The Mechanical Bride Thread

[Richard Fiero]

alice wellintown wrote:
>I Have my McLuhan, the text, not Wiki, in front of me. As I have
>posted from McLuhan's text on several occasion I was quite certain
>that the text I quoted, that is indeed quoted in the wiki is not a
>blurb or a publisher's advertisement or any such thing, but appears in
>McLuhan's text. Morever, the passage is quite significant to the
>discussion of Feminism and Feminist 2nd and 3rd wave Film Theory. So,
>that I added it, as a Note from the wiki along with the Lara Croft
>Note does not, in anyway diminish the point the discussion or the
>authors or their ideas by spinning some grand theory of the world. In
>the Mechanical Bride McLuhan discusses the popular magazines and
>press, the dominant pattern he calls attention to is the linking of
>sex with technology. He admits that he does not understand it all that
>well, and perhaps this is Richard's point, that we are not discussing
>McLuhan's mature and fully fleshed out or better understood ideas
>about The Mechanical Bride and the Dynamo, and the replaceable parts
>cultural dynamics.  But McLuhan is certain of the points he makes in
>the passages quoted: The body Parts of the female citizen have been
>indoctrinated and the atom bomb was named after Rita Hayworth. The
>line Mcluhan draws from the bomb to the dynamo and the virgin is
>clearly cut from the spool of Henry Adams.

Okay, thanks for looking into that. I think that McLuhan is a lot of 
fun. Duchamp was of course a cafe society guy and a darling of the 
New York art set of the time -- to 1920. I saw his exhibition in 
Pasadena 1963 with himself present. I did sneak an object into his 
exhibit which was quickly discovered. I believe he liked women so I'm 
not sure he and Marshall are saying what you want them to say.
By the way, I don't think we've quite discovered the scope of Alice's program.

Photo of Eve Babitz and Duchamp, Pasadena 1963:
http://carmelosaia.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/babitz-duchamp.jpg

Interview with Eve Babitz:
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/tranSCRIPTs/babitz00.htm