Janine Marchessault, York University, Canada.

hybridité

« Nevertheless all other media, for McLuhan, are hybrid. They’re the result of a meeting which produces a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed on us by our senses. The interface between two different media were pioneered by artists such as Dickens, Shaw, Eliot, Joyce, Eisenstein of course, the Marx Brothers Chaplin... Dickens is really another very important artist for McLuhan. Dickens recognized in the printed form, in the newspaper, the form, the material for a new way of writing. And so he merged the novel with the newspaper form. Chaplin is another one who recognizes that in merging ballet with the cinema he could create a new art form. And what McLuhan says is that the greatest artists were able to recognize shifts in the culture and to work, create these hybrid categories. »