
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan