COOL MEDIA & THE VIRGIN MARY

by K. P. Dawes

Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.

Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media

Before leaving Chicago for an extended stint of unemployment in Ann Arbor I decided to take a last drive to see Our Lady of the Underpass. Located off of Fullerton Avenue, under the thumping pavement of the Kennedy Expressway, the miraculous apparition is of what the faithful have hailed as the image of the Virgin Mary. Or as others have carefully determined, "a goddamn salt stain."

For weeks the spectacle of the Mother of God (if that is your inclination) was the favorite real-life but hard-to-believe headline for local, national, and even international media. It started on Chicago's local news as one of those little stories that the anchors mention with a smile and a wink before the production credits. Just behind the sports, weather and obituaries. Within days the Madonna of Fullerton Avenue was a regular feature on CNN and the BBC.

I decided to drive past the salt stain (as is my inclination) on my last night in Chicago because I felt a special connection. If not God than certainly destiny had put my path directly along with that month's favorite puff piece. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't steer clear.

I happened upon the image even before the local affiliates took notice.

I had accidentally gotten off the highway four stops short of my goal and at first, as I drove into a traffic jam miles from my neighborhood, I was convinced that it was just a shooting. All I could make out was a huge crowd of people and several squad cars. When I got closer I saw men and women crying and rows of candles. I still thought it was a shooting. It wasn't until the next day that the story broke.

I didn't switch on the TV. I didn't want to, but somehow, through people, the information came. It swept the city like a plague.

A student of mine said, "My uncle owns a store down the street from the underpass. He says the salt stain has been there for years. Bums used to piss on it. Now people are kissing it." He shook his head and added, "It's sick."

The story might have died, but Victor Gonzalez kept the media hounds interested when he took a magic marker and wrote "Big Lie" over the stain. A filmmaker fiend of mine called me and said excitedly, "I know that guy. Come with me, I have to interview him for my documentary." I finally did switch on the TV. Victor Gonzalez's ten-second interview was identical on every news channel. He did it for political reasons. End quote.

I called my friend and told him to do the interview alone.

Another week went by and again I thought the story would die until the city of Chicago decided to paint over the Madonna. Outrage. Scandal. A friend from city services said, "Yeah man, I was the one who had to paint over it. I've been getting death threats."

My filmmaker friend called me up. He had done the interview with Victor Gonzalez and wanted me to see the tape. "Yeah it was political," Victor said in digital clarity. "These people don't know the world's ending." That was new. He went on to talk about tribulations, raptures, angels.

I couldn't shake the Virgin Mary no matter how hard I tried and in that respect it was good to move out of Chicago when I did. For a couple of days I was convinced that she would follow me to Michigan.

What for many was just a puff piece terrified me somehow.

September 11 th still doesn't feel real to me. It was part of a play. The second act of a tragedy. Was I watching thousands die or was it special effects? God knows that the third act was choreographed. But what struck me most about Our Lady of the Underpass was just how real the story became. It wasn't just on TV, it was everywhere.

I suppose H. Marshall McLuhan, probably the most underappreciated and misunderstood academic of the twentieth century, would understand my meaning perfectly.

McLuhan, a scholar of technology's impact on culture and a one time darling of the pop art icons of the 1950s and 60s, theorized that it wasn't the content that was important as much as the medium by which it was relayed. In the case of TV news, the news is not what's as important as the television. Content, or information, is formed differently by the medium in which it travels. As technologies serve as extensions of limbs (the car takes over for the legs) and senses (the phone connects to the ear), information media extend our minds. As the famous equation goes, "the medium is the message."

Where McLuhan gets to be really interesting is in his ideas on hot and cool media. According to the self-stylized Oracle of the Electronic Age, a medium is cool when there is a lot of participation, hot when there is little. Print is hot, it requires little participation. We read, we gain the information, we are passive because the printed word is constant with a beginning and end. Television is cool, it requires a lot of participation to interpret the images on screen. To connect the various images in the unending stream is tiring. It creates an "all at once world," an interconnected silent audience, sharing experiences and images, but lacking the tools of articulation to interpret them. Image without substance.

In the electronic world fact and fiction meld together into irrelevance. We watch the faces on TV, but because we watch them through the electric glow of the television tube (for those of us without plasma) we don't know what is real. On the one hand we have a shared experience, further growing what Benedict Anderson would call our imagined community, but on the other we fail to grasp the link to reality.

September 11 th was not real for me because no one I knew died. Because it was indistinguishable from any other headline. Because it was commodified and garbled. Because of the medium in which the information came to me, September 11th was just another shared experience devoid of reality.

Let me put it this way: September 11th was a real human tragedy, while the salt stain on the underpass was a farce, but in the world of commodified news there is no difference between the two. As Marshall McLuhan might say, because of the nature of the medium, TV doesn't allow for any linkage between flashing images. We work to make those links and invariably we make the wrong ones. We watch death, then commercials. We watch a salt stain being worshipped and we watch commercials. Our connections get scrambled so when we go to war we go shopping. When we feel pain we visit McDonalds. When we feel lonely we buy an iPod. The medium makes us work to make connections, ones we invariably confuse.

Let's compare farces.

I knew how to feel about the filibuster battle. I watched it on television. But I didn't know how to feel about the salt stain in Chicago. It wasn't just on TV, but it was there with me in reality. I was robbed of the shared experience. I felt removed from the wackos laying flowers and the even those making cracks. I didn't belong to any side because I wasn't plugged in. My world felt smaller, lonelier, and still I knew more about the whole affair than anyone in Chicago.

These things happen from time to time.

Our Lady of the Underpass was not the first Madonna to appear on an emergency off ramp, or a taco shell, or water tower or piece of toast. Of course it happens all the time. The 24-hour news channels, local talking heads, and, yes even the BBC, report such things routinely. And just like the faithful, they go, build up the spectacle, linger for a while, and eventually move on to the next appearance. All that remains in the end is a few holdouts who leave the occasional flower or burning candle.

If you drive across the United States sometimes you might see such a blessed place without ever knowing what you were looking at. Yes, even in Chicago, Fullerton and the Kennedy is not the only place with candles burning.

Those of us not doomed to the fires of Hell dismiss the events as lunacy, as we are supposed to as dictated by its place within the content. Television is such a cool medium that our minds work overtime to create connections. We search for meaning. Overtime we move on to the next flashing image forgetting what we saw.

The medium of television is a delivery system of information that makes us live in the instant. Most of us no longer comprehend cause and effect. One day the big story is September 11 th , the next day it is Iraq, and after those have vanished there is the salt stain. What is the connection other than the Calvin Klein ads in between?

Marshal McLuhan also believed that all technologies eventually become over extended. As with a car, at first we see benefits, but in time we become lazy and pollute the air we breathe. Information media become over extended as well. Extensions of our minds eventually break down into overwhelming negatives. Invariably our solution to over extension is to build a new technology further removing ourselves from our own humanity.

On that last night in Chicago I was not surprised that there was no large crowd at Fullerton and the Kennedy Expressway. Since the city had painted over the image a few intrepid souls had restored the Virgin with some turpentine. There were some flowers and some candles that a few holdouts had left and will continue to leave, but in a month that seemed to last forever the story exploded all over the world only to be forgotten just as quickly.

The only person there beyond myself was a woman snapping photographs. "It's not at all like what I saw on TV," she said.

Not even religious fanaticism is any match for the medium that now holds dominion over our minds.

Copyright @ KP Dawes, 2006-2008