As a Digital Media Studies major, I was forced to take DMS 101 here, which is entitled Introduction to Media Studies. I had to read countless essays and articles written about media, and I distinctly remember reading Mcluhan’s argument on media being the message. At first I really didn’t understand it, and honestly I’m still a bit confused on it, but to the best of my abilities I have tried to figure it out. The conclusion I’ve come to is that what a medium contains is information found within a message, which is the media. According to Mcluhan these are separate things, and they don’t involve one another, which I can agree with to some extent, but I do find issue with. As a fan of musical theatre, I’ve seen many live stage shows of musicals, and their respective movie adaptations. Often times, with a few rare exceptions, the movie versions are almost always different, and cut things out, or restructure important elements of the show to fit the film. Here is where I diverge from Mcluhan’s argument; the information of the medium, the musical itself, is adapted between its two different media (film and stage). So, in a sense, the message/medium is crucial in defining what the information is, even when the information is the same between two media. It changes.
I also really enjoyed Mcluhan’s argument about sports being a form of controlled violence, because essentially that’s what it is; violence. His last statement on the subject matter that sports would be meaningless without an audience truly resonated with me, because as someone who does not enjoy watching or playing sports, they truly have no meaning for me.
To touch back on what I was speaking about with musical adaptations being changed over media, I’d like to present a perfect example of this occurring. My favorite musical, Little Shop of Horrors, premiered Off-Broadway in 1982, and in the end of the musical all the lead actors die. When the show was adapted into a film in 1986, the ending was scrapped and the two lead actors lived, producing a happy ending. This was all done because when the show transitioned to film, the main character was made more sympathetic, and the text audiences did not want him or his love interest to die. So the happy ending was filmed, but only because the original ending did not work in the context of the new media; the film.
Here’s a link to the happy ending:
And here’s a link to the original ending:
Finally here’s a link to director Frank Oz talking about the ending:
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