Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Judit Ágnes Kádár: 'Kleenex-View' and Cultural Devaluation: Merchandise as Ontology in Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985)

where the keyword is MYTH. In his essay John Vickery quotes Ernst Cassirer when defining myth as: ...a mode of consciousness that symbolically structures the world and a record of the mind's processes projected onto the external world. Its symbolizing activity, therefore, contributes to the human creation of a meaningful and so called objective world. By so objectifying human emotions in image and symbol, myth serves the socially pragmatic function of generating a shared feeling and conviction of social and natural unity. (Vickery 79) Zsolt Virágos explains in his essay why and how this originally positive, "ideologically attuned myth-making (30)" changes the 'generation of shared feelings' into something dangerous. DeLillo applied a similar theme in his Libra, where the metanarrative nature of media is in focus, and there is a further example: the ongoing 'live' metanarrative process concerning the O. J. Simpson case each day on CNN and in other media in 1995 or the constantly enriching metanarrative coverage of 9.11, the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in New York and its aftermath. The quest for a firm center is lost and substituted by beliefs in different myths, like clichés, political religion, technology, myth of the apocalypse and the myth of New World innocence, in Virágos's terms; such metaphors as John Winthrop's 350 year old idea of 'a city-upon-a-hiir, the myth DeLillo directly refers to in the text when mentioning the 'College-on-the-Hill.' To some extent, White Noise gives the criticism of the monomyth-seeking conformism, the 'mainframe' as DeLillo calls it (WN 46) ,that is presented in popular culture reinforcing 'core values.' Iris Murdoch claims that the problem is the "over-willingness to depend upon 'myth' (Kermode 123)." The novel also deals with the period of uncertainty, when 'competitive myths' appear. Probably the reason why DeLillo's White Noise, and in particular the chapters analyzed here, focus on contemporary Americans' attachment to popular culture myths is the recognition that: 1. after many classical and avant-garde attempts in arts, people want something that is understandable for everyone ('sensus communis'), taken to extremities in the novel: they need a kind of 'Kleenex-view' provided by the Supermarket Values of TV culture, a defense safety199