©Copyright 2020 by Social Mentality And Researcher Thinkers Journal
SOCIAL MENTALITY AND RESEARCHER THINKERS JOURNAL Doı: http://dx.doi.org/10.31576/smryj.631
SmartJournal 2020; 6(37):1930-1935 Arrival : 04/10/2020 Published : 20/11/2020
MEDIA AND CONSUMPTION IN JON DELILLO’S
WHITE NOISE
Don Delillo’nun White Noise (Beyaz Gürültü) Romanında Medya Ve
Tüketim
Reference: Sarıbaş, S. (2020). “Media And Consumption In Jon Delillo’s White Noise”, International Social Mentality
and Researcher Thinkers Journal, (Issn:2630-631X) 6(37): 1930-1935.
Asts. Prof. Serap SARIBAŞ
Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Faculty of Literature, Department of English Language and Literature, Karaman / Turkey ORCID: 0000-0002-4079-8024
ABSTRACT
To understand the novel White Noise by Don Delillo, one should know the definition of “white noise”. It is the collection of sounds that electrical devices emit. Some of these sounds are perceptible, while others are not – yet they still exist. The colour of the sound is considered “white” because it is synonymous to white light, which is a collection of visible wavelengths of light. The sounds which TVs, radios, or any other electrical devices produce are considered white noise, and it is these sounds which are dominant in the book. The novel is based on a media-centred society. The media referred to in the novel is generally radio and TV, however, sometimes it shifts to magazines. These media have a great effect on human beings, with each type becoming as familiar as a family member within a household. Throughout the novel, information given through the media takes centre stage as people can access all types of information via the media. The very notion of ‘white noise’ that is so central to the novel implies a neutral and reified media speech, but also a surplus of data and an entropic blanket of information glut which flows from a media-saturated society. The amount of information provided to the people in the novel is so excessive that it begins to control even their behaviours. In this essay, firstly, the effects of radio and TV media on people will be analysed since in the Gladney family home there are multiple television units, and the radio is turned on all the time. The aim is to show how these technological devices affect a person’s psychology and the lives of people. This first part will focus on certain characters that particularly show the effects of media on their personalities and behaviours such as Babette, Murray Jay Siskind, Heinrich, and Jack. In the second part, the theme of consumption will be covered. Consumption is related to the media as indicated at the above. In the past, it was only radio that was used for commercial purposes, but now that television has developed, they both play a large role in consumerism and consumption.
Key Words: History of Radio, Media’s Voice, Advertisement
ÖZET
Don Delillo’nun White Noise (Beyaz Gürültü) romanını anlamak için ‘beyaz gürültü’ tanımını bilmek gereklidir. Bu kavram, elektrikli cihazların yaydığı seslerin toplamına denir. Bu seslerin bazıları algılanabiliyorken diğerleri var olmasına rağmen algılanamaz. Sesin rengi "beyaz" olarak kabul edilir, çünkü ışığın görülebilir dalga boylarının toplamı olan ‘beyaz ışık’ ile eşanlamlıdır. Televizyonların, radyoların ya da diğer elektrikli cihazların ürettiği sesler ‘beyaz gürültü’ olarak kabul edilir ve kitapta baskın olan bu seslerdir. Roman, medya merkezli bir topluma dayanır. Romanda atıfta bulunulan medyadan kasıt daha çok radyo ve televizyon olmakla birlikte zaman zaman dergilerden de bahsedilir. Bu medya araçları, adeta evin bir üyesi gibi tanıdık hale gelmek suretiyle insan üzerinde büyük bir etkiye sahiptir. Roman boyunca medya aracılığıyla verilen bilgiler, insanların her türlü bilgiye medya aracılığıyla erişebilmesi nedeniyle ön plana çıkar. Romanın merkezinde yer alan 'beyaz gürültü' kavramı, tarafsız ve cisimleştirilmiş bir medya konuşması, aynı zamanda fazladan bir veri ve medyaya doymuş bir toplumdan gelen sınırsız entropik bir bilgi bolluğunu ima eder. Romandaki insanlara verilen bilginin miktarı o kadar aşırıdır ki artık insanların davranışlarını dahi kontrol etmeye başlamaktadır. Gladney ailesinin evinde birden fazla televizyon olması ve radyonun da sürekli açık olmasından dolayı, bu makalede ilk olarak radyo ve televizyon medya araçlarının insanlar üzerindeki etkileri incelenecektir. Amaç, bu teknolojik cihazların kişinin psikolojisini ve insanların yaşamlarını nasıl etkilediğini göstermektir. Bu ilk bölümde Babette, Murray Jay Siskind, Heinrich ve Jack gibi medyanın etkilerini kişiliklerinde ve davranışlarında özellikle gösteren belli karakterlere odaklanılmaktadır. İkinci bölümde tüketim konusu işlenecektir. Yukarıda belirtildiği gibi tüketim medyayla ilgilidir. Geçmişte yalnızca radyo ticari amaçlarla kullanılırken şimdilerde televizyon da gelişmiş ve her ikisi de tüketicilikte ve tüketimde büyük rol oynamaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Radyonun Tarihi, Medyanın Sesi, Reklam
1. INTRODUCTION “THE EFFECT OF RADIO AND TV”
Consumerism in radio started in the 1920s, when businesses first started to “sponsor” different radio programmes. Since almost everyone had access to a radio, it was an effective way to get people to use their services or buy their products. Soap operas started to be aired on the radio in the 1930s. Since they were sponsored by soap manufacturers, they became known as soap operas. “Soap
