"Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be"
About this Quote
McLuhan isn’t predicting a better politics; he’s predicting politics as a special effect. His sting is in the word “abdicate”: the politician doesn’t get overthrown by technology so much as relieved by it, grateful to trade the grind of governing for the ease of being seen. Power migrates from decisions to impressions, from policy to the management of attention. That’s classic McLuhan: the medium doesn’t merely carry political content, it reorganizes what counts as political reality.
The subtext is bleakly practical. An “image” doesn’t have to pass legislation, balance budgets, or withstand the contradictions that break a person. An image can be endlessly optimized, focus-grouped, refreshed, insulated from consequence. It can be everywhere at once, emotionally legible in a glance, and resilient in a way a human speaker isn’t. The politician becomes a kind of avatar: less a leader than a delivery system for vibes, symbols, and narrative coherence.
Context matters: McLuhan is writing in the long shadow of television’s rise, when debates, ads, and “presence” begin to feel more decisive than party machinery or local organizing. His line anticipates the shift from ideological persuasion to brand strategy: charisma over competence, camera fluency over institutional knowledge. Read now, it lands as prophecy and diagnosis: the triumph of the photogenic, the viral clip, the curated authenticity. When images are more powerful than people, accountability becomes negotiable, because you can always update the frame.
The subtext is bleakly practical. An “image” doesn’t have to pass legislation, balance budgets, or withstand the contradictions that break a person. An image can be endlessly optimized, focus-grouped, refreshed, insulated from consequence. It can be everywhere at once, emotionally legible in a glance, and resilient in a way a human speaker isn’t. The politician becomes a kind of avatar: less a leader than a delivery system for vibes, symbols, and narrative coherence.
Context matters: McLuhan is writing in the long shadow of television’s rise, when debates, ads, and “presence” begin to feel more decisive than party machinery or local organizing. His line anticipates the shift from ideological persuasion to brand strategy: charisma over competence, camera fluency over institutional knowledge. Read now, it lands as prophecy and diagnosis: the triumph of the photogenic, the viral clip, the curated authenticity. When images are more powerful than people, accountability becomes negotiable, because you can always update the frame.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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