A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality in Donal Richard Don DeLillo's Selected Novels

‫‪In the Name of God‬‬
‫‪the Most Gracious‬‬

‫‪the Most Merciful‬‬
‫‪i‬‬
‫دسترسی به این مدرک بر پایة آییننامة ثبت و اشاعة پیشنهادهها‪ ،‬پایاننامهها‪ ،‬و رسالههای تحصیل ت تکمیلی و صیانت از حقوق پدیدآوران در آنها ) وزار ت علوم‪ ،‬تحقیقا ت‪ ،‬فناوری به شمارة ‪/195929‬و تاریخ ‪ (1395/9/6‬از پایگاه اطلعا ت علمی ایران )گنج( در پژوهشگاه علوم و فننناوری‬
‫اطلعا ت ایران )ایرانداک( فراهم شده و استفاده از آن با رعایت کامل حقوق پدیدآوران و تنها برای هدفهای علمی‪ ،‬آموزشی‪ ،‬و پژوهشی و بر پایة قانون حمایت از مؤلفان‪ ،‬مصنفان‪ ،‬و هنرمندان )‪ (1348‬و الحاقا ت و اصلحا ت بعدی آن و سایر قوانین و مقررا ت مربوط شدنی است‪.‬‬
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‫‪University.‬‬
‫‪ii‬‬
‫‪University of Lorestan‬‬
‫‪Faculty of Humanities‬‬
‫‪Department of English Language and Literature‬‬
‫‪Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement of the‬‬
‫‪Degree of Master of Arts in English Language and Literature‬‬
‫‪Yonder the Reality: A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality‬‬
‫‪in Donal Richard Don DeLillo's Selected Novels‬‬
‫‪Supervisor‬‬
‫‪Dr. Abdol Hossein Joodaki‬‬
‫‪Advisor‬‬
‫‪Dr. Ali Khoshnoud‬‬
‫‪By‬‬
‫‪Hassan Beygi Mendi‬‬
‫‪February, 2017‬‬
‫‪iii‬‬
Abstract
Don Delillo addresses many diverse issues in his writings as a postmodern
writer and critic. However, he specifically investigates the experience of
the masses in living in a late-capitalist and media-governed community.
This study aims at depicting media representations of reality and truth in
two of most important works of Don Delillo, namely Underworld and Mao
II. The discussion of media is profoundly important in the light of
postmodern questions of representation and its relationship with reality;
that is to say, media and the images have overly deep psychological
influences on people and modern culture. Among many other postmodern
writers in the United States, Delillo investigates the ways through which
contemporary American individual is influenced by information technology
and consumer technology. In Underworld and Mao II, more than any other
work by Delillo, we witness the technological apparatuses not merely at the
service of better lives for human beings but, totally on the opposite
spectrum, they undertake the role of manipulators that seek to force-feed
the masses what they think is beneficial and simply hide those things that
seem too dangerous; in other words, people are totally controlled by the
discourse of mass media and technology and their culture, lifestyle and
mentality are forged by them.
iv
‫( از پایگاه اطلعا ت علمی ایران )گنج( در پژوهشگاه علوم و فننناوری‬1395/9/6 ‫و تاریخ‬/195929 ‫ فناوری به شمارة‬،‫ تحقیقا ت‬،‫ و رسالههای تحصیل ت تکمیلی و صیانت از حقوق پدیدآوران در آنها ) وزار ت علوم‬،‫ پایاننامهها‬،‫دسترسی به این مدرک بر پایة آییننامة ثبت و اشاعة پیشنهادهها‬
.‫( و الحاقا ت و اصلحا ت بعدی آن و سایر قوانین و مقررا ت مربوط شدنی است‬1348) ‫ و هنرمندان‬،‫ مصنفان‬،‫ و پژوهشی و بر پایة قانون حمایت از مؤلفان‬،‫ آموزشی‬،‫اطلعا ت ایران )ایرانداک( فراهم شده و استفاده از آن با رعایت کامل حقوق پدیدآوران و تنها برای هدفهای علمی‬
‫‪To My Dear Family‬‬
‫‪v‬‬
Acknowledgments
It is a delight to thank those who made writing this thesis possible. Of
course, I may not be able to express my appreciation to all of the friends,
siblings, kinships, and instructors; however, I try to mention some of them
in brief.
First of all, I would like to sincerely thank my family whose relentless
support encouraged me to keep on my studies. Above all, I am deeply
grateful to my parents whose sympathy made me stand on my foot during
my lifelong.
To accomplish this project, I am definitely indebted to my thesis
supervisor, Dr. Abdol Hossein Joodaki, whose calmness, patience, support
and just his being there was the main source for me. I express my deepest
gratitude indeed for never hesitating to answer my messages and guiding
me at the critical time of need.
I wish to show my utmost gratitude to my dear friends Saman Sadr,
Mohammad Sadeq Najjarzadeha, Salman Hosseini, and Ahmad Hossein
Zadeh whose being there to discuss the issues was such an immense source
of inspiration and back-up.
vi
‫‪Table of Contents‬‬
‫‪Abstract .............................................................................................iv‬‬
‫‪Acknowledgments ..............................................................................vi‬‬
‫‪Chapter One: Introduction................................................................... 1‬‬
‫‪1.1. Statement of the Problem............................................................ 2‬‬
‫‪1.2. Significance of Study ................................................................... 5‬‬
‫‪1.3. Review of Literature ................................................................... 7‬‬
‫‪1.4. Key Terms ................................................................................. 12‬‬
‫‪1.5. Methodology.............................................................................. 17‬‬
‫‪1.6. Scope and Limitation of Study .................................................. 20‬‬
‫‪1.7. Thesis Outline ........................................................................... 21‬‬
‫‪Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework .............................................. 24‬‬
‫‪2.1. Postmodernism: Postmodern Era ............................................. 25‬‬
‫‪2.2. Jean Baudrillard ....................................................................... 29‬‬
‫‪2.3. Simulacra and Simulation ......................................................... 34‬‬
‫‪2.4. The Notion of Hyeprreality ....................................................... 39‬‬
‫‪vii‬‬
2.5. Baudrillardian Hyperrealism.................................................... 45
2.6. Mechanical Reproductions and Media Simulations .................. 52
2.7. General Overview on DeLillo.................................................... 57
2.8. DeLillo and Media at the Age of Spectacles .............................. 60
Chapter Three: A Critical Analysis of Underworld: The Hegemony of
Spectacles over Reality ....................................................................... 81
3.1. Delillo and Technology.............................................................. 86
3.2. A Critical Analysis of Underworld ............................................. 88
3.3. Surrounding Reality and the Represented Reality.................... 95
3.4. Disappearance of the Real......................................................... 98
3.5. Medially Validated Reality……………………..........................100

Chapter Four: Technology, Mass Media and Terror in Mao II ....... 108
4.1. Technology and Mao II ........................................................... 111
4.2. Technology and Writing ......................................................... 115
4.3. Technology, Terror and Media ............................................... 119
4.4. Technology, Mass Media and the Future of the United State . 128
Chapter Five: Conclusion ................................................................. 133
Bibliography .................................................................................. 139
viii
‫‪Chapter I: Introduction‬‬
‫‪1‬‬
1.1. Statement of the Problem
―Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary
sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and
promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued
qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and
authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl
of empty signals.‖ (Jean Baudrillard, Simulations 66)
Postmodern era is regarded as an offspring of the remnants of modernism
failure. It is an uprising against the modernists' philosophy undertaking a
drastic change. The change of thought from modernism to postmodernism
could be considered as a preference for complexity over purity, plurality
over stylistic integrity, and contingency or connectedness over autonomy.
Amongst the multiple features of this era, media and the role it plays in
shaping the reality is a subject requiring a close scrutiny. Most of the
people, in their daily lives, are perpetually surrounded by media. No matter
if it is our entertainment, information, health, knowledge, memory, identity,
dreams, emotions, or even our death – all have, by now, been incorporated
by media.
It is impossible to understand our acting and thinking without
considering the influence of this mediation. The entire history of mankind
is inseparable from media, from language to the alphabet and the printing
press all the way to today‘s instant electronic communication. ―Every
interpretation of anything is medially determined‖; media is our means of
understanding through which we try to make sense of the world. Mass
media, now, has an enormous influence on both public and private life of
evey culture. In fact, individuals as much as nations today formulate their
agendas, memories, and identities in response to values and passions that
are increasingly formed through mechanically reproduced images.
The highly multi-faceted culture of postmodern era urged many
critics to debate over its instability and shallowness. One of the prominent
critics is the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) whose
works expand in various fields of studies like social, cultural, literary, etc.
He is also well-known, today, for the replacement of the past notion of
thought with his own novel one. Baudrillard is among the philosophers
who revolutionized all old traditional beliefs in twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. Regarding the ubiquity of media as a paragon of reality,
Baudrillard states that: ―media representations are representations of other
media representations rather than that of the external world‖(Kellner, Jean
Baudrillard, 1994: 63).
Above all the influences that media exerts, it is worth considering
how they mutate the real into unreal or as Baudrillard puts it a ―hyperreal‖.
Media and advertising simulate; they exist in a nonreal realm that holds as
much cultural significance as reality in the sense that the simulation also
constructs American culture and identity. Jean Baudrillard, in his theory of
simulation, asserts that postmodern world is the one in which the real is
substituted by the simulation of reality. In Simulation and simulacra
(1995), he states that: ―it is no longer a question of imitation, nor
duplication, nor even parody,it is a question of substituting the signs of the
real for the real.‖
Baudrillard believes that postmodernity was marked with a change
into hyperreality in which simulations have replaced the real. Accordingly,
in this research, it is mainly attempted to examine the impact of media
upon shaping hyperreality in the advent of technological capitalism in Don
Dellilo's Selected works including Underworld (1997) and Mao II (1991).
DeLillo's creative works, and many of the critical essays written
about his fiction, help to establish a tangible application of the theory
which leads to driving this study on. Factually, DeLillo satirizes the
hegemonic control that media and advertising hold over the mass of people
both on the facet of propagating a consumer culture and a hyperreal milieu,
as well. Thus, his fiction provides a lens through which these
manifestations of American media can be examined. To apply and examine
the concepts of media and hyperreality, the theories of figures such as
Marshal McLuhan and mainly Jean Baudrillard will be utilized. Above all,
the researcher, in an attempt to trace the manifestations of media‘s impact
on individuals‘ lives, acts, and traits as well as a media-drowned society,
demonstrates how media and its progenies disrupt the perception of ―the
real‖ and makes individuals conscious of such adverse effects in
perpetuating a media-governed society.
1.2. Significance of Study
Jean Baudrillard is a major figure in twentieth and twenty-first centuries,
and he is well-known for his vast fields of theories which analyze the new
life of modern man in the contemporary life. His works range from
Structuralism and Post-Structuralism to Marxism, from Marxism to neo-
Marxism and sometime anti-Marxism. He shifted his role from sociologist
to cultural expert and from a philosopher to a literary critic. While
Baudrillard has worked and written in various fields of study, many M.A.
theses are only concerned with Marxism and social prospective of his
theories and there is no specific thesis written based on the consideration of
media culture and hypereality.
Besides, Baudrillard's writings have not been studied completely,
since it is difficult to find them, read them in one try, and understand them
properly. Works like Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), Simulation and
Simulacra (1981), and The Conspiracy of Art (2005) are among his
complicated works which are written in ordinary and simple language but
nonetheless it is hard to understand what Baudrillard really means by them.
On the one hand, tracing Baudrillard's theory is a subject of study
which is rare to be done in an M.A. thesis. This matter adds more
importance to the novelty of the researcher's thesis and makes it one of the
original and new investigations for a thesis. On the other hand,
Baudrillard's theories came to prominence mostly after 70s and 80s which
are rather concomitant with the emrgence of Delillo's writing career. In
fact, it is suggested that Delillo, unconsciously, has depicted an American
milieu which has an affinity with Baudrillard's critique of America
thematically. Thus, it is strived to demonstrate how media technology has
usurped the individuals of perceiving the real and made the unreal seem
real in this research.
1.3. Review of Literature
The twentieth century has been strongly affected by a desire similar to that
of Russ Hodges for the real thing. Surrounded by images that keep
multiplying, people still live in a constant urge for the real. They look for it
in newspapers and magazines, in television, radio and on the internet, and
the more they watch, the more their distance from reality seems to increase.
DeLillo chooses television and supermarket as the places to which
individuals gravitate. Media is highly concentrated on advertising and
brand placement to promote consumerism culture. Both are sources of
nonstop stimuli, bombarding the individual with overwhelming array of
images and advertising. Delillo establishes the relationship between
technology and futurity as uniquely united in defining American historical
identity, claiming, "Technology is our fate, our truth."
