The Scottish documentary pioneer (1898–1972) who coined the word "documentary," founded Canada's National Film Board, and studied the psychology of propaganda at Chicago — read out at length by Bob as a Canadian "fountainhead" of media study a decade before McLuhan. Grierson enters the dialogue as the man Don Theall "hung out with" in Montreal (and got ill from), and as one of the four figures in Paul Tiessen's essay on the Tantramar Marshes. The page holds Bob's biographical portrait and the early media-criticism it turns up. Best entry point: the "documentary" coinage and the "dope peddler" verdict on Hollywood.
Across the dialogues
Enters through Bob's long biographical read — the documentary father whose Chicago propaganda studies and NFB career make him a "fountainhead" of Canadian media study before McLuhan
The stature Bob assigns Grierson — a "pioneering Scottish documentary maker," father of the form on both sides of the Atlantic, whose NFB founding makes him the institutional root of the Canadian analysis of American culture.
"often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film."
The origin Bob reads out — Grierson "coined the term documentary" in 1926 reviewing Robert Flaherty's Moana, having come to media through WWI wireless telegraphy and a 1923 Rockefeller Fellowship to Chicago, where his focus was "the psychology of propaganda" and the mass-media shaping of public opinion.
"Grierson coined the term documentary."
Grierson's own early media criticism, which Bob prizes as premature McLuhan — the Hollywood "cinema magnate" who "does no more than exploit the occasion" of an age of undermined faith is "a dope peddler," an early reading of film as social narcotic.
"He also more or less frankly is a dope peddler."
Connections
Theall hung out with Grierson in Montreal and got ill from the drinking; the camaraderie that Bob says Don survived and Grierson did not.
In Paul Tiessen's essay both are among the four figures anticipating McLuhan in Canadian media study, with Lewis as the "fountainhead."