McLuhan’s Fish

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A media fish out of water

By Ted Pease
Professor of Interesting Stuff

“I don’t know who discovered water,” I tell my class, misquoting Marshall McLuhan, “but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.”

This apparently is a pretty exotic image for my students — they seem to remember it, anyway, which for a professor is reassuring. Maybe it’s because Utah is landlocked, which makes the aquatic compelling. (After all, no one blinked when the University of Utah declared itself a “flagship university,” not noticing that Utah is a desert.) Or maybe the class snaps to when I invoke fish because so many of them are fly-fishermen.

In any case, the fish image seems to have caught hold with these 18- to 22-year-olds in COM 2000—Media Smarts, as I compare their lack of awareness about the influence of the mass media on their lives to how much guppies think about the water in which they live.

“Most of you,” I tell them, laying it on a bit thick, “are as just clueless as a trout, as unaware as a flounder. Most Americans spend their lives in mass-mediated soup, but they don’t notice it. We swim in a daily dose of sitcoms and advertising, muzak and infomercials, MTV, news flashes, Internet and saccharine Top 40 hip-hop.

“How many of you find yourselves singing advertising jingles or Barry Manilow tunes?” Ooops. Wrong generation. I back off: “Well, OK. Not Barry Manilow. But you get the idea.” At 8:30 in the morning you need something to catch their attention, but Barry Manilow is not it.

“Fish don’t know that their ponds are toxic until they turn belly-up and their eyes bug out,” I tell them. “And you guys are as clueless as clams about the mass media environment in which you eat and live and swim.”

Well, OK. Clams don’t swim. And that’s not really a direct quote. A little after-the-fact embellishment. But I’ve been saying stuff like that to them for the past six weeks, and it appears that some of it — the fish things at least, maybe more — is starting to stick.

It’s pretty heady stuff for a sophomore-level GenEd class at 8:30 in the morning. But it appears to be as good an eye-opener for my students as a big cup of Ibis Aggie Blend is for me.

From the first day that I used the McLuhan parable, I’ve been getting fish stories from one anonymous wiseguy via email. Everyone in the class keeps a daily media journal, reflecting on how the mass media influence and infiltrate their lives, or try to, and about how they see media effects seeping into their daily environments. Many email me their diaries, but Fish Boy doesn’t identify himself.

This student (and Hey bub, I think I know who you are) keeps sending me stuff like this: “After a long weekend of football games, I wonder what kind of a fish am I? Am I as smart as a Dolphin? I know I’m smarter than a Bear or a pitiful NY Jet, but . . . .” And, “I had some Charlie Tuna for lunch, so I guess I win that one!” And, “There was this commercial on the Comedy Channel about these Nikes. Advertising is powerful, but do you think a fish would buy shoes?”

OK, I’m thinking, this fish metaphor maybe wasn’t such a good thing. But at least Fish Boy and his classmates are getting ahold of the concept that they are immersed in a mass media environment that, as we all have seen, can be toxic to the less aware guppies among us.

“Let me tell you how the media cause me physical pain,” one woman wrote in her media journal this week. “I have these adorable shoes [that] are considered what’s ‘in’ right now by various magazines. I already have two blisters, the leather is so stiff that my foot barely slides into them, so I’ve ended up just holding them and walking barefoot the entire day.”

“I do not know how I would get along without the Internet,” another student observes. “Most days I get a daily dose of news, sports, and part of my family/friends communications all from the Web. On the other hand, sometimes I never leave the house, and that can be scary. I work the graveyard shift, go to school all morning, and sleep the afternoon away into the night. . . . Sometimes I go for several days before I realize that besides work and classes, I have not left home. I wonder how social establishments are faring these days?”

Another student offers this: “Yesterday I saw a TV show that had kids watching TV on it. . . . [They] said, ‘Oh man! There is never anything good on TV.’ That is so true. The sad thing is that me and my roomies were watching TV, and we found that line quite amusing.”

This from a male student: “I saw a Gap commercial during Sunday football. A bunch of kids were swinging to some modern swing music. The commercial made me want to learn how to swing. The advertisement was for khaki pants. It didn’t make me want pants,”

But another student had the opposite response: “This past week as I have particularly focused on keeping a daily journal of how I use the mass media, I realize it plays an enormous role in my life. After a long day at school and work, I arrive home exhausted.” He turns on the tube: “Soaring through the channels, a commercial caught my attention. It was an advertisement for the Gap’s khaki pants. It had a bunch of young, energetic teens roller-blading around in these ‘ideal for fun’ pants. This commercial honestly generated energy in my body. I wanted to get up off the couch, go buy a pair of khaki pants, put my roller blades on and hit the streets.”
(Now admit it: You recognize these ads, right? And I don’t about you, but I want some “ideal for fun” pants.)

“TV commercials have an incredible impact on our lives,” says another entry. “I caught myself humming jingles for different products while picking up groceries. Just a glance at a box or a sign in the aisle triggered my mind to recall lyrics and catchy lines used in advertisements. Now I am wondering how often I purchase items I really do not need.”

There’s much more in their journals, of course, lately rife with Monica and Bill, baseball sluggers, stock market scares and comic strips. One young woman came to my office last week wearing a baseball cap with a Nike swoosh on it, and an inexplicable B•U•M label on her sweatshirt. She complained that the mass media have no effect on her whatsoever, and so keeping this journal is a waste of time. I urged her to keep trying.

When final course lists came out, 88 students remained in my Media Smarts class, all struggling in their weekly media journals with my demand that they learn to take note of the water in which they and their friends, families and culture sink or swim.

They are not very patient with the assignment to survey the vast wasteland that has, as Newton Minow predicted 37 years ago, become the defining feature of American life, or very happy about the task. But as my wiseguy might observe, “That’s how the fishstick crumbles in the Information Age.” On second thought, I’m sure he (or she) will send me an even better line in time for the next class. And perhaps it would be smart not to say that media markets are bullish....

(This column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal on 10/11/98)