Throughout the progression of DeLillo's oeuvre, literary critics have
attached the "postmodern" label to the author's works, an aesthetic and
historical classification, commonly promoted by the similarities between
Jean Baudrillard's ruminations about subjective reality and symbolic
exchange, and DeLillo's own Americanist literary representations of
subjective reality and symbolic exchange. Many of Delillo's fictions have
been investigated regarding critical postmodern theories including the
novels, Underworld (1997) and Mao II (1991). These selected novels have
been examined through different approaches as they are mentioned below.
However, to the best of the researcher's knowledge, none of them has been
analyzed in light of the controversial subjects of media and hyperreality.
Glen Thomas (1997) appraises the concepts of history, biography,
and narrative in uderworld. The novel is read in the light of textualist
theories of history, in that Libra refuses to see the historical record as a
fixed or stable entity but instead as the product of interpretation.
Marc Schuster in his paper ―Escaping the Third Person Singular‖
studies art and semiotics in underworld. Utilizing Baudrillard's theories, he
examines the work from different perspectives including system of objects,
the ―real‖ world and the abstract realm of value, and hypereality.
Joseph S. Walker in his paper ― Criminality, The real, and The Story
of America: The Case of Don DeLillo‖ studies the idea that the works of
DeLillo move beyond what is meant the simulation and the loss of the real.
He takes different novels under consideration including MaoII and
Underworld.
In ―Lee Harvey Oswald and the Postmodern Subject: History and
Intertextuality in Don DeLillo‘s Libra, The Names, and Mao II,‖ Thomas
Carmichael argues that the postmodern historical subject as depicted in
DeLillo‘s novels emerges as an effect of the signs and images that
constitute the subject‘s culture and that the proliferation of such
phenomena results in struggles that are textual in nature: the postmodern
historical subject alters the course of history by serving as a text that is both
informed by and transforms previous historical texts.
In "Postmodern Transformations of Art and Authorship: From Art
Production to Image Consumption", Corina Marculescu focuses precisely
on the cultural transition – in the particular fields of art and literature –
from modernist authenticity and uniqueness to postmodernist replication
and seriality, from the original artwork to its endless, depthless copies
within a techno-capitalist environment. He uses Mao II as a case study to
show how reproduction has become part of contemporary life, how art and
artists are packaged and turned into commodities, to explore the transition
from art production to image consumption as reflected by the change in the
notion of aura — from the aura of high-culture objects to the aura of the
simulacrum.
In " Consuming Narratives: Don DeLillo and the Lethal Reading"
sets forth a poignant critique of the social response to narratives in an age
that has integrated" aesthetic production" into "commodity production".
Along with a whole series of contemporary writersf rom, say, Paul Auster
to Mark Leyner, DeLillo trades upon the predicament of narrative
representation showing how cultural objectsin general and stories in
particular are fetishized in the public arena.
Joshua Adam Boldt (2001) in his thesis, ―Postwar Media Manifestations
and Don DeLillo‖, examines the relationship between American media,
advertising, and the construction of a postwar American identity. American
media manifests itself in several different forms, all of which impact the
consciousness of the American people, and the postwar rise to power of the
advertising industry helped to mold identity in ways that are often not even
recognized. He applies Americana, and Mao II as his case study.
10
Thoms Carmichael in his ― Lee Harvey Oswald and the Postmodern
Subjct: History and Intertextuality in Don Delillo‘s Libra, The Names, and
Mao II‖ tackles the question of postemodern and its chracteritics represnted
in Don Delillo‘s selected novels. He focuses on exploring the issues of
hostory and intertexuality and delves deep in taking a postmoden grasp of
the novel; he argues that intertexuality is, in fact, an in-built feature in these
novels and the novels are directly and emphtically are like mosaics of
references to and with many other works which form the basis of the novels
in question. On the other hand, the history that Delillo exlpores in the
novels in the history of a controversial point of history which is the Cold
War battle among the two suprpowers.
In ―Writers among Terrosits: Don Delillo‘s Mao II and Russian
Affair‖, Margaret Schanaln deals with the representations of the conflict
between American and the Soveit Russai regaradring the use of Atomic
power in World arena. On the other hand, she also delves deeply into the
question of Communism and how it is condemned by the American
authorities and the pressure on the American indidviduals who one way for
another found Marxism the only possble way to salvage the people of the
world regardless of their nationalities.
11
―Two‘s a crowd: ―Mao II‖. Coke II, and the Politics of Terrorism in
Don Delillo‖ written by Richard Hardack is a colorful and awe-inspiring
article about the question terrorism in the two mentioned novels. Hardack
arges that although the novel is, on surface, explores the outcomes of
writing in a period where written words have lost their power to change the
worls, it is in fact about terrorism and its effects on all people rehardless of
their position in the society. He belives that terrorism is the main focus of
Delillo in writing the novel Mao II and it is in this manner that Delillo has
tries to indicates the point of the lost position of writing in a world obessed
and worried with the issue of terror, terorism and the lost power of writing.
1.4. Key Terms
Postmodernism: The term ―postmodernism‖ first entered the philosophical
lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition: A
report on Knowledge (1984) by Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998). It
emphasizes the importance of power, relationships, personalization, and
discourse in the construction of truth and reality. Knowledge is situated in
time, place and other factors, and hence it cannot be generalized. People
construct their individual understanding from the unique and separate
situations. Postmodernism, thus, takes a holistic, systematic view rather
12
than a constructed, systematic view. It breaks from the philosophies of the
Enlightenment, which seek a universal system of aesthetics, ethics, and
knowledge. Postmodernism started in the 1920s and developed in the 1950s
as a critique of positivism and other structural and "scientific" methods. It's
anti-scientific, anti-establishment views can leave the reader bewildered as
everything they hold true is challenged.
Disneyland: Baudrillard, in Simulation and Simulacra (1995), states:
―Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra‖
(10). In his work, Baudrillard argues the ―imaginary world‖ of Disneyland
magnetizes people inside and has been presented as ―imaginary‖ to make
people believe that all its surroundings are ―Real‖. But he believes that the
Los Angeles area is not real; thus it is hyperreal. Disneyland is a set of
apparatus, which tries to bring imagination and fiction to what is called
―real‖. This concerns the American values and lifestyle in a sense that
―conceals the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus saves the reality
principle‖ (ibid). He also adds: The Disneyland imaginary is neither true
nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse
the fiction of the real. It is meant to be an infantile world in order to make
us believe that the adults are elsewhere in the ―real‖ world, and to conceal
the fact that the real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those
13
adults who go there to act the child in order to foster the illusion of their
real childishness. (11)
Hyperreality: It is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is
fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction
between where one ends and the other begins. It allows the co-mingling of
physical reality with virtual reality (VR) and human intelligence
with artificial intelligence (AI). Steven Best and Douglas Kellner in
Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (1991) define hyperreality as:
" the blurring of distinctions between the real in the unreal in which the
prefix 'hyper' signifies more than real whereby the real is produced
according to a model" (119). They also state, in Postmodern Turn (1997)
that the hyperreal is the "end result of a historical simulation process in
which he natural world and all its referents have been gradually replaced
with technology and self-referential signs" (101). No longer is there an
underlying reality which has an existence apart from the simulations and
simulacra. Rather, what we consider to be social reality is indefinitely
reproducible and extendable, with the copy indistinguishable from the
original, or perhaps seeming more real than the original. Video games
become more real than other forms of interaction, theme parks which are
simulacra become more desirable than the originals (Las Vegas,
14
Disneyworld), and even nature becomes better viewed through national
parks and reconstructions.
Reality: Reality is the conjectured state of things as they actually exist,
rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition,
reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it
is observable or comprehensible. A still broader definition includes
everything that has existed, exists, or will exist. These conventional
definitions of reality represent a larger problem in the attempt to locate the
real on the most basic level, for they are wholly circular, a set of signifiers
reflecting back at each other lacking the grounding necessary to render
meaning. The problem is unique to the word "reality", indeed almost all
words and signs are only able to refer back towards the internal exchange
of other signs in order to produce a theoretical anchor. The slippage of
reality, its elusiveness encountered even in a basic search for a definition, is
an element of the hyperreal.
Simulation: It is defined first as the action or practice of simulating with
an intent to deceive, then as a false assumption or display, a surface
resemblance or imitation of something, and finally as a technique of
imitating the behavior of some situation or process by means of a suitably
15
analogous situation or apparatus. On the other hand, Baudrillard describes
simulation as the savior of the real, as it can be a strategy to deter and
conceal the disappearance of the real and thus save the idea of "the real".
Jean Baudrillard writes in Simulations that an effective simulation will not
merely deceive one into believing in a false entity, but in fact signifies the
destruction of an original reality that it has replaced. He writes: "to simulate
is not simply to feign […] feigning or dissimulation leaves the reality intact
[…] whereas simulation threatens the difference between 'true' and 'false'
between 'real' and 'imaginary'".
Simulacrum: It is defined as a material image, made as a representation of
some deity, person, or thing as something having merely the form or
appearance of a certain thing without possessing its substance or proper
qualities, and as a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness of
something. The simulacrum is defined as a static entity, a mere image
rather than something that imitates the behavior of the real thing on which
it is based. Baudrillard alleges that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real,
but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Gilles Deleuze (1925-
1995) has consistent ideas with Baudrillard's conception of the simulacrum
as a system of empty signs that signals the destruction of the original reality
it is modeled after, though for Deleuze this destruction is brought about
16
because the simulation of the original is so perfect that it is no longer clear
where or what the original is. The original could still exist, but its existence
is irrelevant as we do not know where to locate it.
1.5. Methodology
Media‗s power over the American people is facilitated by constructed
simulation. Based on Baudrillard‗s "Disneyland", the media-oriented
world is hyperreal. It is specifically constructed in order to represent a
reality that does not actually exist. Within this constructed reality, the
individual is made passive. The world is nonthreatening and colorful,
stimulating and exciting. The consumer‗s acquiescence is natural and
logical and the images constantly persuade us to emulate the very non-real
reality.
According to Baudrillard, what has occurred in postmodern culture is
that our society has become so reliant on models and maps that we have
lost all contact with the real world that preceded the map. Reality itself has
begun merely the model, which now precedes and determines the real
world: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it;
nevertheless, it is the map that precedes the territory (i.e. precession of
simulacra) that engenders the territory" (Baudrillard: 1995:1).
17
Baudrillard states that when it comes to postmodern simulation and
simulacra, "It is no longer a question of imitation or duplication or even
parody but a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real" (2).
Baudrillard is not solely indicating that postmodern culture is artificial,
because the concept of artificiality still requires some sense of reality
against which to recognize the artifice. Instead, he points out the fact that
individuals have lost all ability to make sense of distinction between nature
and artifice.
To elaborate on his point, he argues that there are three "orders of
simulacra" including, in the first order of simulacra, which he associates
with the pre-modern period, the image is a clear counterfeit of the real; the
image is recognized as just an illusion, a place marker for the real, in the
second order of simulacra associated with the industrial revolution of the
nineteenth century, the distinctions between the image and the
representation begin to break down due to mass production and
proliferation of copies. Such production misrepresents and masks an
underlying reality by imitating it so well, thus threatening to replace it (e.g.
in photography or ideology); however, there is still a belief that, through
critique or effective political action, one can still access the hidden fact of
the real; in the third order of simulacra associated with postmodern age, we
18
are confronted with a precession of simulacra; that is, the representation
precedes and determines the real. There is no longer any distinction
between the reality and its representation; there is only the simulacrum.
The aforementioned study and the search for simulacra and reality in
Don DeLillo's selected novels necessitate a theoretical basis. In this study,
the novels are scrutinized in accordance with Baudrillard's hypotheses. It
demonstrates that the postmodern age depicted in these novels abounds
with signs and symbols in a way that reality is substituted with
hyperreality; that is, a reality assumed more real than the true real. Besides,
the main characters in the novels seem to be so drowned in the images and
the hyperreals that they are unable to recognize the reality. The researcher
aims to explore and unravel such scenes in these novels in which the
characters are unable to make a distinction between the real world and a
world in which the hyperreals manifest the actual reality.
In line with Baudrrillard's hypothesis on and about postmodern age,
the theories of other literary figures and critics, whose ideas can be
effective in unraveling the postmodern era, will be applied to the novels. In
this era, most individuals devote themselves to media and technology and
believe in this medium as a paragon of reality. Accordingly, the researcher
19
will also focus on media theorists like Marshal McLuhan's hypotheses on
media to excavate and track down the impacts of this medium in forming
hyperreality.
1.6. Scope and Limitation of Study
Don DeLillo has recurrently treated the concepts of consumerism and
hyperreality resulted from the obsession with media and advertising in his
profound works particularly the novels he penned in 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s. Consequently, the researcher has selected two novels (namely;
Underworld, and Mao II) that each one represents the advent of a decade.
This selection has been made so as to take a rather thorough glance at
DeLillo's works.
Underworld and MaoII will be investigated in light of Baudrillardian
hypotheses including simulation, simulacra, hyperreality, and media.