operas, one of the most socially disreputable of radio’s offerings, were kept off the daytime television airwaves until late in the 1950s, and the serial form was banned from prime time” (Hilmes,2002:4). Thus, they were considered low culture and looked down upon. As the main audience for these types of radio shows were housewives, soap operas were considered low culture. In White Noise, Babette listens to some programmes on the radio which she likes very much. She is affected by the advertisements in them. Not only Babette but also other members of the household are affected by these advertisements as well. The reason that they are all affected is that “Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It certainly contracts the world to village size, and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumour, and personal malice. But while radio contracts the world to village dimensions, it hasn’t the effect of homogenizing the village quarters” (McLuhan,1990:267). People are naturally curious about what is going on in the world and now they have the opportunity to learn about what is happening all over, so the outside world has been brought into the individual home through this type of media. Radio played an important role in society because people like listening to it. After the usage of radio as a political tool, it gained value in the eye of scholars. Previous to this, radio had very little academic value.
“Format radio [commercial radio] still attracts little but disdain from academic researches, despite a few notable exceptions (S. Douglas, Listening; Wall). Not until the rise of political talk radio in the ‘80s did the medium begin to receive some scholarly and critical attention mostly from a sociological perspective. Meantime, the number of hours that Americans spend listening to their radios every day continues to grow” (Hilmes,2002:11).
Even though the radio is not studied academically, it is still popular and people still listen to it since it is much easier to become lost in a radio programme than books or newspapers. “I live right inside radio when I listen. I more easily lose myself in radio than in a book,’ said a voice from a radio poll” (McLuhan,1990:260). People choose the easy way. As McLuhan indicates, “the power of radio to involve people in depth is manifested in its use during homework by youngsters and by many other people who carry transistor sets in order to provide a private world for themselves amidst crowds” (1990:260). It is clear in Delillo’s White Noise that the characters, in every field, spend their free time watching TV or listening to the radio in the car, house, at work or even when they are in trouble during an airborne toxic event. Their aim is always the same: to get information.
2. NATURE IS NO LONGER NATURE
After the radio, TV became one of the most important household items. Families began to gather in front of the TV and watch it altogether after listening to the radio. In White Noise, Friday night is the night that the family watches TV together. “Babette had made it a rule. She seemed to think that if kids watched television one night a week with parents or step-parents, the effect would be to de-glamorize the medium in their eyes, make it wholesome domestic sport” (Delillo,1985:16). It is the new “hearth” of the American Family. “For its [radio] forty years it provided one of our primary means of negotiating the boundaries between public life and the private home, becoming the American family’s ‘electronic hearth’ (Tichi), our central acculturating and nationalizing influence during the turbulent decades of the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s” (Hilmes,2002:1). In the novel, the effect of TV or radio is already seen as a negative thing even though it is not declared so aloud by Babette or Jack. Through her actions, Babette tried to decrease the attraction to the television by making it a family event. On the other hand, since Babette forces the family to watch TV together, the TV becomes a central character in their lives. Thus, watching TV becomes a natural family activity and this makes TV more powerful to control personal psychologies. It becomes the medium of action in the family far from being simply entertainment.
radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber” (McLuhan,1990:261).
At first, people believed everything said on the radio. Even if it was a story, made up to entertain or horrify the listener; people perceived those stories as facts. For instance, if the radio said there was a war coming, it was assumed to be reality. In White Noise, the same situation exists. Jack’s son Heinrich is addicted to the radio and believes that the radio always speaks the truth. He is a media fanatic and acts according to whatever he hears. The conversation between father and son shows how Heinrich is under the control of media:
“(…) It’s going to rain tonight.’ -It’s raining now,’ I said. -The radio said tonight.’
-Look at the windshield,’ I said. ‘Is it rain or isn’t it?’ -I’m only telling you what they said.’
-Just because it’s on the radio doesn’t mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.’
-Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they’re right. This has been proved in the laboratory” (Delillo,1985:23).
