Marshall McLuhan needs to be credited with identifying, in the 1960s, the first media cultural generation, that we now call the Boomers. We know that this has been followed by subsequent generations, each identified by its own popular culture. McLuhan made a brilliant start by identifying media users as a new sociological feature of countries. He invented the name ‘media’ and recognized its importance for the cohort of people who grew up with it.
But where McLuhan went wrong was misrepresenting what this media-using cohort of people were actually achieving. McLuhan called this media use by young people a form of ‘tribalism.’ With this term he saw youth as failing. McLuhan regarded the only useful contribution to society as what was political and ideological. For him the newly appearing Baby Boomers lacked all serious literary and moral impact…unlike his own generation.
For himself, and people his age who lacked any surrounding media, McLuhan regarded people as influential only when they were literary individuals, private thinkers who worked alone and thought for themselves, and whose only support was alcohol. McLuhan expected men – and not women or youth – to be private, boozy, and essentially moral and politically oriented contributors to the institutional order of their society.
McLuhan couldn’t see any useful purpose for the ‘tribalism’ displayed by the media-using young people of the Sixties. For him, their deficiency, was their inability to contribute abstract concepts to the ideological discourse of the state.
Let’s jump forward forty years and look at somebody else who made, in my opinion, an equally important analysis of the meaning of media. I’m talking about Paris Hilton and her contribution to media influence through fashion and beauty. Around the Millennium, Paris Hilton was criticized by the older generation for ‘not doing anything’ and therefore not deserving any fame.
But Paris Hilton did make a huge contribution. She demonstrated that being beautiful, wearing the right clothing, hair and makeup was enough. You didn’t have to do anything that was political, ideological or charitable, in order to be influential. Being beautiful was enough, because it was an effective use of the power of media. Paris Hilton showed that political, ideological, and philanthropic activities were irrelevant to the popularity of the media. Today’s ‘media influencers’ now understand this basic truth. At the Millennium, it was not clear how much work went into presenting oneself. Before she went out, Hilton had to spend 45 minutes on hair, and another 45 minutes on makeup, as well as finding and wearing the right clothing. She would make changes of clothing during the day so that news photographers could publish her pictures at different events on the same day. This was not ‘doing nothing’; this was hard work that was relevant and necessary to effective deployment of media.
In sum, Paris Hilton’s achievement was showing that being beautiful is enough; through media, anyone can be influential with youth and affect society. You don’t need to be conceptual, policy oriented, or a political advocate for one cause or another. The media is its own thing, a fact which every subsequent generation has learnt for itself, and inspires so many of our young women to become media influencers. McLuhan was wrong. He could not have predicted the profound change which has shifted society away from literary high culture and politics. Much of the old ruling heights of political consciousness have lost influence due to the rise of media.
More sadly, social science generally, has failed to catch up with the importance of youth and media. Why did reading and print media decline? Without media, how do we know how young people see themselves collectively? What is each generation adding to media? The great transformation by which youth and media have been elevated into importance is demonstrated perfectly by Paris Hilton.
Today, people have largely forgotten Marshall McLuhan. His limitations are now all too obvious; businesses now study each youthful media cohort and report on what is new. These innovations are taken very seriously – and rightly so.
So it is disappointing that academic social science has so far failed to learn the Paris Hilton message that using the media is enough in itself. What is the mechanism by which media is so effective? How does the personal life of young people shape politics, economy, and popular culture? Our current social sciences cannot tell us the answer because, in important ways, our sociology and political science are stuck back in the McLuhan Era. They still suppose that written commentary, and policy making within formal organizations, are the only ways of steering society. Revisiting the legacy of Paris Hilton may be a good way to cast off the obsolete vision that still sees no purpose for the media in a modern country.