Besides, it is worth noting that this study places a critical emphasis on the
role of media since the growth of technology and its progenies are quite
evident within this span of time in America. To provide a substantial
foundation for the study, the researcher adopts other theoreticians' theories
to cast light on these concepts, as well. Thus, other theorists‘ ideas will be
utilized in each selected novel.
20
1.7. Thesis Outline
This study consists of five chapters:
The first chapter is the introduction to the thesis. In this chapter, the
researcher concentrates on the tenets of the study so as to provide a firm
backbone on which the practical chapters can rely. It encompasses the
general overview, the statement of the problem, the significance of the
study, key terms, methodology, review of literature, and thesis outline.
The second chapter is dedicated to the theoretical terms, where the
major tenets of these new-born theories are elaborated comprehensively.
Since the complicated terms of Simulation, simulacra, and hyperreality are
exclusively associated to Jean Baudrillard, the researcher attempts to
incorporate prerequisite information concerning these fundamental notions
coined by this French philosopher. Since the study is not confined to
delving into these notions in Don DeLillo's works, particularly media
representations and mass media theoreticians' theories are fully described in
order to acquaint the readers with these notions and make them form a
better understanding of the thesis. In line with exploring these ideas, the
author's main thoughts and beliefs regarding the postmodern era will be
presented in this text.
21
The third chapter also investigates the traces of media in
Underowrld. Although this novel is mostly not considered as a profound
work of DeLillo, it depicts the world‘s present situation, insofar as his
novel (his novels overall) is related to ―men-in-the-world‖ and he has an
acute criticism towards how everything that surrounds us is working
nowadays. Don DeLillo is concerned with the relationship people have
with a society dominated by the consumerism of images and things, and his
novels offer samples of how these processes are occurring in contemporary
world. Thus, the researcher attempts to demonstrate the postmodern media-
oriented society by treating and tracing the major character and other
characters, as well.
The forth chapter is an application of the theoretical framework to
DeLillo's Mao II. Mao II deals with the proliferation of mechanically
reproduced images. A major topic is photography and its effects on both
the individual and society: From ‗Yankee Stadium‘ to ‗In Beirut‘, Mao
II carries the reader full circle from photography‘s seemingly innocuous,
even benign, use as a preserver of memories, an attempt to identify and
maintain the image of a loved one, through its manipulative and destructive
power to level differences and efface subjectivity, to its unexpected power
to redeem identity.
22
The dissertation ends with a conclusion that discusses the dominance of
media and hyperreality over individual, societal, cultural and even semiotic
aspects of life. The magnitude of the American citizens‘ servitude and its
institutions are so tremendous that dim the feasibility of a normal lifestyle
without the influence of the omnipotent media. Through the theories
mentioned above, the dissertation is going to verify the claim that media,
consuming images, and hyperreality have dominated postmodern America.
The result is a new idol that has tied the followers and non-followers to its
inescapable systems. Finally, the research bibliography is presented at the
end.
23
‫‪Chapter II: Theoretical Framework‬‬
‫‪24‬‬
2.1. Postmodernism: Postmodern Era
―I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-
narratives‖ (Lyotard, 6).
Postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism or distrust
toward grand narratives, ideologies, and various tenets of Enlightenment
rationality, including the existence of objective reality and absolute truth,
as well as notions of rationality, human nature, and progress. Instead, it
asserts that knowledge and truth are the product of unique systems of
social, historical, and political discourse and interpretation, and are
therefore contextual and constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is
broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral
relativism, pluralism, self-referentiality and irony.
But what does it mean to use the term "postmodernism"? The
concept of postmodern has been so widely applied in every field that it has
lost any aspect of accuracy and scientific value. It is a dangerous term
because using it one has the illusion of understanding a determinate work
of art or a social condition, but, since it is an illusion, that same term does
not give a comprehensive understanding of the complexities which can
characterize one‘s object of analysis.
25
The term postmodernism is included as a subdivision of this
dissertation because all the books that are studied in it are commonly
acknowledged as postmodernist and the kind of postmodernism the
dissertation refers to is a literary one. In literary studies this term was first
used by Ihab Hassan in The Dismemberment of Orpheus, a book of the late
60s which mainly focuses on authors that we would now define modernists.
Twenty years later Terry Eagleton gave a definition of the term that
recognizes "the typical postmodernist artefact" as "playful, self-ironizing"
and that sees in it a reaction "to the austere autonomy of high modernism
by impudently embracing the language of commerce and the commodity."
There is a consensus among many critics who stress on the
recreational and ironic aspects of postmodern literature in contrast to the
more austere modernism. This is a simplification. It is crucial to stress that
the so-called postmodern literature developed during the second half of the
twentieth century, a moment in which technology and in particular new
visual and recording mass media began to acquire a dominant role in
people‗s life. In the 60s, when a part of the European intellectual debate
was concerned with the death of the novel as cultural form, the language of
cinema and television seemed to offer a very strong alternative to the more
plain structure of the novel.
26
It was thus unavoidable for the new novelists to confront these
languages, to discover through them new forms of narration that would
have opened a path toward a correct understanding of the forces of mass
media. David Harvey is right in arguing that "postmodernism" represents a
kind of reaction to, or departure from, 'modernism‗, but this statement
should be clarified by saying that postmodernism is a reaction to
modernity, departing from modernism. Postmodern American literature,
indeed, reacted to the new narrative styles created and promoted by
television and other mass media, using them in their work that was already
shaped with techniques that were mainly developed by modernism.
The modernist sensibility is present under the form of a critique of
the use of those same mass media that influenced them. Writers like Don
DeLillo, who is usually considered distant from these themes, show himself
to have been always conscious, in his novels, of mass media and the
technologies, and the dualism between word and image as a conflict
between individuals and a system that tries to devour them in its logic is
presented.
Postmodernism is somehow honored with the fact that it has
liberated the cultural and social theory from the limitations of meta-
27
narratives.This movement was somehow the start of a new era. It
revolutionized almost everything relating to cultural and social issues and
thus independent elements like identity and consumerism and so on:
The attack on grand narratives is not restricted to science and
overarching theories; more importantly it is an attack on
intellectual conventions that could at least distinguish opinion
from theory ,an incoherent argument from a coherent
argument ,theory from fiction ,theory from reality ,an intent at
truthful representation from playful fiction and so on. This is
the legacy of postmodern methodology.As these conventions
have fallen from grace, anything goes. The green light has
been given to poor scholarship, truncated thinking and weak
theory.Indeed, it no longer seems important to make such
identifications since they presuppose the validity of the
conventions that belong to an earlier era and are deemed to be
no longer relevant (Bauman 19).
Throughout the 1980s, the social critics had the perspective that most
of the well-developed capitalist communities were subjected to integral
changes. The alleged changes are in production and technology, the
28
growing effect of informatics, the dominance of electronic media, and
decline of heavy industries. We may attribute these changes as Fordism, the
revolutionizing of the requirements for work, the dissolution of
communities and the changing of the roles that were previously attributed
to genders. All these changes have a unique message that the new era is
conceived with insubordinate modifications due to the occurrence of a
period. This allegedly period surpasses the bounds of its prior epochs and
subverts any antediluvian restrictive structures, in other words,
deconstructs them.
The supposed changes that we merely connect them as being most
pertinent to the establishment of the latest ideology of consumerism had
undeniable effect in this process are the shift from Fordist to post-Fordist
forms of production. The change from a life-focus centered on work to one
on consumption; the replacement of fixed identities with fluid,
consumption-based identities and the de-materialization of consumption
(Ballesteros 130).
2.2. Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was born to a peasant family in Reims, north-east France,
on July 29, 1929. He was the first in his family to attend university when he
29
moved to Sourbonne University in Paris. There he studied German
language, which lead him to begin teaching the subject at a provincial
Lycee, where he remained from 1958 until his departure in 1966. While
teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature, and translated
the works of such authors as peter Weiss, Bertold Brecht, and Wilhelm
Muhlmann. Gradually, Baudrillard commenced to transfer to sociology;
eventually completing his doctoral thesis The System of Objects (1996)
under the tutelage of Henri Lefebvre.
In 1986, he moved to IRIS (Institute de Recherche' et d'Information
Socio-E'conomique), where he spent the latter part of his teaching career.
During this time, he took a few steps away from sociology as a discipline.
After ceasing to teach full time, he rarely identified himself with any
particular discipline, though he remained linked to the academic world.
During the 1980s and 90s, his books gained, to a great extent, a wide range
of addressees as an intellectual and thinker. He died of illness on March
6th, 2007, at the age of 77.
Baudrillard was also a social theorist and critic best known for his
modes of mediation and of technological communication. His writing,
although consistently interested in the way technological progress affects
30
social change, covers diverse subjects- from consumerism to gender
relations to the social understanding of history to journalistic commentaries
about AIDS and cloning.
His published work emerged as part of a generation of French
thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Jean-francois Lyotard (1924-
1998), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), who
all shared an interest in semiotics, and he is often seen as a part of the
poststructuralist philosophical school. In common with many
poststructuralists, his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that
signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how
particular words or "signs" interrelate. Baudrillars, like other
poststructuralist, hypothesized that meaning is brought about through
systems of signs working together.
Following the footsteps of the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure, Baudrillard argued that meaning is based upon an absence (so
"dog" means "dog" not because of what the word says, but because of what
the word does not say: "cat", "goat", "tree", etc.). In fact, he viewed
meaning as near enough self-referntial: objects, images of objects, words,
31
and signs are situated in a web of meaning: one object‘s meaning is only
understandable through its relation to the meaning of other objects.
From this starting point, Baudrillard constructed broad theories of
human being based upon this kind of self-referentiality. His pictures of
society portray societies always searching for a sense of meaning that
remains consistently elusive. In contrast to poststructuralist such as
Foucault, for whom the search for knowledge always created a relationship
of power and dominance, Baudrillard developed theories in which the
excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge lead almost inevitably to a
kind of delusion. In Baudrillard's view, the human subject may try to
understand the non-human object, but because the object can be only
understood according to what it signifies and because the process of
signification immediately involves a web of other signs from which it is
distinguished.
This never produces the desired results. The subject, rather, becomes
seduced by the object. He argued that, in the last analysis, a complete
understanding of the human life is impossible, and when people are
seduced into thinking otherwise they become drawn toward a "simulated
version of reality" or, to use one of his neologisms, a state of "hyper-
32
reality". This is not to say that the world becomes unreal, but rather that the
faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together
into one supposedly coherent picture, the more insecure and unstable it
looks and the more fearful societies become. Reality, in this sense, "dies
out."
Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that in the late twentieth century,
"global" society, the excess of signs and of meaning had caused a (quite
paradoxical) effacement of reality. In this world, neither liberal nor Marxist
utopias are any longer believed in. People live, he argued, not in a "global
village", to use Marshal McLuhan's (1911-1980) well-known phrase, but
rather in a world that is ever more easily petrified by even the smallest
event.
Because the "global" world operates at the level of the exchange of
signs and commodities, it becomes ever blinder to symbolic acts such as
terrorism. In Baudrillard's work the symbolic realm, which he develops a
perspective on through the anthropological work of Marcel Mauss (1872-
1950) and Georges Bataille (1897-1962), is seen as quite distinct from that
of signs and signification. Signs can be exchanged like commodities;
33
symbols, on the other hand, operate quite differently: they are exchanged,
like gifts, sometimes violently as a form of potlatch.
2.3. Simulacra and Simulation
In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard theorizes the emergence of a new
theory of signification, one that resembles the Saussarian system of signs in
reverse. It is almost anti-representational in nature. Baudrillard's theory of
simulation, which holds that the ordering of the basic elements of signs,
usually considered in terms of signified preceding the signifier, is now in
postmodern society, reversed, such that the signifier, the image, the
symbol, icon, and index, precedes the signified, the real basis of the sign,
posits a world where capitalism has run rampant, and where any concept of
the real, or of meaning, or of history, has been eroded. Baudrillard's
postmodern world is that of mass communication, mass media and the
proliferation, across all boundaries, of signs. Baudrillard's formulation of
postmodernism, in extreme conclusion, would entail the eventual
disintegration of the Saussaurian concept of the sign, leaving a world
completely divorced from the real and containing only infinitely recursive
simulacra.
34
Simulation has many bases. It is a direct result of capitalism in that
the fetishization of the commodity has come, in a society that places more
and more value on information itself as a commodity, to be applied to ideas
and images themselves. Just as the concept of use-value had been eroded
for material goods that came to have only exchange-value, so did the
concept of use-value of the signified's relation to the signifier become
eroded, leaving only exchange-value between signs. This is the origin of
the simulation, a sign whose only value is that of exchange with other
signs, its use-value, which for a sign means the connection between the
signifier and signified, eroded into nothing. Simulations are removed from
the real, like currency whose value is only exchange and no longer based
on a real weight of gold.
