As widely acclaimed for his slogans or theses such as “Global Village” and “the medium is the message”，Marshall McLuhan has long been chiefly identified as a media theoristHowever，the paradigm and inner truth of his media studies are basically literary or aestheticAs we know it，he once called his media studies “applied Joyce”What bridges the two fields is his pursuit of perceptive totality，and in this regard，McLuhan can be viewed as a representative of aesthetic modernism in the field of media studiesIn China，media studies become increasingly empirical，and to remedy this trend，the literariness and criticalness it originally held should be activated and enforcedAs for literary studies，which always enjoys boasting of its aesthetic autonomy，attention should be drawn to how the perceptions，or in McLuhans terminology，the “sense ratios”，are altered by the introduction of new media into daily affairs