The Infiltration of Popular Culture in DeLillos White Noise Essay

The Infiltration of Popular Culture in DeLillos White Noise In Don DeLillos satirical novel White Noise, we become introduce with what we might call a postmodern family - a group of people loosely bound together by birth, marriage, and common residence. But as we keep up this family, we notice that the bonds between them are strained at best, and that their lives have been taken over by some insidious new force. This force is popular gardening. For punter or worse, pop agriculture has infiltrated the lives of our fictional family just as it has the lives of real human beings. DeLillos purpose in the book is best illuminated by Heinrichs gloss after the airborne toxic event The real issue is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day. In other words, DeLillo states that popular culture is downfall - or, perhaps, has ruined - us all. We must first unpack what DeLillo, speaking through Heinrich, means by this statement. First, we notice that culture of some sort is important to a societys well-being - in fact, some would argue that a group of people does not form a civilized society unless they have culture. Now, high culture - the culture espoused by the ruling classes, such as theater, classical music, and the like - is usually delivered live. No radiation is required. In contrast, low or popular culture is generally transmitted by radiation - the television or the radio. Steffies Toyota Celica episode (154-155) is an example of this, as are the symptoms of the airborne toxic event that continually castrate in accordance with the radio. Furthermore, the fear of death figures prominently in the novel, and this is parallel to the obsession with youth. Many have blamed the American obsession with youth (e... ...ized by an obsession with the messages delivered by the radio. All the characters change the name that they use to refer to the event when the radio announcer does - a feathery plume (111), a billowing demoralize (114), and finally an airborne toxic event (117). But this is solitary(prenominal) nomenclature. More telling is the fact that the girls symptoms - actual objects with physical manifestations - constantly change with the radio reports. We discipline that Heinrich told her Denise she was showing outdated symptoms (117). How can symptoms be outdated? The only solution is that we really have become media lemmings, ruled by the suggestion of beings who exist only in radiation rather than by our own selves. We have become slaves of the media, as DeLillo so vividly illustrates - and we should be terrified. Work CitedDeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York Penguin, 1985.