Furthermore, in a society where a constant flow of images via mass
media and mass communication becomes part of everyday life, we are
treated to an endless barrage of signs which we accept, not as being real,
but, as Baudrillard would argue, as supplanting the real, the real loses its
meaning and what we believe and deal with are simulacra. Baudrillard
would, as Jameson did, relate this idea to history. Without any grounding in
the real, and having no way to prove the real, our knowledge of the past is
35
confined to whatever symbols we associate with it when we attempt to
portray it.
As he developed his work throughout the 1980s, he moved from
economically-based theory to the consideration of mediation and mass
communications. Although retaining his interest in Saussaurian semiotics
and the logic of symbolic exchange (influenced by anthropologist Marcel
Mauss), Baudrillard turned his attention to Marshal McLuhan, developing
ideas about how the nature of the social relations is determined by the
forms of communication that a society employs.
In so doing, Baudrillard progressed beyond both Saussure's and
Roland Barthes's formal semiology to consider the implications of a
historically-understood (and thus formless), version of structural
semiology. Most famously, he argued, in Symbolic Exchange and Death,
that Western societies have undergone a precession of simulacra. This
precession is in the form of orders of simulacra, from:
1. The era of the original
2. To the counterfeit
3. To the produced, mechanical copy
36
4. To the simulated "third order of simulacra", whereby the copy has
replaced the original.
Referring to "On Exactitude in Science" (1999), a fable written by
Jorge Luis Borges, he argued that just as for contemporary society the
simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had
come to precede the geographic territory, for example, the first Gulf War:
The image of war preceded real war.
With such reasoning, he characterized the present age, following
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) and Guy Debord (1931-1994), as one of
"hyperreality" where the real object has been effaced or superseded by the
signs of its existence. Such an assertion, the one for which he is most
criticized is typical of his fatal strategies (1990) of attempting to push his
theories of society beyond themselves. Rather than saying that hysteria
surrounding pedophilia is such that people no longer really understand
what childhood is anymore, Baudrillard argued that the child no longer
exists. Similarly, rather than arguing, as did Susan Sontag in her book On
Photography (1977), that the notion of reality has been complicated by the
profusion of images of it, Baudrillard asserted that ―the real no longer
exists."
37
Going back to the beginning of his "postmodern" phase, Baudrillard
starts his important essay "The Precession of Simulacra" (1995), by
recounting the feat of imperial map-makers in a story by Jorge Luis Borges
(1899-1986) who makes a map so large and detailed that it covers the
whole empire, existing in a one-to-one relationship with the territory
underlying it. It is a perfect replica of the empire. After a while the map
begins to fray a tatter, the citizens of the empire mourning its loss (having
long taken the map-the simulacrum of the empire-for the real empire).
Under the map, the real territory has turned into a desert, a "desert o the
real." In its place, a simulacrum of reality- the frayed mega-map- is all
that's left.
The term "simulacrum" goes all the way back to Plato, who used it to
describe a false copy of something. Baudrillard has built his whole post-
1970s theory of media effects and culture around his notion of the
simulacrum. He argues that in a postmodern culture dominated by TV,
movies, news media, and the Internet, the whole idea of a true or false copy
of something has been destroyed: all we have now are simulations of
reality, which are not any more or less "real" than the reality they simulate.
38
In our culture, claims Baudrillard, we take "maps of reality" like
television, film, etc. as more real than our actual lives. These "simulacra"
(hyperreal copies) precede our lives. Our television friends might seem
more alive to us than their flesh-and-blood equivalents. We communicate
by e-mail, and relate to video game characters like Lara Croft better than
our friends and family.
We drive on freeways to shopping malls full of identical chain stores
and products, watch television shows about film directors and actors go to
films about television production, vote for ex-Hollywood actors for
presidency (Is he really an actor? or a politician? It does not matter). In
fact, we get nervous and edgy if we are away too long from our computers,
our e-mail accounts, our cell phones. Now the real empire lies in tatters, the
hyperreal map still quite intact. We have entered an era where third-order
simulacra dominate our lives, where the image has lost any connection to
the real things.
2.4. A General Overview on the Notion of Hyeprreality
Lots of critics followed Lyotard and his notions, including the French
cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, who believed that humankind has entered
the phase of what he called the "hyperreal". According to Baudrillard, the
39
first Gulf War had never happened; it was simply a hyperreal, media-
generated spectacle.
Since this war was won in advance, we will never know what
it would have been like had it existed…we have seen what an
ultra-modern process of electrocution is like, a process of
paralysis and lobotomy of an experimental enemy away from
the field of the battle with no possibility of reaction. But this is
not a war, any more than 10,000 tons of bombs per day is
sufficient to make it a war. Any more than the direct
transmission by CNN of real time information is sufficient to
authenticate a war. (61)
Walmsley introduces Baudrillard in this way:
The popular notion of a postmodern age in which everything
and everyone is consumable, in which the medium becomes
the message, in which there is no hidden depth beneath the
surface, in which the truth is another illusion, and in which
every experience is reduced to the level of an MTV rock video
owes a considerable debt to the French sociologist, Jean
Baudrillard. (412-413)
40
Known as a postmodern sociologist, Jean Baudrillard, in is
influential book, Simulacra and Simulations (1981) which is "the definitive
moment when Baudrillard's theories shift into a postmodern account of
culture" (Mason 32), makes use of the terms "Simulation" and "
hyperreality" in order to define the "mediatization" of reality in post-
industrial society.
Discussing abstract and totalizing theory, he rarely refers to
television directly but, this view shows a good judgment to the context of
watching TV. He maintains that based on the immense increase in signs
and images broadcasted in post-war media theory, the differentiation
between objects and their representation has vanished.
He argues that we are now living in a world of "simulation" where
media-produced images act freely from any external reality. Signs and
meanings move aimlessly in a self-referential "hyperreality", an extreme
reality and also one that is literally "hyped".
In Simulations, Baudrillard suggests four basic historical phase of the
sign. In the first phase, there is a truth, a basic reality which is faithfully
represented. This truth or reality still exists in the second phase, but it is
distorted, warped, or perverted through representation. Finally, in the fourth
41
phase, there is no relationship between the sign and reality, since there is no
longer anything real to reflect.
Baudrillard asserts, now, the western society has entered the fourth
phase of development, the "hyperreal". In the fourth phase, or the order of
simulation, meaning "implodes" and we move from reality to hyperreality.
This hyperreality is nothing but the direct result of advances in information
technologies. As Berten notes:
We have entered the hyperreal… Whereas the real was
produced, the hyperreal is reproduced. The hyperreal is a
reproduced real, the real as 'the generation by models of a real
without origin or reality', constructed 'from miniaturized units,
from matrices, memory banks and command models', a '
meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through
another, reproductive medium'. (146)
Apparently, a central tenet of Baudrillard's argument is that, in
contemporary culture, the object and the sign have become
indistinguishable; therefore, we have replaced reality with simulation and
the hyperreal:
42
In the age of hyperreal, the image dominates, and the 'normal'
relationships are turned on their head. The age of production
has given way to the age of simulation, an age in which
products are no longer made and then sold; they are sold
before they exist. (Waugh 413)
Advertisements, then, play a crucial role in this age, since media
creates advertisement and through that a desire created for the advertised
product, which is later created to fulfill that desire:
For Baudrillard, the way this excess of desire is produced and
manipulated in contemporaray culture is the motivating force
of capitalism and leads to the most central aspect of
postmodernity; the ubiquity of the messages produced by
advertising in the communications media and the subsequent
annihilation of reality. This, Baudrillard defines as the
'seduction of commodity. ( Malpas, " The postmodern" 123).
In more general terms, in the hyperreal world, there is no reality principle,
in fact, it is lost for good. Moreover, there is no chance of reversing or
moving backward, since "we are already pre-coded", as Baudrillard
believes.
43
"Simulacrum" is a term he uses in order to refer not only to
representation, but also to suggest a sense of fake and counterfeit.
Walmsley remarks:
Simulacra pervade every level of our existence, and we cannot
escape from them or, express ourselves in terms other than
through the codes which saturate us. Normal, sexual desires,
for instance is no longer personal response to a person we
meet and with whom we interact. On the contrary, it is
simulated by the images of beauty and desire with which the
media bombard us, and we remould and recreate our bodies
and personalities in accord with the latest fashion of the
beauty. (413)
Thus, considering hyperreality, Baudrillard does not mean unreality,
rather he represents a culture in which the fantastical creation of the media,
film and computer technologies have come to be more real for us than the
real world, to the extent that they "interact more fundamentally with our
experiences and desires than the hitherto predominant realities of nature or
spiritual life" as Malpas asserts (125).
44
In this simulated world, we can create our virtual selves, one that
have no basis in reality; it means that every social role we adopt is "already
pre-coded to such an extent there is no possibility of breaking free from the
matrix of representation into a genuine, personal response" as Waugh
explains (413). In the condition expressed, in which representation
becomes more important than the events being represented; no possibility
of resistance and interference is suggested by Baudrillard.
2.5. Baudrillardian Hyperrealism
Baudrillard‘s basic epistemological thesis is that, due to the implosion of
the medium and the message, and due to much of media being based upon
self-referential pseudo-events internal to the media, what we consider to be
‗Real‘ has now changed. His epistemological work on McLuhan‘s
‗Medium is the message‘ (McLuhan 1964) leads him to conclude that ―It is
by the technological support that each ‗message‘ is in the first place
transitive towards another ‗message,‘ and not towards a human reality‖
(Baudrillard 42).
Baudrillard gives a historical illustration of this, inspired by that of
Benjamin (1936). Baudrillard defines three era, or ‗orders,‘ of simulacra,
which he ties to ―the successive mutations of the law of value‖ (Baudrillard
45
50). Before the Renaissance we had the ‗obligatory sign‘: in societies based
on ceremony and rank ―signs are not arbitrary‖ and their ―circulation is
restricted‖ as they are ―protected by a prohibition which ensures their total
clarity and confers an unequivocal status on each‖ (ibid). ―The arbitrariness
of the sign begins when [...] the signifier starts to refer to a disenchanted
universe of the signified, the common denominator of the real world,
towards which no-one any longer has the least obligation: (ibid).
Post-Renaissance signs are ‗emancipated signs,‘ correlated to the
emancipation of class and the rise of democratic ideals (ibid: 50-51). Thus
in the period from the Renaissance to the Industrial revolution we have
―overt competition at the level of signs of distinction‖ in the form of
fashion (something that cannot exist pre-Renaissance due to the tight
control on signification) and instead of the production of signs being based
on reciprocal social obligations, tradition, and class, they now proliferate
based on ―demand‖ (ibid: 51).
Baudrillard refers to this period as that of the ‗counterfeit‘ not
because pre-Renaissance signs are changed, but because emancipated
signs, being ―non-discriminatory,‖ ―relieved of every constraint,‖ and
―universally available,‖ have also become free of ―reference to the real‖
46
and to ―nature‖ (ibid: 51). Thus, the emancipated sign must simulate the
‗obligations‘ of traditional signs and ―giv[e] the appearance that it is bound
to the world‖ (ibid), or else they will hold no resonance with people.
Baudrillard draws parallels between the adventures of the sign with that of
class and labour: ―just as the ‗free‘ worker is only free to produce
equivalents, the ‗free and emancipated‘ sign is only free to produce
equivalent signifieds‖ (ibid).
Baudrillard‘s empirical example for this is the development of stucco
in architecture during the Renaissance, in which it was used in the
―imitation of nature‖, ―embrac[ing] all forms, imitate[ing] all materials,‖
and becoming ―generally equivalent for all the other‖ signs (ibid: 51-52).
The next order of simulacra, corresponding to Benjamin‘s ‗age of
mechanical reproduction‘ (Benjamin 1936), arises during the Industrial
Revolution, featuring ―signs with no caste tradition, that will never have
known restriction on their status, and which will never have to
be counterfeits, since from the outset they will be products on a gigantic
scale‖ (Baudrillard 55). Mass production of objects solves the problems
caused by their counterfeiting. Instead of the relationship between objects
being based on the original versus the counterfeit (i.e. real grapes vs. stucco
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grapes), the relationship becomes that of ―equivalence and indifference‖ as
objects become ―indistinct simulacra of one another‖ (ibid). Baudrillard
says that Benjamin‘s analysis ―shows that reproduction absorbs the process
of production, changes its goals, and alters the status of the product and the
producer‖ (Baudrillard 55).
In this order of simulacra, objects are ―conceived according to their
very reproducibility, their diffraction from a generative core called a
‗model‘ [...] There is no more counterfeiting of an original [...] and no more
pure series [...]; there are models from which all forms proceed according
to modulated differences‖. (ibid: 56) Thus, the result of ―this process of
reproducibility‖ is that the Real becomes ―not only that which can be
reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: the hyperreal‖
(ibid: 73). Baudrillard‘s definition of the Real is ―that of which it is
possible to provide an equivalent reproduction‖ (ibid), and thus to
―dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has,‖ therefore ―feigning or
dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always
clear, it is only masked‖ (Baudrillard 5).
