Sherry Mathews

Lit4433

10/5/03

Media in ‘White Noise’

There are three types of people; the people that want desperately to be completely apart of the media world, those who want out, and those who walk the invisible line between the two. What the types do not know is that they are, and will always be, part of the global white noise that makes up the media. The media includes not just television, radio, movies, and books but anyone who has read books, watched television or movies, or listened to the radio. Although it might be easy to avoid the hard copy version of the noise, it is not as easy to avoid your parents, friends, teachers, and neighbors who have all been individually “infected” by all the media they have been consciously and subconsciously presented with in their lifetime. They will also never get out because the media is a cycle; it unknowingly causes us to be one way and because of this we rely on it, and therefore get affected in a completely different way. Then the cycle repeats. ‘White Noise’ by Don DeLillo includes all three types of characters and shows how they interact with each other. It also shows exactly how the media persuaded them to join one of these three sides.

These three types are the affects because the media forces a person into a category of thinking. Part of the trickiness of the media is that without it, we wouldn’t be who we are today. Jack’s trust in the media, Heinrich’s skepticism of the media, and the Babette’s bad decision making are all shaped by the media. The thesis of this paper is a direct result of the media (the media being ‘White Noise’).

“Krylon, Rust-Oleum, Red Devil,” (159).

Jack Gladney, the main character of the novel, is not only the narrator but also someone who is openly seeking his place in the world, and consequently, the media: “In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are. No one’s knowledge is less secure than your own,” (120). Jack is one of the most complex characters of the novel; he wants to find answers so badly, but is not willing to escape and instead he places a large amount of trust in the hands of the media’s gimmicks (i.e. technology). An example of this trust would be when the SIMUVAC man did a reading for him. Even though Jack didn’t know the credibility of the man or his organization he still believed every word he said and would proceed to worry about this systematic fortune reading for weeks: “Where was it located exactly? Some state agency, some insurance company or credit firm or medical clearinghouse? What history was he referring to? I’d told him some basic things. Height, weight, childhood diseases. What else did he know? Did he know my wives, my involvement with Hitler, my dreams and fears?” (140). If he was really thinking about it, he would know it was impossible for the SIMUVAC man to know his dreams but because the media promotes technology as this all-knowing all-seeing Wizard of Oz character Jack lets it goes unquestioned and puts all possible and impossible belief into the reading.

Media is such a double edged sword, it slowly shapes us into one of these three categories and then, once shaped, we rely on it either for justification, safety, or distraction. In one situation Jack is struggling with his fear of death and Murray explains to him that it is not our fear of leaving other people behind, it is our fear of being out of control of our own fate, we do not know what is going to happen to us, selfish, but true: “A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?” (294). He needs the media, just as many other people do, to feel sane, secure, normal, prepared. He also needs it to distract him from his own insecurities which, although he doesn’t realize, are also brought about by the media’s hold on him: “We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information,” (66). The night that Jack and his family were glued to the disasters on the news shows his reliance on the media for an escape from his own reality and it also shows where his fears of death are derived from; he watches the news where people die painfully and without warning which causes him to be scared of death.

Jack’s vision is a lot like looking at the Most Photographed Barn in America; he ca not look objectively at anything because of the cloud in front of his eyes. Jack Gladney is the type that desperately wants to be welcomed in the white noise. He wants to be completely enveloped in the noise not because it’s where he should be, but because Jack is afraid to think for himself and afraid of the consequences of living that way. The effect the media had on Jack was to make him want to hide within the media world, be a professor that wears dark glasses, and keeps secrets from himself and his family about his real fears and hopes.

Towards the end of the novel, Jack starts to have moments of realization. He sees that something has affected him to a great degree but he can’t put his finger on it: “I threw away the picture-frame wire, metal book ends, cork coasters, plastic key tags...I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they’d put me in this fix. They’d dragged me down, made escape impossible,” (294). Of course, when this does not work he reverts back to relying on the media for a solution and goes on a hunt for the Dylar: “‘I don’t want to ingest.’ ‘Yes, you do.’” (209). Babette explains to him that he is not just curious and that if someone handed him some Dylar, he would take it without question; his fear is too big for him to say no.

 Tommy Ray Foster is another example of this type. We live in a world that shows live coverage of wars, dead bodies, and riots. The media completely enhances this aspect of our imagination with movies such as Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and Phonebooth. Why wouldn’t someone who’s depressed be lead to kill when killers are commercialized, interviewed, and written about? It’s the easiest way to get attention in this world where murder is anticipated in the news. It’s also the easiest way to get remembered. We are bombarded with the importance of being remembered from grade school. We read history books to learn about the people who did big things, bad and good. The people in this type yearn to be remembered. 
 Jack Gladney would do anything to be remembered. He started the department of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill to be remembered in some way. He also did it, according to Murray, to be “protect(ed)” because “Hitler is larger than death” (287). Hitler will always be remembered because he killed, Tommy Ray will always be remembered because he killed, and Jack Gladney will be remembered because he taught about Hitler. All three of these people are apart of the same type and continue to perpetuate the cycle of the media; the effect, the need to resolve, the reliance, and eventually another effect. 
“MasterCard, Visa, American Express,” (100).

Heinrich, Jack’s son, is the type that wants to be completely free of the white noise. Although Heinrich admits that the media has direct effects on people, he believes that by admitting this that he is somehow excluded and is therefore a more enlightened human being: “What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything,” (149). This type of mentality is how Heinrich justifies actions of people such as Tommy Ray Foster. If no one really knows anything and we are all acting off of our “brain chemistry” then anyone can do anything they want to do (45). Heinrich is an active part of the media’s cycle because his thoughts are a direct product of the media’s presence. Without the media Heinrich wouldn’t be who he is; Heinrich’s skeptical personality is driven by his concepts of the media and if the media didn’t exist he would be a totally different person.