Heinrich becomes too interested in the airborne toxic event as he is under the control of TV and radio news. He undertakes the mission of informing people about the event and finally he becomes the media itself. He becomes the reporter of the incident for his family and he starts to talk about Nyodene D. “Nyodene D. is a whole bunch of things thrown together that are by-products of the manufacture of insecticide. The original stuff kills roaches, the by-products kill everything left-over” (Delillo,1985:131). He is the radio now.
Radio and television surround the Gladney family. Their lives are within the television and radio or the TV and radio are within their lives. They are always there as background noise, and sometimes that noise even provides a commentary on their situations. All events in their lives – Babette’s affair with Willie Mink, simply having lunch, going to school, etc. – feature the background noise of the media. “After dinner, on my way upstairs, I heard the TV say: ‘Let’s sit half lotus and think about our spines” (Delillo,1985:18). Sometimes the sound breaks the conversation between people. “Someone turned on the TV set at the end of the hall, and a woman’s voice said: ‘If it breaks easily into pieces, it is called shale. When wet, it smells of / like clay” (Delillo,1985:28). In this moment, Jack and Babette’s bedtime conversation is interrupted. Characters live within these kinds of noises. The technological devices and the noises they produce seem to become a member of their family. Radio is sometimes used to get away from the moment. It helps to distract the characters. “I turned off the radio, not to help me think but to keep me from thinking” (Delillo,1985:126). Jack does not want to think about the airborne toxic event so he turns off the radio in order to escape from that moment.
The radio plays a very important role because people, especially the Gladney family, count on the news they hear very much. Whenever they hear of a new symptom, for instance, one of the Gladney children purports that she or he has that particular symptom. Denise and Steffie have the first symptoms announced on the radio; however, after doing some research, the symptoms change. The media controls the girls’ psychology and makes them react accordingly. They are under its control, just like Heinrich.
It is not only the TV and radio that appear as mass media in the Gladney family. Print media also has a prominent role in their lives. Babette reads tabloids so much that she becomes the image of tabloids in the novel. “At breakfast, Babette read all our horoscopes aloud, using her storytelling voice. I tried not to listen when she got to mine, although I think I wanted to listen, I think I sought some clues” (Delillo,1985:18). Jack cannot resist listening to Babette read the horoscopes because he is just as bound to media as the others. Jack and Babette also like reading some erotic tabloids about extramarital affairs before having sex. As the novel goes on, Babette begins to read newspapers and tabloids for others as they evacuate their homes. “Babette employed her storytelling voice, the same sincere and lilting tone she used when she read fairy tales to Wilder or erotic passages to her husband in their brass bed high above the headlong traffic hum” (Delillo,1985:142). She is like Heinrich here. She becomes a reporter of the news and a storyteller.
The media in the novel affects people’s perspectives and behaviours. Media changes reality, the perspective of the characters, and the originality of things. Nature is no longer nature. Murray and Jack go to see “The Most Photographed Barn in America.” Murray says “We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura” (Delillo,1985:12). They listen to the noises of cameras and then Murray asks: “What was the barn like before it was photographed? What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can’t answer these questions because we’ve read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can’t get outside the aura. We’re part of the aura” (Delillo,1985:13). “During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well” (Benjamin,1936:4). The historical developments about technology decide what nature is here. Walter Benjamin argues the loss of aura with the reproduction of it. By photographing the barn, the original aura is not there anymore. As Murray says, they are now part of the aura because of technology, because of the lack of “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Benjamin,1936:3).
People like scandalous news. Such news grabs the attention of the audience or the listener. Earthquake, floods, fires and the like are phenomenal incidents which might never happen to rich people according to Jack. That is why he and people like him want to see such news on the television while they are in front of it. This type of news is good and thrilling as long as it does not happen to the audience. “(…) we gathered in front of the set, as was the custom and the rule, with take-out Chinese. There were floods, earthquakes, mud slide, erupting volcanoes. We’d never before been so attentive to our duty, on Friday assembly. (…) Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping” (Delillo,1985:64). Jack has stereotypical beliefs about different socio-economic classes and he tries to get rid of his concerns by saying bad things happen to poor people. He is like Heinrich surrounded by the TV and radio (media) and the images they create. He has seen bad things happened to the poor. Now, he thinks that “we live in a neat and pleasant worn near a college with quaint name. These things don’t happen in places like Blacksmith” (Delillo,1985:114). Media becomes a disaster in Jack’s life. He sees reality but he wants to deny it.
3. THE CONSUMPTION THEME
The novel’s very first page begins with the theme of consumption. The narrator describes the students around him and the things that the students have. They have with them “onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints” (Delillo,1985:3). These are all items to be consumed. In addition to that, Babette buys yogurt all the time but never eats it. Denise says:
Because she thinks if she keeps buying it, she’ll have to eat it just to get rid of it. It’s like she’s trying to trick herself” (Delillo,1985:7).
Hitler is a symbol of consumption in the novel because the media advertises, and if one stops following society’s rules of consumption there would be a problem. It would alienate that person from society as he or she does not want to follow the traditional shopping rules. Babette is the same. She keeps buying yogurt in order to follow the crowd. If she does not buy it, she feels guilty. She buys it but does not eat it and again she feels guilty because it spoils.
The side effect of television is to encourage people to consume. TV advertisements become embedded in our brains. For instance, people are eating and shopping too much. “Blacksmith is full of obese adults and children, baggy-panted, short-legged, waddling. They struggle to emerge from compact cars; they don’t sweat suits and run in families across the landscape; they walk down the street with food in their faces; they eat in stores, cars, parking lots, on bus lines and movie lines, under the stately trees” (Delillo,1985:14). Obesity is a problem related to over-consumption. Fast food advertisements on radio and TV encourage people to consume those foods. As a result, they become addicted to them. In the novel, it is not only advertising on television or radio that influences characters, but also telephone advertising. While Jack is talking to Babette in the kitchen, the phone rings. “The phone rang, and I picked it up. A woman’s voice delivered a high-performance hello. It said it was computer-generated, part of a marketing survey aimed at determining current levels of consumer desire. It said it would ask a series of questions, pausing after each to give me a chance to reply” (Delillo,1985:48). Since technology is everywhere and not restricted to only TV and radio, commercialism is everywhere, too.
Not only is over-eating related to consumption craziness, but also to the Cosmopolitan Culture. It means that while some people eat without stopping, some people shop without thinking. “(…) the women carefully groomed, the men purposeful and well dressed, selecting shopping carts from the line outside the supermarket” (Delillo,1985:14). As a further example, the character Murray Jay Siskind mainly appears in the novel while shopping in a supermarket. In addition, Delillo uses many brand names throughout his novel, which irritates the reader as it seems that the book is also an advertisement. This is his way of showing the media’s voice in daily life. Delillo uses those brand names in order to emphasize the importance and the very presence of consumption in people’s lives.
Although Siskind’s character is seen as a consumer in the novel, the reader is aware that the character can see the negative aspects of media and its effects on consumption. Siskind believes that looking directly at the TV is important to make it beneficial for humans. However, he is also aware that consumption is encouraged by the colourful packages and that they are waste of money. “This is the new austerity. Flavourless packaging. It appeals to me. I feel I’m not only saving money but contributing too some kind of spiritual consensus. It’s like World War III. Everything is white. They’ll take our bright colours away and use them in the war effort” (Delillo,1985:18). Although Siskind is mocking the army in this passage, he is also trying to make the point that quality is more important than quantity. When shopping in the supermarket, one often chooses products with superior packaging. Yet, the appearance of the package does not always guarantee the quality of the product.
A final type of consumption can be seen through Babette’s drug addiction. “An ad caught my eye. Never mind exactly what it said. Volunteers wanted for secret research. (Delillo,1985:192). This particular advertisement starts Babette addiction to Dylar, an unknown drug which she will do anything to obtain. She goes so far as to have an affair with Mr. Gray in order to support her habit. This type of consumption is different from that of food or goods, yet it is still consumption. Babette allows her body and dignity to be consumed so that in return she can consume the drug Dylar.
4. CONCLUSION
White Noise is a natural thing in the novel. If technology did not exist under any circumstances, it would be a disaster for characters in the novel. As one can understand from the information given above, the world became globalized thanks to radio and TV so it is not difficult to learn about any event in any part of the world. It is clearly stated in the novel White Noise that “technology with a human face” appears. Each electronic device is part of a human being. Sometimes a human being might do the duty of a radio or newspaper as Heinrich and Babette do in the novel.
As long as media technology develops, its effect on people and their subsequent consumption will increase, too. While some people believe that radio or TV for entertainment and commercial purposes are considered low-class or uncultured, these media will never lose their powerful effect on people. People need to hear voices around them even though they are not real. And this unconscious or subconscious type of passive listening can cause real changes to people’s behaviours. Perhaps this is the reason why media is such an effective and popular method of imposing values or issues on society.
REFERENCES
Benjamin, W. (1936). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” N.P. 3-4 Delillo, Don. (1985). White Noise. London, Picador.
Hilmes, M., & Jason, L. Eds. (2002). “Rethinking Radio.” Radio reader: Essays in the Cultural
History of Radio. London: Routledge, 1-11.
McLuhan, M. (1990). “Radio.” Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. The MIT Press, 260-67.
Wilcox, L. (1991). “Baudrillard, DeLillo's White Noise, and the End of Heroic Narrative Contemporary Literature.” University of Wisconsin Press 32. 3 346-365.
