Today’s students mix homework with radio and hi-fi, even TV and telephone, and experience little difficulty correlating such data, or at least in having them co-exist. California students get into their little wraparound cars(a form of clothing), kick off their sandals so they can feel the freeway coming right up through the car, travel at 70 mph down the freeway with signs flashing past on the right and the opposite traffic passing at 140 mph on the left, the top down, sun and wind in their faces, radio on and every fourth telephone pole in sync with the beat, eating breakfast and pawing a coed; in short, total sensory involvement. Then they enter class, turn off all senses, put on a tribal face and go numb. One is reminded of slouching, tribal-faced Method actors for whom all life is empty dialogue until they suddenly get with it, erupting with startling jets of emotional power. "Getting with it, getting turned on," means getting involved, all senses orchestrated. Freak-out means sensory chaos.
“McLuhan Looks at Fashion” (1968), in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 154
Year: 1968
Chapter:
Attention
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan