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)

primal force in American home. Sealed-off, timeless, self-contained and self-referring, similarly to the supermarket image. It's like a myth being born right there in our living room... (WN 51)." For a lot of people TV means too much: actually, sometimes I am amazed how much a lot of people are attached and glued to the 'metaphysical God

1 in my own surroundings as well. Again taking McLuhan's opinion, which also deals with waves and radiation: "At the speed of light there are no moving parts. At the speed of light you don't have a body. On the telephone, on TV, on the radio, you are discarnate. This is the age of discarnate man. And without a body you can't be human. You can be God or devil, but you can't be human (Powe 24)." Jack gives his own view in the next chapter (Chapter 11) saying: The boy [Eugene in Australia] is growing up without television, which may make him worth talking to, Murray, as a sort of wild child, a savage plucked from the bush, intelligent and literate but deprived of the deeper codes and messages that mark his species as unique. And Murray's reply is: TV is a problem only if you've forgotten how to look and listen. ...Root out content. Find the codes and messages, to use your phrase, Jack. (50) He adds later on: You have to open yourself to the data. TV offers incredible numbers of physic data... [The real thing TV provides us is] coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. ...sacred formulas (51). Jack and Murray represent two close, but not identical views: both recognize the extraordinary importance of myths and codes, easy to notice and understand signs for the sensus communis. However, Jack considers the media as a purpose, too. A similar paradox appears here as the one I referred to earlier in the contrast of European and American cultures. The two 'sites of experience,' using Eugene Goodheart's term (26), emphatic carriers and producers of myth, in chapters 9, 10 and 11 are the Supermarket and TV: anyway one can find many other contemporary mythical subjects in the rest of the book, too, such as Elvis, cars, Anglo-conformity, suburbia or the campus. To understand DeLillo's ideas concerning the role of media, one must know that he is a media-expert himself and seems to be perfectly familiar with the relationship of media, popular culture and literature, 198