Comparison of The Medium is the Message and The Right Stuff (Book)

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Comparison of The Medium is the Message and The Right Stuff (Book)
Over 135 million books and novels have been published in the history, and most of them have influenced our mental capabilities to an extent. Books are perhaps a good source of entertainment and have a lot to get inspired from. Through their well-versed, fictional stories, the authors of these books and novels try to engage a large number of people. The Right Stuff is one such book that sheds the light on the lives of pilots engaged in the U.S. postwar research. However, some phrases also leave an everlasting impact on our minds and hearts. The Medium is the Message, an excellent example of that. In this paper, I will compare the themes of The Right Stuff and The Medium is the Message, highlighting whether Marshall McLuhan and Tom Wolfe have told delivered the same message or not (Stein 2012).
The Right Stuff vs. The Medium is the Message
In 1979, Tom Wolfe published a book titled The Right Stuff in which he talked about the lifestyle of several American pilots engaged in a research project. NASA selected a couple of brave, hard-working, talented and energetic astronauts for one of its most crucial space programs. Before writing The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe must have done lots of research on the lives of test pilots and their families. In the 1970s and 1980s, the scientists and astronauts used to be ignored. The world was more interested in knowing about musicians and celebrities (Wolfe 2018).
On the other hand, The Medium is the Message is a popular phrase coined by none other than Marshall McLuhan. He has beautifully embedded his message in the medium, claiming that the medium of a message is as important as the message itself and that there is a strong relationship between the medium and the message. In no way, both of these things can be separated from one another. The medium largely impacts how a specific message is delivered or perceived. There are a lot of differences and similarities between The Right Stuff, and The Medium is the Message. Their themes are somewhat different from one another, so as the way the two writers have delivered their messages (McLuhan 2005).
Themes of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (The Medium is the Message) and The Right Stuff
At a higher level, Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message actually explains a link between the message and the medium. The chaos and changes swirling around us have also been depicted in this phrase. Marshall says that the “content” of any medium becomes juicy and meaningful if the medium itself is engaging (McLuhan 25). If it doesn’t engage the people, then the message itself will lose its worth. The society we live in is full of controversies and conflicting thoughts. Some people believe that social media is the best and fastest medium to deliver a message, while the others believe that we should find alternatives to social networking sites because they are good for nothing. This phrase was first introduced in Marshall’s book titled Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In this 1964 book, McLuhan clarified that until the medium is not strong, the content would not impact individuals in any way. Thus, we can say that how the mediums impact the societies is the actual theme of this book (McLuhan 2005).
At a point, the author writes that “All media work us over completely” (McLuhan 32), which means the different forms of media do impact our lives in one way or the other. In simple words, we can say that the existence of a message is possible only when it is delivered or conveyed through a powerful and robust medium. The society might not get impacted by that message, but the medium would definitely bring positive or negative changes. For instance, the social media networks, as well as television and radio adverts, impact our lives. Whether we purchase a specific product from the internet or a nearby store or not, but the way its ad is shown on televisions or the internet does impact our minds. If the medium affects us positively, we would definitely want to buy that item without caring about its price. And if the medium has not been meaningful and engaging, then we would refrain from trying that item (McLuhan 2005).
On the other hand, the story and theme of The Right Stuff are entirely different from McLuhan's novel Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe doesn’t talk anything about the medium or the message. Instead, he discusses the problems astronauts and their families faced during a space project. It was not easy for those pilots or astronauts to survive in space without oxygen, but they didn&r...