The Infiltration of Popular Culture in DeLillo's White Noise

The Infiltration of Popular Culture in DeLillo's White Noise

In Don DeLillo's satirical novel White Noise, we become acquainted with what we might call a "postmodern family" - a group of people loosely bound together by birth, marriage, and common residence. But as we observe 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 culture. For better or worse, pop culture has infiltrated the lives of our fictional family just as it has the lives of real human beings. DeLillo's purpose in the book is best illuminated by Heinrich's comment 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 ruining - 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 society's 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. Steffie's "Toyota Celica" episode (154-155) is an example of this, as are the symptoms of the airborne toxic event that continually change 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...

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...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 cloud" (114), and finally an "airborne toxic event" (117). But this is only nomenclature. More telling is the fact that the girls' symptoms - actual objects with physical manifestations - constantly change with the radio reports. We learn that "Heinrich told her [Denise] she was showing outdated symptoms" (117). How can symptoms be outdated?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 Cited

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1985.