Caught Between Simulacra And Reality: A Study On The Public Life In Don Delillo's White Noise

Recognized as Don DeLillo's most renowned masterpiece,White Noise won National Book Award for Fiction in 1985,which deserves our deep excavations and exhaustive anatomy.As a matter of fact,White Noise has been decoded comprehensively with innovative thoughts from diverse perspectives up until now,such as multilayer meanings of “white noise”,cultural syncretism,globalized identity,comparisons between “air borne event” and “September 11”,naturalism,ecological crisis,collective unconscious theory,archetypal criticism,and so on so forth.Despite abundant research achievements,there still exist inadequacy and blind spots which are worthy of being explored.On one hand,even if some critics have laid emphasis upon the phenomenon of people's consuming multifarious commodities to the fullest and the transformation of consuming pattern,namely demand-oriented one has been replaced by sign value-prioritized one,in the postmodern society,it is worth noting that semiotic consumption is not confined to overindulgent consumption without restraint,and similarly,having evolved into the stage of consumer society,postmodern society does not feature semiotic consumption solely.On the other hand,Baudrillard's simulacra theory has been repeatedly utilized by some critics to unscramble characters' imitating performances furnished by the radio in White Noise,nevertheless,the relevant analysis has been basically focused on Denise's and Steffie's outdated symptoms.Therefore,the insufficiencies of the previous literary research are established as the foundation for this thesis.The thesis consists of five parts.Chapter 1 sketches Don DeLillo's life experiences and the plot as well as the literature review of White Noise.Chapter 2 aims at analyzing people's consuming commodified objects in the postmodern society and shooting a wide-angle picture of the consumer society by virtue of Baudrillard's consumerism theory and text analysis.First,on the basis of Murray Jay Siskind's indulgence in holding seminars to appreciate the aesthetics of car crash scenes in movies,the trend towards visualization and the advent of image era in the industries of movie and photography contemporarily contribute to demonstrating the proliferation of information,namely people tend to give priority to the image-based information in comparison to the preciously dominant print-based information.Second,people's being hooked on consuming ample commodities,Jack Gladney's being addicted to wearing his academic gown and dark glasses,and his showing special preference to Hitler studies jointly contribute to illustrating the fact that what people consume is the sign-value of commodities so as to construct their own identity and social status.What's more,the emergence of cyber-words such as “zhongcao”,“anli”,“daka” in the current Chinese society provokes our reflections upon Chinese people's consuming patterns.Third,female body consumption in consumer society gets manifested in people's paying close attention to maintaining exterior self-image and people's obsession with browsing supermarket tabloids with erotic content involved.Consequently,female body is gradually reduced to an eye-catching commodity sign.Last but not least,American society in White Noise is replete with weird people and bizarre behavior,such as Steffie's indulgence in coupons,Babette's unnecessarily setting up useless courses and Howard Dunlop's congested and messy house.By dint of Baudrillard's simulacra theory and text analysis,Chapter 3 aims to disclose American people's living environment which is saturated with a variety of mass media,and to anatomize characters' simulating performances as well as the resultingly constructed simulacra world in the respects of television,radio,camera and advertisement.For one thing,excessive television viewing not only throws Jack Gladney and his family members into an illusory world where they are able to escape all calamities and catastrophes,but also exerts detrimental effect on the communication and cohesion inside the family and on the appropriate construction of their self-identity which should not have been established by means of mass media.For another,immoderate exposure to the radio and camera triggers people to switch their focus from the objective reality to the produced reality,thus submerging people into the simulacra world,in other words,a hyper-real world which is more real than real.Last but not least,the intrusion of advertisements which contain unreliable information tremendously degenerates people's cognitive capability.Chapter 4 conducts comparisons between American people and Chinese people when they are confronted with man-made disasters,namely the toxic spilling event and the COVID-19 outbreak respectively,in the aspects of death-fear,administrative omission and ethnic conflicts.Chapter 5 lists the research achievements and showcases the conclusion.Based on the aforesaid analysis and discoveries,this thesis rolls out a picture of Americans' public life in contemporary society that they are caught between the simulacra world and the reality world.Furthermore,this thesis unveils the pivotal element hidden behind all of the extracted fragments—human beings' dissimilation,which is embodied in people's attitudes towards commodities and consumption,people's judging ability and cognitive competence about the information mediated by mass media,and the extent that people make use of the advanced science and technology.All these issues are exactly what American people and American society are confronted with,but in the meanwhile,it is worthwhile for us to maintain vigilant about these issues due to the fact that they have been noiselessly lingering around Chinese society nowadays and even some of them have posed a huge threat to Chinese people and Chinese society.