Realist conceptions of the truth rely on the premise that you can
prove something wrong or right, that evidence can be provided to prove the
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speaker‘s comment was wrong and therefore was lying. Conversely, in a
Hyperreal conception, ―To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn‘t,‖
and thus ―simulation threatens the difference between ‗true‘ and ‗false,‘
between ‗real‘ and ‗imaginary‘‖ (ibid). For the topic at hand, we can thus
say that the Realist actions of journalists (quoting and interviewing,
providing ‗both‘ sides, live reporting) function to restore the ‗reality
principle‘ by creating simulations of ‗reality‘ instead of functioning to
verify and distribute ‗true‘ information, therefore their normative role
would be largely undermined.
Furthermore, he argues that many news media events are ―produced
as artifacts from the technical manipulation of the medium and its coded
elements […] It is this generalized substitution of the code for the
reference that defines mass media consumption‖ (Baudrillard 92). ‗Reality‘
has now become simply models of reality. Simulation ―is the generation by
models of a real without origin or reality‖ (Baudrillard 2).
News events become a simulation of an event ―in the sense that they
are inscribed in advance in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the
media‖ and ―function as a set of signs dedicated exclusively to their
recurrence as signs, and no longer to their ‗real‘ goal at all‖ (Baudrillard
49
42). Again, connecting this to journalism, the ‗he said, she said‘ motif and
the presence of ‗competing truth claims‘ act only to simulate that one or the
other can possibly be true and that we are rational beings who can make
that determination, both which are inherent in the ‗decoding and
orchestration rituals‘ of news media.
Furthermore, he adds (ibid: 32): ―Facts no longer have any trajectory
of their own, they rise at the intersection of the models; a single fact may
even be engendered by all the models at once. This anticipation, this
precession, this short-circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model [...] is
what each time allows for all the possible interpretations, even the most
contradictory – all are true, in the sense that their truth is exchangeable, in
the image of the models from which they process, in a generalized cycle.
We can thus see that this conception of ‗truth‘ as extending from
models-as-truth within the media deeply problematizes the idea that access
to more information will allow us to make better choices in politics, society
and the rest, for much of that information has no reflection to Real life, but
instead to signs of Real life‖.
Baudrillard seems to believe there is/was truth out there; we just
cannot access it anymore because our modern epistemology is Hyperreal.
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Just as advertising and consumerism does not depend on truth to sell its
goods, ―[m]ass communication is beyond truth and falsehood […] All the
great humanistic criteria of value, all those of a civilization of moral,
aesthetic, practical judgment, fade away on our system of images and
signs‖ (Baudrillard 72).
So what is the actual function of news media then? ―All media and
the official news service only exist to maintain the illusion of actuality – of
the reality of the stakes, of the objectivity of the facts‖ (Baudrillard 71).
This is also expressed by Žižek: ―one should not forget to include in the
content of an act of communication the act itself, since the meaning of each
act of communication is also to reflexively assert that it is an act of
communication‖ (Žižek 21). Thus, the ‗stakes‘ are not purely political-
economic in nature but epistemological; not that we have to take a side in a
political-economic struggle, but that the struggle itself it what is important,
for if it is belief in this struggle that maintains the system.
While some would view a news story about, for example, one
political party criticizing another as a ‗elite transaction‘ irrelevant to the
larger populace and democracy in general and only reflecting these party‘s
differing political-economic bases and not any fundamental policy
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differences (i.e. Curran 2000, Sparks 2000), Baudrillard‘s perspective
would view it as simply reinforcing that this discourse, no matter what its
base, exists to simulate multi-party democracy and a possible left-right
binary.
The purpose of news reports about movements of abstract units of
currency around the world, the rise and fall of stock markets and other
financial news is not to inform people what exactly is going on, but to
reinforce that they are important. Thus, we can argue that the news media
does not function to inform people of ‗facts‘ but to maintain the simulation
that those facts (and not other ones) are ‗real‘ and central to our lives.
2.6. Mechanical Reproductions and Media Simulations
Repeatedly copying an original imbues it with a special power. The very
fact that something is worthy of copying dignifies it in a way, suggesting
that it is special enough to preserve and recreate. When multiple copies of
the item are made, an aura begins to develop around it. The original gains
power and influence. It becomes important. As the copies circulate and
more people are exposed to the item, it becomes more and more
recognizable. The more that people recognize it, the more power it holds.
The aura grows.
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The infinite reproducibility of the original recalls Walter Benjamin‗s
classic discussion of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction." Benjamin also describes the aura surrounding a work of art,
but he sees it in a different way. To Benjamin, the aura of the original is
created by its uniqueness. He argues that an object‗s inherent value is
derived from its rarity. In the age of mechanical reproduction "that which
withers is . . .the aura of the work of art" (283).
Benjamin suggests that the more widely reproduced the work is, the
weaker its aura. In fact, he goes as far as to argue that an object‗s
uniqueness is actually synonymous with its aura (283). This may be true for
high culture art, but in the case of pop art, the opposite is true. In pop art
(which is increasingly the art form that influences contemporary culture),
the more reproducible an object is, the greater its aura. Mechanical
reproduction has drastically increased the cultural impact of pop art
because it has facilitated an art form that can easily and affordably reach
the masses.
Benjamin, himself, admits that ―mechanical reproduction of art
changes the reaction of the masses toward art‖(284). The reason for this
change is the newfound accessibility of reproduced art. It can reach more
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people. And, as I previously argued, in postmodern American culture the
growth of an object‗s aura is directly proportionate to its mass accessibility
and cultural saturation. The more recognizable an image is, the stronger its
place in the cultural collective.
Rather than liberating art from its aura, as Benjamin suggested would
happen, the mass reproduction of art has only solidified the aura as a
necessary element of cultural success and recognition. In order for
something to be considered a cultural success now, it must be widely
accessible and regularly consumed. Thus, the opposite of Benjamin‗s
prediction has occurred. The commodification of culture "has worked to
preserve the myth of origins and of authenticity" (Frow 422), and has
actually only reinforced the role of the aura in the classification of a "work
of art."
By Benjamin‗s suggestions, this result might have been predictable.
He argues that "the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is
never entirely separated from its ritual function" (284). His argument is that
a work of art‗s "authenticity" is derived from its connection to a ritual
performance (as in theater or concert) and that a copy of this performance
could never equal the original, thereby establishing authenticity. However,
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there is a different perspective on the idea of "ritual art." Ritual implies an
event or concept that can be indefinitely reproduced almost identically. In
pop art, this ritual characteristic is exactly what reinforces the aura.
The ability to recreate extends the accessibility to the masses and
ensures its cultural status precisely because (and not in spite of) its "public
presentability" (Benjamin 284). The aura of a work of art is actually
strengthened by that work of art‗s commodification. In postmodern
America the success of a work of art depends on its function as a cultural
commodity. The attention span of mass America is growing shorter and
shorter; this places a heavy burden on the art (and the artist) to entertain if
it wants to maintain relevancy.
Art must always seek to match the rapidly changing landscape of the
fickle public. Very rarely does postmodern society produce anything that is
enduring or respected for more than a few years (and often only a few
days). Everything that entertains any level of cultural relevancy is almost
immediately forgotten by the American public. One reason for this is the
fact that art is now almost always dependent on technology. Music, film,
even literature now, are all at the mercy of technology and run the risk of
extinction not on the basis of merit, but instead simply because of a shift in
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the medium through which art is consumed. For example, the mode of
consumption for music has drastically changed over the last 40 years.
The art form is still essentially the same "artists create audio art for
the listener, but the medium through which that art is transferred is vastly
different. Art and artists who do not adapt to the changing modes of
consumption lose cultural relevancy, and this loss does not necessarily have
anything to do with the merit of the artwork. Thus, commodification of art
does have the ability to create an aura around the work of art, but it also
makes the art a product of consumption which almost always means that
once "consumed" it will become a relic of the cultural past.
This culture of consumption hinges on the need to always drive the
market. Products must constantly be invented, improved, and re-invisioned
in order to maintain a high level of consumption, which is what allegedly
fuels the economy. Because of this, everything in a consumer culture is a
―product‖ to be consumed. It must be asked then ―to what degree is our art
just another consumer product?‖ (Osteen 450). This is a question that
DeLillo addresses in several of his novels.
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2.7. General Overview on Donald Richard Don DeLillo
Born on November 20, 1936, Donald Richard Don DeLillo was reared in a
working-class Italian Catholic family, from Molise, in an Italian-American
borough of the Bronx in New York City. As a teenager, DeLillo was not
fond of writing until taking a summer job as a parking attendant, where
hours spent waiting and watching over vehicles led to a reading habit. In a
2010 interview with The Australian, DeLillo reflected on this period by
saying "I had a personal golden age of reading, in my 20s and my early
30s, and then my writing began to take up so much time".
Among the writers DeLillo read and was inspired by in this period
were James Joyce, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Ernest
Hemingway, who was a major influence on DeLillo's earliest attempts at
writing in his late teens. As well as the influence of modernist fiction,
DeLillo has also cited the influence of jazz music – "[...] guys like Ornette
Coleman and Mingus and Coltrane and Miles Davis " -and postwar cinema:
"[...]and Godard and Truffaut, and then in the '70s came the Americans,
many of whom were influenced by the Europeans: Kubrick,
Altman, Coppola, Scorsese and so on. I don't know how they may have
affected the way I write, but I do have a visual sense."
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After graduating from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in
1954 and from Fordham University in the Bronx with a bachelor's degree
in Communication Arts in 1958, DeLillo took a job in advertising because
he couldn't get one in publishing. He worked for five years as a copywriter
at the agency of Ogilvy and Mather on Fifth Avenue at East 48th
Street, writing image ads for Sears Roebuck among others, working on
―Print ads, very undistinguished accounts...I hadn‘t made the leap to
television. I was just getting good at it when I left, in 1964.‖ DeLillo
published his first short story, ―The River Jordan‖, in Epoch, the literary
magazine of Cornell University, in 1960 and began to work on his first
novel in 1966. Discussing the beginning of his writing career, DeLillo said,
―I did some short stories at that time, but very infrequently. I quit my job
just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work
anymore.‖
However, experiencing various sorts of jobs and living in an
exclusive environment all together led to the commencement of his writing
career in a way that DeLillo said ―I became a writer by living in New York
and seeing and hearing and feeling all the great, amazing and dangerous
things the city endlessly assembles.‖ In an interview to Jonathan Bing
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(1997) DeLillo asserted that ―I became a writer by avoiding serious
commitment to anything else.‖
DeLillo's works are the subject of debate considering their contents
and structure. Many critics assume DeLillo as a postmodern writer,
whereas he claims to be defying this statement. As Peter Boxall suggests in
his introduction to Don DeLillo: The Possibility of Fiction, his work can be
read beyond the postmodern debate which engaged his critics in the recent
years. Certainly DeLillo‗s novels offer always the possibility for a critical
thought which resist the postmodern, but they do so criticizing it from the
inside. DeLillo is able to live, tell and express the postmodern age, looking
at it from a critical distance, which only writing and the possibility of
language, allow him to have. For this reason, defining such a writer as
―postmodern‖, reduces the complexity of his work and hides its main
features.
Don DeLillo has been celebrated by critics for his ability to describe
contemporary society and its struggles. In the words of Molesworth: ―[…]
no other contemporary novelist could be said to outstrip DeLillo in his
ability to depict that larger social environment we blandly call everyday
life‖ (143). He has published sixteen novels, eight (screen) plays, and
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numerous short stories and essays. His fiction has been awarded the
American Book Award (White Noise, 1985), and the PEN/Faulkner Award
(Mao II, 1991) among others, and his 1997 novel Underworld was the
runner-up in the New York Times‘ ‗Best Work of American Fiction of the
Last 25 Years ‗competition. His past works have included subjects such as
the Kennedy assassination (Libra, 1988), foreign and domestic terrorism
(Falling Man, 2007 and Players, 1977 respectively), and isolation (Great
Jones Street, 1973). The two novels I chose to work with spread over a
decade, namely nineties, which his works thrive and represent all his pas
works.
2.8. DeLillo and Media at the Age of Spectacles
What is real? Russ Hodges, the radio speaker who gives a running
commentary on the legendary baseball match between the Dodgers and the
Giants held at Brooklyn‗s Polo Grounds and narrated in the prologue of
Don DeLillo‗s Underworld, has his own personal answer to this question:
―The thing that happens in the sun.‖ He used to work in Charlotte, North
Carolina, creating big league games that were already played, giving his
listeners the illusion that they were acted in the same moment in which he
was narrating them. His business was representations; representations made
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out of words. He recalls: ―somebody hands you a piece of paper filled with
letters and numbers and you have to make a ball game out of it.‖
He also recalls that his only desire at the time was to work at the
Polo Grounds in New York, doing real baseball. However, when he is
finally there, under the New York sun, he discovers that what his voice is
narrating does not hold together the different dimensions developing in
front of his eyes; and by the end of the show he is dazzled, like a drunkard
who mimes a ball game, in the empty stadium. What he thought it was real,
corresponded perfectly to the unreal he used to represent.
