Camp is popular because it gives people a sense of reality to see a replay1 of their lives. (…) People need old lives2 to make their young lives real…3
- McLuhan often emphasized the importance of “replay” as “recognition” and “retrieval”. Here it has the opposite value of preventing “recognition” and “retrieval”. The differences between these values turn on the presence or absence of “dialogue as a process of creating the new” that does not “merely reflect or repeat the old” (Take Today, 22). ↩
- “Old lives” as giving “a sense of reality” provides an interesting ontological twist to the “rear-view mirror”. ↩
- Linda Sandler, ‘Interview With Marshall McLuhan: His Outrageous Views About Women’,Miss Chatelaine magazine, September 3, 1974). Some further observations from the same interview: “Escaping into another time or space is a form of indulgence — like licking a candy bar. I’m not sure there should be any law against it. I don’t think people should be deep and profound — my gosh! who wants even to hear such people?”; “Men (as opposed to women) have no imagination (…) (they have taken) early retirement for sagging psyches”. ↩