CCT300Lab3

 Lab 3  Marshall McLuhan was an English Literature professor at the University of Toronto, where he contributed to the study of media theory. His famous phrase of “the medium is the message” demonstrates the correlation between the mediums and ultimately how the message is recognized. McLuhan discusses media in two categories, hot and cold. Hot media, as exemplified by television, engage the audience in a visual aspect. The audience is watching the program while focusing with their visual sense, therefore the program was generated to be explicable to the average person. Conversely, comics fit into the cool media category. McLuhan states, "the modern comics strip and comic book provide very little data about any particular moment in time, or aspect in space, of an object.”

 I support McLuhan’s position of comics being an extension of photographic media because of their simplistic nature. “The viewer, or reader, is compelled to participate in completing and interpreting the few hints provided by the bounding lines." Comics require a lot of imagination from the reader, intriguing them to fill in the details that the cartoonist may not have included. Although the text that is accompanied by the illustrations supports the story, the comic is still left with a lot of room for interpretation. The illustrations are merely a suggestion or an indirect drawing to invite and entice the reader. In conclusion, the comic’s illustrations are only visual aids at specific moments in the comic and due to the fact that there is effort needed by the reader to visualize the story in which they are reading. Works Cited:

Leshinski, Guy. "McLuhan's Cool Comics." The Cultural Gutter. 28 Sept. 2005. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. .

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: the extensions of man. New York: Mc-Graw Hill 1964, p. 22.