The twentieth century has been strongly affected by a desire similar
to that of Russ Hodges for the real thing. Surrounded by images that keep
multiplying, people still live in a constant urge for the real. They look for it
in newspapers and magazines, in television, radio and on the internet, and
the more they watch, the more their distance from reality seems to increase.
American society, estranged by a real performed as spectacle in the media,
finds only uncertainties in its quest for knowledge. Its condition is still a
postmodern one, with all the positive and negative implications that such a
statement has.
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In this respect, little has changed since television and mass media
industry in general, began to shape society, and spectacles and images
became the main instrument with which reality is experienced. Yet, this
wild process, by which a multiform visual language dominated American
culture, has offered in the years, from Kennedy‗s assassination to 9/11,
several "epiphanic" moments. When, for example, on September 11, 2001,
millions of Americans watched live on television the downfall of the Twin
Towers, the spectacle created an uncanny feeling of virtuality. Was it really
happening or was it just another Hollywood production?
As Slavoj Žižek suggests, what we saw on television that day was
not the harsh intrusion of reality in our realm of images, but the exact
contrary: the image of the two towers collapsing entered and altered our
reality. The point is that our reality was already shaped by images and 9/11
simply revealed it to us. Quoting Alan Badiou and his Le Siècle, Žižek
argues that the attack represented the conclusion, the climax, of this
"passion for the real" which characterized twentieth century. From this
point of view it is possible to trace continuity in the development of mass
media from the early stage of their diffusion to the new millennium. This
first act of mass media history is over and the rush of new digital
technologies opened a new age for communication.
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Certainly the medium par excellence that defines America, from the
post-war era to the present, is television. It has penetrated American homes
and minds for decades, selling the only possible world, the only real one;
causing what Cecelia Tichi calls an "ontological change," becoming the
very certification of human experience. Still television was perceived as a
dangerous medium since its birth.
As David Foster Wallace notices in "E unibus pluram: television and
U.S. fiction", television literally means "seeing far"; and thus it trains the
watcher not only to feel really present at any televised event, such us the
Olympics or New York under a terrorist attack, but also to relate to
everyday life as something distant and exotic, as if it is shown on a TV
screen. Wallace‗s ideas of "seeing far" and of distance, evoke the words
that Guy Debord uses as incipit in The Society of the Spectacle: "The whole
life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail
presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once
directly lived has distanced itself into a representation."
Paraphrasing the same words with which Marx begins the first
section of the Capital, Debord signals a crucial shift in the postmodern
development of capitalism: the commodity has become spectacle, image,
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and mere representation. Of extreme importance is the term Debord uses to
point out this process: the real "s‗est éloigné", distanced itself, it went
away; a concept that a medium such as television embodies perfectly.
The Society of the Spectacle was published in 1967, when mass
media were still in an archaic phase of their development, in comparison to
the present. In such a phase Debord has sensed the malignant charm of
representations, and prophesied the immaterial reality of today. Using as a
starting point the first section of Marx‗s Capital, the one in which the fetish
side of the commodity is analyzed, Debord builds his two hundred and
twenty one theses, conveying a crucial message, that is the spectacle is the
last stage of the transformation of the commodity, which has no more value
in itself, but only as an abstraction: ―The Spectacle corresponds to the
historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of
social life. It is not just that the relationship to commodities is now plain to
see ―commodities are now all that there is to see; the world we see is the
world of the commodity.‖
It is not something related uniquely to the world of mass media, but
to the entire capitalist society: ―The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the
point where it becomes image;‖ It makes the real become image and only
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the images can be real: ―...reality erupts within the spectacle, and the
spectacle is real;‖ It establishes a monopoly of the truth, a unique
unbreakable order of things: ―The spectacle manifests itself as an enormous
positivity, out of reach and beyond dispute. All it says is: 'Everything that
appears is good; whatever is good will appear.‖
Debord distinguishes two forms of spectacles: a concentrated
spectacle, which is related to totalitarian societies, and a diffused spectacle,
typical of western democracies; however, in his Commentaries on the
Society of the Spectacle, he envisions a unique integrated spectacle, which
unifies both the forms theorized before. Whereas the concentrated spectacle
could not control peripheral societies and the diffused spectacle could not
control society in all of its expressions, the integrated one pervades all of
reality, without possibility of escape.
When the Commentaries were written, in 1988, the Berlin wall had
not yet fallen, but Debord confirmed his capacity of prophesizing on this
further development of the spectacle, which interests the contemporary
world. It is thus in this way that the theories enunciated in The Society of
the Spectacle are fulfilled. Spectacle is a term that better than others gives
significance to the way in which mass media transforms reality; it
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transcends technology in order to underline the human role in this process.
Instead of considering mass media as autonomous forces, Debord looks at
them as strictly embedded in the society which produces them. Such an
approach should be of help in finding paths to resist the overwhelming
power of the media, but also Debord is not immune from a sort of
impotence that affects critics of mass media.
One of the characteristics of mass media‗s critique is that it has,
paradoxically, helped them to flourish. Critique seems to have functioned
as those prohibitions that inflame curiosity and interest for the thing they
try to prevent. The more critics build theories, systems of thought that
attempt to understand, classify and dominate the technologies of mass
media, the more these technologies multiply their power, acquiring
consent, and proving their necessity.
In Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan writes: "not even the
most lucid understanding of the peculiar force of a medium can head off
the ordinary 'closure' of the senses that causes us to conform to the pattern
of experience presented." The closure of the senses is a sort of dream-like
state of mind to which many visual media (television above all) force our
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brain. Being used to their languages since childhood one is compelled to
structure one‗s thoughts in terms of passive spectatorship.
One is not the creative interpreter of a certain message, but
submissive spectator of a medium. That the force of a medium is something
not easy to counteract is made clear by the fact that the relationship with a
medium (television for an example) is always unequal: the power to control
the medium is limited to certain types of operations that one can perform in
order to obtain a limited result. But the medium can operate without control
from the moment in which it starts to function.
Literature responded to the advent of cinema and television, often
critically, often with an aura of cool detachment that might give a different,
more thoughtful, perspective on reality. Apart from the great artistic quality
that many visual products can reach, if one considers the medium used,
there is a crucial difference to underline: the possibility to control that
medium. Cinema and television present moving images and sounds that
most of the time pass rapidly in front of one‗s eyes, and through one‗s
hears, without giving the opportunity to reflect and interpret those images.
A book, instead, gives space to a various range of actions that can be
performed by its reader in order to gain control over the form and content
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of the medium. The reader is always engaged in a never-ending
interpretative process by which he or she becomes the main actor of the
communicative act he or she is involved in with the writer. In "The Movies
and Reality" (1926), Virginia Woolf deplored 1920s cinema, in which
travesties of great novels, simplified to a ridiculous degree, were the norm:
The eye says: "Here is Anna Karenina." A voluptuous lady in
black velvet wearing pearls comes before us. But the brain
says: "That is no more Anna Karenina than it is Queen
Victoria." For the brain knows Anna almost entirely by the
inside of her mind, her charm, her passion, her despair. All the
emphasis is laid by the cinema upon her teeth, her pearls, and
her velvet.(13)
But that same brain to which Woolf gives so much power can be
easily "titillated", and "settles down to watch things happening without
bestirring itself to think." However something different happens when one
finds himself in a reversed situation: reading a book where the act of
watching a movie or a TV-show is described. In this case, and as examples
one could use various passages from Don DeLillo, passages that will be
later analyzed in this thesis, the author never induces the reader into passive
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receptivity; a rambling narrative like Underworld , for example, forces the
reader to reconsider his status as spectator, to critically look at the
environment created by the media. It works as a sort of filter for all those
images that overwhelm him in everyday life.
From an historical perspective mass media penetrated the world as
people were used to experience it and modified it at its roots, creating new
perceptions of reality. This epoch-making shift took place in the midst of
the twentieth century, when the arrival of new media technologies caused
that gradual distancing from the real which, according to Debord,
characterized the ―society of the spectacle.
The real has been killed by TV, as Baudrillard would later theorize in
his The Perfect Crime: what disappears with postmodernity is the
possibility of the real, the capacity of projecting oneself into a world that
would be directly experienced. That real is substituted with imitations,
images, representations, simulacra, to use a Baudrillard's term. But these
images and imitations, while ―killing the real‖, also serve as signals of its
disappearance.
What are the technological roots of television? Television is rooted
in narrative techniques that belong to the novel, to the Greek tragedy, to the
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Shakespearian Theatre. Television is a medium that proposes narratives,
tales under the form of information or entertainment. But since it is a
different and powerful medium it has the faculty of shaping one‗s ideas,
one‗s perception of reality and one‗s decisions. Wallace says that television
hegemony is resistant to the critique of what he calls the fiction of image
because television itself has co-opted those distinctive narrative forms that
characterize postmodern literature.
In his widely quoted essay "E Unibus Pluram," Wallace recognizes
certain elements which characterize the writers of his generation. The main
one is the omnipresence of television in their lives. Television became for
these writers a very useful instrument would help them observe, describe
and study the American character. It has become a mirror that reflects what
people want to see, their desires. And being desire, "fictionally
speaking...the sugar in human food," fiction writers use television as a
substitute of their own ogling, watching, and staring activity that is
necessary to their job.
In stressing the importance of television for the generation of writers
which he belongs to (those born in the 1960's), Wallace is tracing a crucial
separating line in the history of twentieth-century American literature. A
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line that divides two generations of writers by the relationship they had
with television. Foster Wallace is among those writers that have been born
with television and that are used to its presence in their homes, while other
writers, those born in the 30's, the generation of DeLillo, saw the TV-set
materialize in their home, as a new mysterious, technological object. This
generation confronted TV as something exotic, a novelty or a curiosity, and
finally an object that would debauch the American character.
They could experience the development of the TV environment in
the United States, a process that goes from the exotic to the commonplace,
a naturalization by which the TV phenomenon becomes assimilated to the
point that people see it as a part of the natural order of things. The advent
of a television age represented for these authors the entrance in a
completely new cultural dimension that was just beginning to reshape the
way in which America envisioned itself. They were aware of this change
and their work reflects it.
To put it in Wallace‗s words, ―they were sentient citizens of a
community that was exchanging an old idea of itself as a nation of doers
and be-ers for a new vision of the U.S.A. as an atomized mass of self-
conscious watchers and appearers. ―From this point of view,
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postmodernism was deeply informed by television and other mass media,
with the result that many of its expressions can be read as articulate
reflections on the issues of appearance and representation that could have
only been raised by the visual ambiguity in which the new medium was
taking America.
The real life, distanced from the spectacle, was beginning to imitate
it, as disparate texts show. Postmodern fiction exploits the lexicon and the
forms of television, legitimating the televisual as the primary, natural,
structure of experience. Cecelia Tichi Cecelia Tichi in Electronic Hearth:
Creating an American Television Culture reads many novels by DeLillo,
Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, and others in these terms. Jack
Gladney, in DeLillo‗s White Noise, checks on his sleeping children and
feels as if he‗d wondered in a TV moment; a part in Carver‗s Cathedral,
becomes like one those game shows; stories in which TV programs become
an integral part of the structure of story-telling, and in which the narrative
depends on the structure of television The society of the spectacle governs
fiction and even if writers act as critics of this society, they nonetheless
exploit its technologies, being aware that those technologies shape the
contemporary environment.
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Television and other media in which the disappeared real reappears,
fragmented and ruined, and the Traces of media influence in the American
character can already be found in novels that precede the rise of literary
postmodernism in the United States or that can be considered as early
postmodernism. At the end of The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman
Mailer, for example, a Major of the U.S. Troops, Dalleson, has what he
thinks is a genial idea in order to jazz up the map-reading class: to use a
Betty Grable full-size color photograph in a bathing suit, with coordinates
and a grid system. The instructor could point to different parts of her and
say, 'Give me the coordinates.' Goddam, what an idea!
The Major chuckled out of sheer pleasure. It would make those
troopers wake up and pay some attention in map class. He thinks, and it is
as if he acts with a typical postmodern mood, understanding that the
coordinates of a postmodern world are dictated by mass media and Pop -
cultural references became tools to relate to the other, orientating points
that can be recognized by a mass media influenced character. Pop- cultural
references are, of course, a constant element in DeLillo's works.
One cannot almost understand novels such as Mao II, without a
certain knowledge of characters from movies, radio and TV-shows. One of
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the most recognizable things about this century's postmodern fiction was
the movement's strategic deployment of pop-cultural references brand
names, celebrities, television programs in even its loftiest high-art projects,
Wallace says, and one cannot but agree with this statement.
