WAR V. YOUTH

WAR V. YOUTH - Video Still Frames

WAR V. YOUTH is a video project that revolves around McLuhan’s notion of the global village. When I was younger I had heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and in the context in which McLuhan presents it, the world has become itself a global technological village. Due to modernization, we have reached new levels of communication that had only ever been part of science fiction. My take on the global village theory will be represented in this video where I explore the effects of news media on our modern day youth. I believe that the phenomenon that we are observing among our deteriorating youth is linked directly to what they are being shown by the media. We are slowly removing the youth and innocence from the child. The modern child has a vast understanding of things that one could argue is well beyond their years. My video tells the story of the removal of youth from a child and the ultimate empty vessels that we as a society are producing. 

Lao-Tze: The Value of the Non-Existent

     Researching in depth, one of the references of Marshal McLuhan's book, surprisingly changed my outlook on what I, once perceived - and still to a varying degree still perceive - to be a glorified "magazine". The more time I had spent reading McLuhan's book throughout the term, the more it seemed like a piece of abstract art rather than informative literature. However, as I researched Lao-Tze as referenced in, "The Medium is the Massage" I pieced together how McLuhan had used Lao-Tze's passage to prove a commentary of our media culture.

     The Passage that McLuhan used from the ancient writings of Lao-Tze's from Tao Te Ching outlined how we, as a modernized western world, have come to define ourselves by what we are not. Using both Lao-Tze’s ancient passage and McLuhan’s commentary it becomes clear that it is our isolation that has defined us, but it is the extremity of that isolation that has now pushed us into the realms of technological communication. I believe that these passages together are trying to prove that we have gone from one extreme to another. We have ultimately gone from the isolated, personal, individualistic ideologies of the West and have entered (as McLuhan calls it) a fused "oriental" way of life.

Collage of Iconic representations of both Lao-Tze and Marshall McLuhan. In the center they are morphed into one. 

Individual photo-credits to: 

Marshal McLuhanby JustinRandall 

WordPress – Marshal McLuhan

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