Television Language Of White Noise Essay Research

Television Language Of White Noise Essay, Research Paper

Television, in our culture, is by far the most dominant medium of communication and stimulation. The fears, the joys, and the horrors of the world are all channeled through television. As seen in the Rodney King police beating videotape, television can incite in a population sheer and utter rage and dark hostility. That same footage; however, can also detract from the very anger it incites. After countless times of viewing the footage, in a never-ending Simulacrum of the same grainy image, the masses became desensitized to its graphic violence. In fact, the repetitive viewing of the footage during the trial led to the desensitization of the jury and the acquittals of the “guilty” officers. In White Noise DeLillo recognizes television as a vital component in American culture and makes it a major focus of the novel. DeLillo uses media and more specifically television, as a symbol of the American Simulacra and links the Simulacra into his character’s escapism from the violent realities in White Noise.

John Frow, in his criticism of White Noise, rightfully focuses on television as the defining medium of the Simulacra in DeLillo’s America. Television, of course, by definition is a copy; it is a broadcast of something that has been filmed; it is viewed in millions of homes worldwide, each television flickering the same image into the sub-conscious eye. Frow presents a close reading of a speech Murray gives to his students:

they’re already too old to figure importantly in the making of society. Minute by minute they’re beginning to diverge from each other. “Even as we sit here,” I tell them, “you are spinning out from the core, becoming less recognizable as a group, less targetable by advertisers and mass-producers of culture. Kids are a true universal. But you’re well beyond that, already beginning to drift, to feel estranged from the products you consume. Who are they designed for. What is your place in the marketing scheme. Once you’re out of school, it is only a matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity” (qtd. Frow 50).

Frow seems a little distressed by this passage, for how bleak is a society if an individual is only important as judged by their perceived value/commodity relationship with television. Frow says, “The propositions are monstrous, but only because we find it so hard to believe” (426). By falling into the trap of this distrust of television Frow falls into the same trap that Wilder’s students stumble into: “Television is the death throes of human consciousness…They’re ashamed of their television past” (DeLillo 51). Frow does not see what Wilder sees: the beauty of the television medium as a means of escape. In fact, like the students, Frow is embarrassed that a relationship of value between humanity and television could even be established. Frow is astute; however, in noting that DeLillo is not interested primarily in the negative aspects of the television simulacrum, but instead in its importance to the American lifestyle. By saying that when one becomes devalued to television they become full of “loneliness and dissatisfaction,” DeLillo is saying that the reverse must be true. If one is connected to the experience of television one is satisfied and complete. This is seen in the Gladney household; anywhere that the television is located becomes a happy place where the family gathers. The “reality” reported on the television contains an operatic sense of beauty. Describing the Gladneys viewing television DeLillo writes, “Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping” (64). The beauty of the disaster epic is the beauty of the struggle of humanity against flooding in Bangladesh…against Union Carbide toxic event killing two thousand five hundred human beings…against mud slides in California … against any great adversity; adversity juxtaposed against the detached backdrop of blue-screen bleach-white toothed television. DeLillo cautions that we should not be frightened or repulsed by our vulture-like tendency to happily consume the bloodshed and gore of the disaster epic. After all, it is not true misery we are witnessing; it is only a copy of their copy of how the misery should be. It is only a televised simulation of the expected responses of “people” shocked out of their reality. Why should we fear a copy, it cannot harm us. Why should we fear our fascination with that copy; isn’t that fascination only human and in a way life-affirming. Our safety is in our distance from the actual object if ever there was such a thing; the Simulacra protects us from its danger. DeLillo writes about the Gladneys witnessing TV disaster: “For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is” (66).

The Toxic Event montage in White Noise can be paralleled to the Simulacra of television and the comfort it brings to those who experience it. The Toxic Event is not an event in and of itself but only becomes an event when it is made one through the official filters of media. Jack and Babbete discuss this perplexity during the onset of the Event:

“What if the symptoms are real.”

“How could they be real.”

“Why couldn’t they be real.”