Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!

by Edmund Carpenter

sociology, media studies, culture studies

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Cultural, Essays

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[Jonn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent anthropological work that holds up decades later, with quick readable chapters and a lot to think about in terms of the way Western culture has colonized the world through media, changing and erasing cultures and behavioural patterns. Useful to be familiar with McLuhan’s work and main ideas going in though.

[Will Lashley]

When I read this book in 1972, it gave me a grasp of what 'post-modern' meant by looking at the mediated world I lived in through the observations of New Guinea tribesmen living on the Sepik River and Artic Aivilik Eskimos, in other world, modernity as interpreted by people who were not considered part of my own modern, cosmopolitan tribe. “I wanted to observe, for example, what happens when a person — for the first time — sees himself in a mirror, in a photograph, on films, hears his voice; sees his name.” He is humble about what could be claimed to be a Promethean mission, not just screening films for the New Guinea tribal audiences but putting cameras in their hands. Carpenter not only invokes but plays the Trickster, and speaks in poetic declarations. "Electricity has made angels of us all." His training as an anthropologist shaded into a more "universal" discipline, aesthetics. These "interventions" earned him strong disapproval from his scholarly anthropology colleagues, but excited his contemporaries creating the new discipline of media studies, especially his close friend and collaborator Marshall McLuhan.

Someone needs to take his example and and find those Angel Trickster tribesmen who can hold a mirror up to the "post-post-modern" cybersphere, our media landscape today.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ted Carpenter was life-long bffs with Marshall McLuhan, and it's easy to see why when reading his work. Media studies with an anthropological basis, the work explores the ways that new media change culture. This is timelessly timely stuff. Also recommended: the film by the same name, which features footage of incidents discussed in the book.

[Hooper Bring]

Bob cites this in the talk “the Motives and Consequences of the Sixties Counterculture and Beyond” as having an explanation for why the theory of reincarnation and oriental thinking would become more prevalent.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this in the West Covina public library when I was going to high school in the early seventies. I checked it out and read it may times. It's a big influence on my work and thinking.

[Gregory Kuchmek · Rating 5 out of 5]

nails McLuhanism perfectly. answers a lot of questions, but keeps asking better ones!