Night-mares on screens
December 1, 2019 Nicholas Cash Grodsky, Brent Adam Luvaas
This research extends Marshall McLuhan's metaphors of sleep, dreaming, and somnambulism by adding sleep paralysis (the night-mare) as a new figure. The author analyzes McLuhan's interpretation of the 1786 painting The Nightmare and presents two collections: 684 sleep paralysis experiences from an internet message board (573 posts by 523 users) and 81 scenes from 54 film and TV titles. Selections from these results form five chapters examining variations of the night-mare on screens. The work connects McLuhan to other media philosophies, including Richard Grusin's nonhuman turn, Jean Baudrillard and Graham Harman's readings of McLuhan, Eugene Thacker's "dark media," and psychoanalytic perspectives from Freud and Lacan. The night-mare, as a liminal state between sleep and waking, better conceptualizes nonhuman interpretations of McLuhan that complicate divisions such as medium/message, reality/hyperreality, and subject/object.