White Noise

Media Saturation and Consumerism

White Noise sets the stage for an exploration of media saturation and consumerism, the two themes I am beginning to focus on. Don DeLillo offers a satirical but poignant look at the ways broadcast media is penetrating the American home and family unit. He offers examples of our obsession with technology and the mesmerizing power of the television signal. His vision of American society is an exaggeration of trends that were present in mid-eighties America and are even more truthful today. It is obvious that broadcast media influences our lives, our goals and desires, and our family structure. I am concerned with the political power it exerts over us by encouraging consumerism and the desire for material goods.

The power that consumer products exert on us:

"I like clearing my arm from the folds of my garment to look at my watch. The simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish. Decorative gestures add romance to a life. Idling students may see time itself as a complex embellishment, a romance of human consciousness, as they witness the chairman walking across campus, crook'd arm emerging from his medieval robe, the digital watch blinking in late summer dusk" p9

"'Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.'" p23

"Here we don't die, we shop." p38

He sees the American household as signal:

"Murray came over to talk to the two girls and Wilder, something he did from time to time as part of his investigation into what he called the society of kids. He talked about the otherworldly babble of the American family. He seemed to think we were a visionary group, open to special forms of consciousness. There were huge amounts of data flowing through the house, waiting to be analyzed." p100

"I'd been seeing colored spots for years but never so many, so gaily animated." p39

The television signal and its presentation of reality:

"Waves and radiation. Something leaked through the mesh. She was shining a light on us, she was coming into being, endlessly being formed and reformed as the muscles in her face worked at smiling and speaking, as the electronic dots swarmed." p102

"It is when death is rendered graphically, is televised so to speak, that you sense an eerie separation between your condition and yourself." p137

The production of stimuli:

"'Your brain has a trillion neurons and every neuron has ten thousand little dendrites. The system of intercommunication is awe-inspiring. It's like a galaxy that you can hold in your hand, only more complex, more mysterious.'

'Why does this make you proud to be an American?'

'The infant's brain develops in response to stimuli. We still lead the world in stimuli.'" p180

To overcome the fear of death:

"You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." p272