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ScrillaVille Podcast Radio show wth host Mc Willa Scrilla regarding 2Hot...

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Peyser, Thomas. "Globalization in America: the case of Don DeLillo's 'White Noise.'." CLIO 25.3 (1996): 255+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.

  Written in 1996 at Perdue University, author Thomas Peyser describes the historical influence and modern intensity that globalization has on everyday life.  The article focuses on Don DeLillo's exploration of the ramifications of globalization and the potential impact the novel itself has on the process globalization. Peyser best describes DeLillo's contribution to understanding globalization by arguing that DeLillo's "narrow focus on the privileged world of the white middle-class - exemplified in this novel by the academy - gives him the space to depict the way global forces impinge on old cultural boundaries and even how they disable the ver concepts of boundedness and community." This article does a successful job of connecting the relevant topic of globalization to White Noise and uses appropriate references and quotations for support.  

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"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." (White Noise, 66) 

Don Delillo uses White Noise to criticize modern American Culture. We have become over saturated with technology - television, radio, now the Internet, and smart phones. Our lives could be tracked and described in detail based on numbers alone.  But people are more than numbers.  Unfortunately, the Gladney family is constantly surrounded by their radio and television, almost to a point that they become members of the family.  The radio and TV interrupt at critical moments, they prompt family discussions, and they also are a viewed as reliable sources of information.  

Jack's son, Heinrich loudly voices his disapproval of our society's reliance on technology and the harm it can have on us.  Heinrich argues that “‘[t]he real issue is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day.  Your radio, your TV, your microwave oven, your power lines just outside your door, your radar speed-trap on the highway. For years they told us these low doses weren’t dangerous’” (p. 174). Everyone is concerned with fad diets, wearing the newest trends, avoiding foods that can cause cancer, but how often do people take into consideration the harmful effects of all the technology that is constantly surrounding us.  Nothing is natural about the technology we use today, it was all made from man, completely void of true organic material.  Sure some man-made things do help us for the better, such as shelter, but it just seems that something that the earth doesn't naturally give us, will only eventually harm us.  

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"I am the false character that follows the name around."

Jack Gladney is a complex character who loves his family, obsesses over death, and is constantly trying to assert his 'character' throughout the novel.  One main theme, aside from death and the critique on modern society, is Jack's need to create a facade in his professional life.  As a professor Jack is known as J.A.K. Gladney and walks around campus wearing a flowing robe and dark-rimmed glasses.  When in reality - his life outside of the College-on-the-Hill - he doesn't rely on any of these things for his identity.  When Jack nears campus or thinks he will run into someone he knows from school, he instinctively reaches for his glasses.  As if no one would recognize him or understand his greatness as the Hitler Studies professor.  

Jack does keep aspects of his true-self hidden from his family as well.  He considers himself close and deeply in love with Babette, yet he does not let her in on his deepest fear, his fear of death.  They have casual conversations and compete over who will die first, but neither of them let the other know just how much they think about, obsess over and fear death - at least not until half way through the novel.  

I think most importantly though to note about Jack is his love for his children and wife.  He genuinely enjoys being around them and wants what is best for all of them, even his step-children.  This side of Jack is important to the novel because even though it is a satire on American culture - with critiques about our technology, interests and intelligence - humans are still capable of love.  So maybe all hope isn't lost.  

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There was always another store, three floors, eight floors, basement full of cheese graters and paring knives.  I shopped with reckless abandon. I shopped for immediate needs and distant contingencies.  I shopped for its own sake, looking and touching, inspecting merchandise I had no intention of buying, then buying it.  I sent clerks into their fabric books and pattern books to search for elusive designs.  I began to grow in value and self-regard.  I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I'd forgotten existed. Brightness settled around me. We crossed from furniture to men's wear, walking through cosmetics.  Our images appeared on mirrored columns, in classware and chrome, on TV monitors in security rooms.  I traded money for goods.  The more money I spent, the less important it seemed.  I was bigger than these sums.  These sums poured off my skin like so much rain. These sums in fact came back to me in the form of exitential credit."  Jack Gladney,White Noise p. 83-84

Jack Gladney, Don DeLillo's main character in White Noise considers himself a sensible man who does not generally rely on consumerism to define or contribute to his self-worth.  However, after an encounter with a fellow professor, Eric Massingale, Jack is overcome with the desire to shop.  Eric described Jack as "a big, harmless, aging, indistinct sort of guy" (83) when he's spotted without his usual glasses and gown.  Jack does not narrate specifically how Eric's perspective of him affected his mood, but his actions and descriptions at the mall suggest a grander effect.  

Jack relies heavily on his College-on-the-Hill wardrobe to define his character as a professor .  He relies on his dark-rimmed glasses and flowing robe as a source of recognition and a source of self-regard and value.  If he did not walk around campus in a robe, would people recognize him or know he was a big deal, or would he go unnoticed by the majority?  

I think in this passage Jack captures the allure and draw many people have to shopping.  There is something about spending money, that either you've worked hard for or have not worked for at all, on something that will either make you look better or make your life easier in some way.  Clothing, apparel  accessories and other material purchases allow people to define themselves.  Usually, the clothes and appearance are the first things people notice about someone else, so why not make the best first impression?  There is also something about having that new shirt, or new pair of shoes that you cannot wait to wear.  Somehow, by having that new pair of shoes,  your day is automatically going to be better, you are going to get the attention you deserve, and last but not least, you're going to look good.  

American culture places a lot of emphasis and importance on consumerism.  Name brand clothing is the first pick for many consumers, regardless of the usual increase in price.  Sure a jacket is a jacket, and as long as it serves its purpose of keeping you warm, then why does it matter what logo is on the front or how much money you paid for it?  Except all you have to do is look around the UST campus and see an plethora Northface, Columbia and Nike jackets.  People get a sense of self-worth from their name brand clothing - like they are more important and they matter more because they can afford to wear a certain type of jacket.  And unfortunately this materialistic, superficial measurement of self-worth is applied to a variety of clothing pieces, accessories and electronics.  

Furthermore, when Jack was describing floor after floor, store after store, I instantly thought of the Mall of America.  The MOA literally has a store for everything imaginable, it is always packed full of people and it is almost a rite of passage for Minnesotans and a must-see-attraction for tourists.  The Mall of America symbolizes the American consumer culture and helps perpetuate the notion that it is the things you buy, wear and use, that define what type of person you are to others and yourself.  

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This is the new austerity, he said. Flavorless packaging. It appeals to me. I feel I'm not only saving money but contributing to some kind of spiritual consensus. It's like World War III. Everything is white. They'll take our bright colors away and use them in the war effort.

-- Murray Jay Siskind, White Noise by Don Delillo p. 18

On numerous occasions  Jack runs into Murray at the grocery store.  What seems everyday and typical to an average American, is profoundly interesting and eventful for Murray.  He takes such interest in the grocery store and the products readily available for mass consumption that he forces readers to look upon grocery store items under a different light.  With the help of his imagination and overall interest in American culture, Murray sees "symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material" (37) dispersed throughout the store.   Murray provides an outside perspective into American consumerism, with a sense of awe and wonder, rather than criticism and satire.