How to Make Love to Your Television Set (1983)

Perhaps no artist and fellow media theorist worked so fastidiously in the vein of McLuhan as Douglas Davis albeit directly contrary to what he described as McLuhans apocalyptic message when he proclaimed The medium is not the message You and I in all our obstinate unpredictable glory and complexity are the message The ultimate power lies on this the other side of the TV screen in the eye and mind of the viewer who can increasingly become the actor This performative broadcast which also functions somewhat as a miniretrospective of other classic Davis pieces features Daviss selfdescribed investigation into a kind of denial of the physical reality of the mediumputting the control over the mediumback into the hands of the human imagination Likewise it directly contradicts VIDEODROMEs association of television and sexuality with pain and control Whether it does so effectively is up to the viewer