The function of these references is very much different from that of
the modernists that would use products of an early mass culture with
theoretical scopes, and it is not a simply abstract formula with which to
create irony, but it is, fundamentally, a way to return to the real, in a world
that is always more, in Debordian terms, a representation. Showing the
individual's estrangement towards televisual products (think of DeLillo's
White Noise) and the overwhelming power of corporate media (think of
DeLillo's Americana), puts the reader in a critical perspective from which
he can look at his own everyday life, full of images and visual experiences,
like in a mirror.
There has always been in the history of fiction the use of rhetoric
techniques that became typical of television and mass media in general.
Almost provocatively Wallace says that the stream-of-consciousness guys
who fathered modernism were, on a very high level, constructing the same
sort of illusions about privacy-puncturing and espial on the forbidden that
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television has found so fecund. Television is informed by a technology of
the tale which is basically constructed through the use of various narrative
techniques that are traceable to the origins of literature, and cinema is not
free from the same technology.
Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces clearly referred
to archetypical tales and characters that are still narrated in contemporary
novels, movies and TV-shows. A book like The Writer's Journey: Mythic
Structure For Writers by Chris Vogler, who's deeply influenced by
Campbell's work, is widely used by screenwriters throughout the world,
who are taught to use certain typologies of characters and certain events in
their plot in order to glue the spectators to the screen. From a structuralist
point of view everything is analyzable under the form of tale: a picture, a
ballet, a novel, a movie, and a commercial on TV; different narrative forms
always communicated with each other, and one should not be surprised in
finding this communication among mass media and literature.
Still it is evident that something surprisingly new happened with the
literature produced in the United States after World War Two: the influence
of popular mass culture on literature was not anymore merely technical. In
Wallace's words: About the time television first gasped and sucked air,
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mass popular U.S. Culture became high-art viable as a collection of
symbols and myth.
The episcopate of this pop-reference movement were the post-
Nabokovian black humorists, the metafictionists and assorted franc- and
latinophiles only later comprised by 'postmodern'. In this respect, Wallace
identifies a further change in postmodern literature, something that he calls
a later wave, and of which DeLillo is the true prophet. This later wave is
characterized by a different approach: while for Pynchon, Gaddis or Barth
television images were valid objects of literary allusion, for DeLillo and
others television and metawatching are themselves the subjects.
Wallace recognizes in DeLillo ―the true prophet of this shift in U.S.
Fiction, and, quoting the famous barn-scene‖ in White Noise, when Jack,
the protagonist of the novel, and his friend Murray, go to see the most
photographed barn in America, underlines an essential characteristic of the
first generation of postmodern American writers: the silence of their
characters as a reaction to spectacles. That silence signals three things: 1)
the impossibility of the characters to change the imagined reality
surrounding them; 2) the resistance of Spectacle to any form of critique and
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protest; 3) (and this is Wallace's point of view) the very disease from which
he, Murray, barn-watchers, and readers all suffer.
But silence, in a medium, the novel, which functions uniquely
through words, also focuses readers' attention on the act of watching. Thus,
one can say that the protagonist's silence in DeLillo functions as a sort of
irony of spectator‗s impotence towards the technologies of spectacle. In
this element that lays the deep critique these postmodernists move to the
world of images and mass media. Their voice is structured through the
silence of their protagonists and it is not a critique of technology itself, or
of the media using it, but of the devaluation of the human role in the
information process.
The shift has to be understood historically as sort of natural
development of modernist techniques in an age, as Wallace would say,
deformed by electric signal. Naming it postmodern literature does not
clarify the crucial role important cultural changes had in the definition of
this new literature. Formally DeLillo and his contemporaneous writers are
all modernist, but they all distance themselves from the modernist attitude
of looking for epiphanic, ontological truths. They are modernists who live
in an age of spectacle, modernists who have to deal with the disappearance
77
of the real, and the re-shaping of their lives in tele-visual terms. The Age of
Spectacle they live in does not affect their style so much as it affects their
Weltanschauung. It transforms their role as writers, making them at the
same time prophets and oracles of the Society of Spectacle that was about
to born.
Concerning the role of mass media and the world of image in the era
of spectacle, DeLillo's ideas are best described in his revealing article he
published on The New York Times Magazine: The Power of History. Mass
media and world of image is described in the article; not directly, but
through suggestions hidden in the text. For example at the beginning he
says that the newspaper with its crowded pages and unfolding global reach
permits us to be ruthless in our forgetting; or, few lines later, he describes
common everyday life experiences connected to images: Maybe it is the
evanescent spectacle of contemporary life that makes the novel so nervous.
Things flash and die. A face appears, a movie actor's, say, and it seems to
be everywhere, suddenly; or it is an entire movie that's everywhere, with
enormous feature stories about special effects and global marketing and tie-
in merchandise.
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Almost at the end of the article, in a long paragraph, he examines the
feeling one can have watching a videotaped event and concludes: It is
another set of images for you to want and need and get sick of and need
nonetheless, and it separates you from the reality that beats ever more
softly in the diminishing world outside the tape. The Power of History,
thus, describes the way in which DeLillo relates to the Society of
Spectacle, the way in which he thinks the writer, with his work, can
overcome the power of the media.
And he says that he can do it mainly through the power of its
weapon: language. Language, he says, lives in everything it touches and
can be an agent of redemption, the thing that delivers us, paradoxically,
from history's flat, thin, tight and relentless designs, its arrangement of
stark pages, and that allows us to find an unconstraining otherness, a free
veer from time and place and fate. Heinz Ickstadt notices that, in the case
of DeLillo, fiction runs counter to the dominant obsessions of our
contemporary world, through naming those obsessions. It is, thus, only
fiction, that can save the world from the disappearance of the real. It is only
language that can become a counterforce that re-orders things, giving
people the critical tools to experience them.
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‫‪80‬‬
‫‪Chapter III: A Critical‬‬
‫‪Analysis of Underworld: The‬‬
‫‪Hegemony of Spectacles‬‬
‫‪over Reality‬‬
‫‪81‬‬
Underworld
Underworld is the story of two people who are from Bronx and the have a
short affair and then leave each other. The do not meet each other for many
years and they both become successful in their lives later on; one of them
becomes a well-known artist while the other becomes an executive in the
waste industry as a manager. About forty years pass and they meet each
other by chance in the Arizona dessert where they talk for a couple of
minutes. During their ignorance of each other‘s lives, many things have
changed; it is the era of Cold War and many new cultural, economic and
other social issues have emerged.
It is October 3, 1951 and the novel begins with a major league
baseball match between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers in a
field called Polo Grounds where a boy, Cotter Martin, stealthily goes inside
to watch the competition. This first part of the novel has an identity of its
own and was published entitled Pafko at the Wall as a novella. In ninth part
of the game, at one point, one of the players hits the ball so that it goes to
the audiences and it is never found; however, in Underworld, the
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whereabouts and the fate of the ball becomes evident; Cotter Martin who
has sneaked into the stadium becomes friend with another tough supporter
of one of the teams and when the man gets the ball, Cotter sees this he
takes the ball away from him using force and then runs to his home. As it is
recounted in the novel, the ball is later stolen by Cotter‘s father and sold for
$32.45. There is also another important event happening and the same day
is also the day that the Soviet Russia successfully tests its atomic bomb
which indicates the beginning of the Cold War.
The novel contains many other characters either major or minor and
two of the most colorful figures include Nick and Klara. They are both
from Bronx and while Nick‘s father has been almost a successful runner, he
runs away from home one day and never returns. Nick is a good and
prospective kid but with a dysfunctional family he ends up living on the
streets where he unwittingly kills a man and spends many years in an
educational camp. Later on he meets Klara and the two have a short affair
only to break up some time later.
The lives of both Nick and Klara are colorful; that is to say, although
it seems that they are worlds apart, the have the same problems, issues and
involvements. While Nick is trying to escape from his early life and
83
reinvigorate the passion and activity he need to have, Klara is thinking of
an independent live she has always desired; however, the bottom line is that
they and their culture, society and country are on the verge of insanity due
to the imminent danger of the breaking off of an atomic war.
The effects of the Cold War are seen everywhere and there is nobody
found nonchalant of the insidious threats of that war. Many people feel a
kind weltschmerz, paranoia, schizophrenia and all are on the verge of
insanity and madness. Don Delillo also touches upon someone called
Hoover who is the FBI director and is keeping track of all the people who
may be dangerous to the capitalist system of America one day which is, in
turn, a colorful representation of the era of McCarthyism.
Lenney Bruce is also an arresting picture of the paranoia era who is
surprisingly a comedian and with this picture come many other points and
characteristics of the era including sexual promiscuity, drug culture and
civil rights movements which all represent the zeitgeist of the period in
American history. Furthermore, Delillo is like a successful photographer
who captures all the interesting facets in the American history which is told
in six parts, each of which aiming at depicting some fragments from
different times during 1950s and 1960s.
84
Following "The Triumph of Death," which is labeled a prologue, the
body of the book is divided into six parts. The first is set in 1992 and is told
from the point of view of Nick Shay, a middle-aged executive in the waste
management business; the sixth is set in the early 1950s and tells the story
of Nick's turbulent adolescence in New York City, though a third person
voice is employed. The four sections in between move gradually backwards
through the intervening decades, periodically revisiting Nick but also
spending considerable time on various friends, acquaintances, and people
whose connection to Nick is tenuous at best. Three vignettes inserted
between these sections tell the story of Manx Martin, Cotter's father, who
steals the crucial baseball after his son goes to sleep on the night of the
game (thus eliminating any possibility that the ball's identity can ever be
verified) and spends the rest of the night finding a buyer. Finally, an
epilogue tells the story of Nick's business trip to Russia following the
events of part one and then revisits several of the other major characters.
Given this complex narrative framework, Underworld does not lend itself
to any sort of summary or reductive scheme. If Nick Shay is the central
character, it is because he appears on more pages than anyone else, not
because any aspect of the novel's thematic structure demands it.
85
3.1. Delillo and Technology
DeLillo seems to present an incomparable description of the way in which
information technologies and mass media, in general, have shaped modes
of perceiving reality in the postmodern age. His novels present characters
and situations which are deeply related to the society of the spectacle,
including: moviegoers, ex-actors, TV sets, employees of the corporate
media, professors of pop culture, and people who stare daily at the tube. In
any number of ways, television, radio, movies, the ―spectacle‖ in general,
becomes the main protagonist of their work. It would, thus, be almost
impossible to ignore all these elements in an analysis of his narrative. One
cannot study DeLillo without being aware of his profound link with what is
to be considered the society of the spectacle he narrates.
DeLillo often reflects on the world of mass media. However, he does
not directly apply critical theories, such as those developed by Baudrillard
or Debord. These theories are rather helpful tools offering a way to analyze
and define the world of the spectacle described by this author. Specifically,
DeLillo‗s reflection upon mass media must be considered part of a slow,
deep, ontological shift profoundly linked to American society in the second
half of the twentieth century. This shift was caused by the diffusion of
86
television on a large scale, the strong development of the Hollywood
industry, but, also, by the birth of mass culture.
Don DeLillo, in his novels, portrays a reality where the spectacle is a
hidden force, an intangible entity that permeates people‗s experiences and
lives. If there is someone behind this spectacle, he is not a single person,
but a collective spectator who, through his desire, yearns for the
representation. As the character Murray says in White Noise: ―we‗re not
here to capture an image, we‗re here to maintain one.‖
Among DeLillo‗s novels, Underworld is probably the one that best
expresses all the themes that have been evolving through the years in his
narrative. Set in a very long time range, from the post-war era to the end of
the twentieth century, the book offers a wide perspective on American
history, connecting real characters like J. Edgar Hoover and Lenny Bruce
to fictional ones, all living their lives as if they were part of a mysterious
web of connections. Spectacles, mass media, movies, and images are not
secondary in the development of the story; however, sometimes they are
not represented directly, but indirectly.
An example of such an indirect existence of the spectacles is best
depicted in ―The Triumph of Death,‖ Underworld‗s prologue, in which a
87
legendary baseball game is narrated. In 1951, the Polo Grounds in New
York was the theatre for a historical play-off game between the Dodgers
and the Giants, and DeLillo narrates this event with complete mastery,
imagining different characters present at the game and telling, through a
cinematographic montage technique, the different experiences they live.
What DeLillo stresses of all these characters at the stadium is their status of
spectators and their function in maintaining images and representations. In
a similar fashion, the portrayal of the passive function of the characters and
how they crave for a representation so called hyperreal is thoroughly
evident in the fragmentary narrative of Underworld.