The scary part of the white noise is that it needs the type of people that recognize it to be a whole as well. God wouldn’t make any sense if Satan didn’t exist; everything has its opposite. This relationship explains why Jack and Heinrich need each other so much; they both need each other to feel that they are right.

Similar to Heinrich, Murray Jay Siskind is another character whose skepticism of the media categorizes him into the avoidance category: “TV offers incredible amounts of psychic data. It opens ancient memories of world birth, it welcomes us into the grid, the network of little buzzing dots that make up the picture pattern,” (51). The main difference between Heinrich and Murray is that although Murray wants to completely avoid the affects of the media on him, he is fascinated by watching it in others.

Murray tries his hardest to steer clear of media effects by buying non-label groceries and living in a very simple environment and manner. He is still affected though. Instead of accepting this fact he pawns off his media influenced ideas as “intellectual” when they are really direct products of the media: “This is a theory. We’re a couple of academics taking a walk. But imagine the visceral jolt, seeing your opponent bleeding in the dust,” (291). This type of talk reminds me of old mobster movies, the whole concept of countries going to war, people hitting a wall because they got mad at something, and the old saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.

“Panasonic,” (241).

The third type includes the people that ride the invisible line in between the two extremes. Babette was an example of this type; she had a very neutral personality in the beginning of the novel. She was the type of person that pretended like they were happy in the hopes that if they acted a certain way, even if it was a lie, they would be that way. She didn’t know why she was unhappy though: “She reads to him from the National Enquirer, the National Examiner, the National Express, the Globe, the World, the Star. The old fellow demands his weekly dose of cult mysteries. Why deny him?” (5). “Why deny him” sums up Babette’s entire outlook in the first half the novel; she was so oblivious to the detriment of her involvement with the media.

The media’s cycle is actually what bumped Babette up to Jack’s media type. She is afraid of death because of the subconscious affects of media and finds an ad in a tabloid to solve this fear: “That’s why I was so quick to notice Mr. Gray’s ad in the tabloid. I was reading aloud. The headline hit home. FEAR OF DEATH, it said,” (197). She completely dives into the media for an answer, trusting it with her life.

Babette was walking the invisible line until she ran directly into the conscious affects of the media. After her she switched types the cycle continued; she relied on the media for distraction from her problems: “Babette picked up a tabloid someone had left on the table…Surgeons use high-frequency tapes of mouse cries to destroy tumors in the human body…She put down the newspaper. After a while she said to me urgently, ‘How do you feel, Jack?’” (236). After her solution doesn’t work, Babette moves to the opposite end of the spectrum and tries to stay away from the media as much as possible. To do this she spends all of her time with Wilder who is too young to be affected by the media: “Active helps but Wilder helps more,” (263).

The children in the novel are also walking along the invisible line. Wilder, for example, is too young to realize the affects the media has on him: “He doesn’t know he’s going to die. He doesn’t now death at all. You cherish this simpleton blessing of his, this exemption from harm,” (289). Wilder though is still subconsciously being affected by the media because Babette depends on him so much: “ ‘Is it just my imagination,’ I said, ‘or is he talking less than ever?’” (264). It is obvious from this passage that Babette’s dependence has caused a drastic change in his behavior; this is how the media inadvertently affects him.

Steffie is also unknowingly affected by the media: “A little later I watched Steffie in front of the TV set. She moved her lips, attempting to match the words as they were spoken,” (84). By trying to match her mouth to the words spoken on the screen she is subconsciously letting that entire information soak into her had. This process seems really similar to osmosis, where you rest your head on a book to learn the information. It was said that if you listen to books on tape while you’re sleeping, you will remember everything in the book if someone asks a specific question. Subconsciously Steffie’s mind is soaking in all of the information that she sees and hears on television and at the drop of a hat this hidden knowledge will either hurt of help her in the future.

“The American mystery deepens,” (60).

So the big question is; how is the media able to affect us? It draws us in; it makes us feel as if we are apart of it, and we are. This novel as a form of media completely draws the reader in. The random one line quotes in this paper were just as random when reading them in the novel. These lines can be viewed as the subconscious media, like what you would hear when you play a record backwards. They are the hook; they draw you in because they are only for the reader’s eyes to see.

It is important to realize that no one is excluded from the media no matter how much they think they are and it is also important to realize that the two worlds (reality and media) can coincide. The media has and will always be the distorted reflection of real life; if the media lies it’s because the world contains liars. That doesn’t mean that we should hate the media though, it just means that we have something to work on.

In many ways media and people define each other; the three types of people make up the media and the media makes up the three types of people. Without the media, as we saw in Heinrich’s case, we wouldn’t be the same. Some people might think that would be a good thing, but if the media wasn’t spreading the white noise then it would be something else.

What I was wondering is why Don DeLillo wrote this novel. Was he just trying to create good media? Was he trying to show which category he belonged in? Was he just trying to make some money? Or was he trying to show that people can co-exist with the everyday white noise, that it’s doable: “And this is where we wait together, regardless of age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods…Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks,” (326). According to the media theory mentioned above, if the media (i.e. the novel) presents people that co-exist with the media then the reflection in the real world would be that people really co-exist with the media and that no one is alone in the “wait,” (326).