Night-mares on screens

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Beginning from the idea that if you are well adjusted to media you are sound asleep, this research extends a series of metaphors employed by Marshall McLuhan dealing with sleep, dreaming, and somnambulism. I evaluate sleep paralysis (SP), or the night-mare, as an addition to this series, focusing on McLuhan's take on the 1789 oil painting, The Nightmare. I completed two projects into SP on screens. One produced a collection of catalogued experiences from a popular internet message board (684 experiences across 573 posts from 523 users). The other, a collection of scenes and images from film and TV (81 scenes from 54 titles). Selections from my results form the basis of five chapters (4-8) concerned with variations of the night-mare on screens. In the process I connect McLuhan to other media studies philosophies: Richard Grusin's nonhuman turn, Jean Baudrillard and Graham Harman's takes on McLuhan, Eugene Thacker's concept of "dark media," and two psychoanalytic perspectives (Freud and Lacan, linked to McLuhan through Alice Rae). During a night-mare encounter one is neither sound asleep nor wide awake but enmeshed in a confusing and painful overlap. Compared with sleep or dreaming, this liminality more accurately conceptualizes nonhuman interpretations of McLuhan which complicate, collapse, and as I suggest, superimpose both sides of the following divisions: medium/message, reality/hyperreality, subject/object, natural/supernatural, real/unreal, conscious/unconscious, and figure/ground. Night-mare mediation summarizes and advances these interpretations while hoping to complicate things as ordinary as thin air.