At any rate, the multi-billion dollar, nation-wide educational programmes of the ad-men (dwarfing the outlay on formal education) provide a world of symbols, witticism, and behaviour patterns which may or may not be a fatal solvent for the basic political traditions of America, but which certainly do comprise a common experience and a common language for a country whose sectional differences and technological specialisms might easily develop into anarchy.
“American Advertising”, published In Horizon, No.93-4, October (1947), reprinted in Mass Culture: the Popular Arts in America,(1957), reprinted as McLuhan Unbound #9 (2005), p 6
Year: 1947
Chapter:
Advertising
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan