White Noise

White Noise: Consumerism and Mass Media
By Sharon White

Jack Gladney, as a consumer may feel free, independent and powerful to create his own future, but the feeling of satisfaction soon fades away and the feeling of emptiness returns, because the only thing he really is able to control is the number of goods he can buy and the amount of money he spends. Mass consumerism creates a false sense of helping an individual find a unique identity. It actually kills the identity which assigns the individual to one of the many standardized groups of consumers. Jack Gladney, the founder and the college chairman of the ‘Hitler studies’, believes that just like the great German dictator unified the Nazis, Americans now long to be members of consumer groups in order to ward off death. Death is another interesting topic in this book. The main characters use consumerism to deny death. Anyway, death still faces individually, so it doesn’t matter what group you belong to. All the characters including Babette, Jack’s wife, are fixated on death. Babette has problems imagining death. At this high income level, even with all of the assets acquired, she is concerned with her health and is trying to find ways to get out of this fear. Instead of searching for the escape inside of herself she is finding external painkillers. She starts using some kind of Prozac-like medication called ‘Dylar’, which really does her no good and it only harms her health. John sticks by Hitler because Hitler is ‘larger than death’, basically just like any other celebrity used by people who are afraid to deal with their fear of death on their own.

But this doesn’t help him much anyway. Even Jack’s initials J.A.K., which were specially invented in order to have a better image, remind of the deceased American president. Sometimes Jack thinks about his gun, hidden in the bathroom, sometimes he wakes up and thinks of death (especially before his 51st birthday), often he thinks about who’s going to die first :he or his wife? The airborne toxic event was quite an experience for a death-fearing family.

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