The character of the television image, I think, fosters this kind of participation simply because it is a rather poor image, and it involves the viewer in a great deal of completion of the detail that is missing visually in that image. The act of seeing television is very much that of participation as in reading a detective story where you are very much with it precisely because you are not given very much narrative information. You have to fill it in.
“Popular / Mass Culture” (1960), in Understanding Me (2003), p 38
Year: 1960
Chapter:
Television
Compiled by William Kuhns
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan
© 2026, The Estate of Marshall McLuhan