3.2. A Critical Analysis of Underworld
Underwold is potentially postulated as DeLillo's magnum opus, since it
evolves from the initiative novels and revolves around the incidences,
scenes, and characters that ultimately culminate in this work. He
masterfully connects the scenes and characters to the scenes and characters
of other novels or even the imaginary ones. DeLillo best demonstrates a
society abounding with spectacles even in the prologue of the novel ―The
Triumph of Death ‖.The crowd at the Polo Grounds is a society made of
88
and for spectacles. Russ Hodges compares the moment he is beholding now
to the Dempsey-Willard match he saw when he was a little boy, and he
realizes that these kinds of moments are historical only because they
become newsreel; J. Edgar Hoover feels ―some libidinous thing in the
world,‖ which is in a way possessed by those who work in the show
business, and that is why he tries to stay always with them. (17) Cotter
links Bill Waterson, the guy who sits near him at the stadium, to ―small-
town life in the movies;‖ (20) People gather around Jackie Gleason asking
him to repeat lines from his TV show;(23) and at a certain point in the
prologue, through Hodges, it becomes clear that what is going on is the
awaiting for a revelation and there is only one thing that can be the vehicle
of this revelation: Hodges's voice on the radio.
―This is radio, buddy. Can't close down. Think of what's out
there. They are hugging their little portables.‖
―You're not making me feel any better.‖
―They are goddamn crouched over the wireless. You're like
Murrow from London.‖
―Thank you, Al.‖
―Save the voice.‖
―I am trying mightily.‖
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―This game is everywhere. Dow Jones tickers are rapping out
the score with the stock averages. Every bar in town, I
guarantee. They are smuggling radios into boardrooms. At
Schrafft's I hear they are breaking into the Muzak to give the
score.‖(27)
People seem all to play part in an ancient ritual. During the seventh-
inning stretch Waterson explains to Cotter that they are respecting a long-
standing tradition the essence of which is the connection, the legacy
between different generations; and in this religious moment the only priests
are Hodges, his voice, and the radio. The revelation everybody is waiting
for is not clear, but it will surely provide a shift of some sort. As DeLillo
writes: ―The game doesn't change the way you sleep or wash your face or
chew your food. It changes nothing but your life.‖(32) In other words, it
changes everything at a fundamental level.
While the spectacle is going on Hodges has to describe things as any
radio commentator would do, but often the ―real baseball‖ he tries to
describe disappears behind any attempt of catching it. And in the end his
job becomes not so different from the one he used to do in Charlotte, when
he had to make up imaginary baseball matches. ―The crowd begins to lose
90
its coherence‖ (33) notices the journalist, and later DeLillo says that ―Russ
wants to believe they are still assembled in some recognizable manner;‖
(36) whatever he says in his microphone, it seems to lack coherence and
connection with the world outside. If one has to think of a central character
in the choral virtuosity of ―The Triumph of Death‖, then Hodges is the only
candidate for such a role, a surrogate artist.
DeLillo concentrates on him the last section of the prologue. The
match is over, everybody is going back home and Russ is interviewing
players; he is ―trying to describe the scene in the clubhouse and he knows
he is making no sense and the players who climb up on the trunk to talk to
him are making no sense and they are all talking in unnatural voices, failed
voices, creaturely night screaks.‖(58) It is as if they all existed in that
spectacular moment and now they are all just ghosts of that moment. Mass
media create the spectacle and everything which is outside of it is no more
real.
Leaving the stadium, Hodges's eyes, are captured by a drunk who
runs the bases of the empty field. He repeats the pantomime of the
spectacle and of the mass media's creation of it. DeLillo writes: ―All the
fragments of the afternoon collect around his airborne form.‖(60) Another
91
ghost of that same spectacle. It is in that image that Russ mirrors himself
and the spectacle he just created. The revelation everybody was waiting for
it is just passed, ―falling indelibly into the past,‖ (60) making Russ aware of
the disappearance of the real. ―The event is the real that has become
consistent‖, writes John Marks(2000) in his Deleuzian analysis of DeLillo,
reflecting on the ball game at the Polo Grounds; the baseball match is
transformed through Russ‗s eyes in a spectacle that is the only possibility
for its reification. The event cannot exist if not as spectacle, and thus as a
representation which nullifies its concreteness.
Talking about the 1951 play-off between Dodgers and Giants at the
Polo Grounds, the newsreel footage of the event, and Russ Hodges's voice,
DeLillo(1997) sees it as a moment in contrast with time-collapsing
technologies of the contemporary world (he mentions the microwave, the
VCR remote and the telephone redial button), something ―beautifully
isolated in time – not subject to the frantic, debasing repetition which has
exhausted a contemporary event before it's been even rounded into
coherence.‖
Still, what he narrates in Underworld, is not the isolation in time of
the event, but the ambiguity with which mass media relate to such an event:
92
their impossibility of narrating it, and their unique capacity of creating it.
Hodges's account of the game's final moments is a sort of primitive
experience of the exhaustion of a contemporary event. And the drunk who
plays baseball alone in an empty field at the end of Underworld's prologue,
signals the bewilderment that a culture of spectacles can cause, in the same
way in which Oedipa is puzzled by the media power of Pierce Inverarity.
A recurring phrase in Underworld is ―everything is connected.‖ All
the stories in the novel, though set in different periods of the twentieth
century, are related. In the same way different experiences, feelings, and
visions communicate throughout the novel. The spectacular event narrated
in the prologue, and its media conjugation, is a sort of paradigm related to
other spectacles which take place in other years: the Zapruder film or
Esmeralda's apparition.
Media technologies mold these spectacles, they give them sense and
structure, and it is through them that the spectacles mature an
overwhelming power to change people's life. In the ―Power of History,‖
DeLillo writes, talking about video-tapes and their capacity to transform
the watcher: ―It is another set of images for you to want and need and get
sick of and need nonetheless, and it separates you from the reality that
93
beats ever more softly in the diminishing world outside the tape.‖ The
drunk who plays baseball alone is someone who ―wants and needs‖ a
repetition of that same spectacle he has been watching until then. And it is
behind this ambiguous desire of the spectators that is hidden that power of
the spectacle to nullify reality.
The passages which best explicate DeLillo's words in ―The Power of
History‖ are those, in Underworld, that deal with the Texas Highway
Killer. The Texas Highway Killer is Richard Henry Gilkey, an assassin,
who, like all the other figures in Underworld, disappears and reappears
throughout the novel. His tenth crime is recorded by a child with a video
camera traveling with her parents on the highway at the time of the murder,
and thus, shown on TV. The broadcasting of the homicide is the occasion
for DeLillo to reflect, in a novel where images are often transforming and
revolutionary means, on the process by which they influence and shape the
human mind.
In the construction of the scene the writer narrates, two different
elements need to be underlined. There is, first of all, a sort of primordial
innocence breathing between the lines. It is the innocence of the kid who
has the camera in her hands and who is unaware of the final
94
death/revelation she is about to witness; it is the innocence of the spectator,
who has already witnessed that revelation several times, but who is
unaware of the way those images are transforming him.
The last sentences of the chapter in which the broadcasting of the
killing is narrated read: ―The more you watch the tape, the deader and
colder and more relentless it becomes. The tape sucks the air right out of
your chest but you watch it every time.‖(60) It is an ambiguous innocence:
the child is in some way conscious of the dangerous and mysterious powers
possessed by the technology she is holding in her hands, but she seems
used by that technology and by the promises of reality it contains. Like her,
the TV-watcher is concerned with the possibilities of the real the medium
can donate. And this is indeed the second important element of the passage:
a strong desire for the real, which like a ghost inhabits the pages. ―There's
something about the nature of the tape,‖ DeLillo writes, ―...you think this is
more real, truer-to-life than anything around you...the tape has a searing
realness.‖(157)
3.3. Surrounding Reality and the Represented Reality
Reality is the final crucial desire around which develops the entire scene,
and, also in this case, the process is ambiguous: because on one side there
95
is a media technology which promises to fulfill the spectators' desires for
reality, and, on the other, reality gets always more distant in its
representation: ―The things around you have a rehearsed and layered and
cosmetic look. The tape is superreal, or maybe underreal is the way you
want to put it. It is what lies at the scraped bottom of all the layers you have
added.‖(157)
This contrast between the ―surrounding reality‖ and the ―represented
reality‖ is at the core of how mass media functions in the contemporary
world. The case is here that a writer transforms this contrast, repeating it
into his novel, in different moments of the twentieth-century history, into
an essential feature of this century's shift toward not only that Society of
Spectacle theorized by Debord, but also toward a disappearance of the real
with which literature has to come to terms.
Catherine Morley (2006) has written that characters like the Texas
Highway Killer in Underworld, ―are subject to the illusions nurtured and
sustained by the media culture they inhabit, losing their subjectivity to
become hyper-manipulated characters.‖ If this is the case, then the
boundaries among spectator, representation, video-maker, and medium are
96
very thin. They all share the same innocence, the same desires for reality,
and the same subjugation to a power they cannot control.
In two very revealing moments of the novel, Don DeLillo shows
these links through communication technologies and their capacity to
convey common needs and desires. The episode narrated in these two
moments is the same: during the umpteenth television show about the
recorded killing, Richard Henry Gilkey makes a live phone call to the show
and talks with Sue Ann Corcoran, the anchorwoman. The way DeLillo
narrates this phone call is first through the eyes of Matt Shay, Nick's
brother, and then through the perspective of Gilkey.
When Matt finds himself, casually, in front of a TV where they are
showing again the tape of the killing, he recognizes the necessity of looking
at it. That scene seems to haunt him:
―When it was running he could not turn away from it. When it
wasn't running he never thought about it. Then he'd get on line
at the supermarket back home and then it was again on the
monitors they'd installed to keep shoppers occupied at the
check-out--nine monitors, ten monitors, all showing the
tape.‖(215)
97
3.4. Disappearance of the Real
The video is an uncontrolled, autonomous force; when Matt approaches the
TV, the screen is already on. He seats on the footstool near it, as if he is
approaching an altar, a place of devotion, waiting, like all spectators, for a
revelation. The revelatory moment when Matt watches the scene is always
the same: the recognition of witnessing something absolutely real, and thus
the need of confronting another human being who would confirm the
revelation. ―Matt could not look at the tape without wanting to call out to
Janet. Hurry up, Janet, here it comes...it wasn't enough. It was never
enough.‖(217)
When the same episode is narrated from the serial killer point of
view, it changes the perspective, but not the essence of the episode: the
need to witness something real and, at the same time, to be part of it:
He made the call and turned on the TV, or vice versa, without
the sound his hand wound in a doubled hanky, and he never
felt so easy talking to someone on the phone or face-to-face or
man to woman as he felt that day talking to Sue Ann. He
watched her over there and talked to her over here. He saw her
lips move silent in one part of the room while her words felt
98
soft and warm on the coils of his secret ear. He talked to her
on the phone and made eye contact with the TV. This was the
waking of the knowledge that he was real.(133)
DeLillo puts this passage in contrast with what happens before and
after the telephone call, that is, the gray, dull, melancholic everyday life of
the Texas Highway Killer. As the son of a dad who has ―infirmities still
waiting for a name,‖ (262) he has to take care of him, together with his
mom, constantly. And, apart from homicide, his only other diversion is
paying visit to Bud Willing, a person he barely knows and of whom he
secretly loves the wife. The life around him is a fake version of the real life
of the videotape which he inhabits through technological repetition every
day. It is this virtual life he desires and dreams of. ―She had so much
radiance she could make him real,‖ (270)
DeLillo underlines, as if it is only the image that comes from the TV
screen to legitimate reality. Sue Ann Corcoran, the anchorwoman who
presents the show, embodies this televisual power and becomes an essential
element of the process of communal desire created by the spectator, the
spectacle and its protagonists. She is not an entity separated from the
spectator, whether he is Matt Shay or Richard Gilkey, because by the latter
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she is evoked as someone who also becomes object of observation through
the medium, having given an interview about her life and her choices in
another TV-show. She participates of the spectacle like every spectator
does, but the roles and the positions of the game or often intertwined. The
Texas Highway Killer is himself spectator and spectacle while Matt, who
seems to be only a victim of image repetition, desires strongly to be part of
that spectacle.
As many, like Mark Osteen and Catherine Morley, have already
noted, media technologies seem to be the only elements of the narration to
validate the characters' existence in DeLillo. This reflection and insistence
on the disappearance of the real, of its blurring with representations is at
the root of his oeuvre.
3.5. Medially Validated Reality
Theorist of communications James Carey has stated that ―modern
communications have drastically altered the ordinary terms of experience
and consciousness, the ordinary structures of interest and feeling, the
normal sense of being alive, of having a social relation‖ (2). What this
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statement indicates foremost is the total effect modern communication has
on people in society, influencing every aspect of life. Although this pertains
to all types and forms of communication, it is undeniable that the media
make up a great, if not the greatest, part of it. This power of being able to
influence what is considered normal by society, what its inhabitants should
feel, what they should be interested in, and how life should be experienced
by them, is strong on its own, but even more so when combined with
Baudrillard‘s notion of images and simulacra.
Postmodernity has caused people to no longer be able to make the
distinction between reality and representation. As a result, the
representations seen on TV or read about in the paper are valued as truth.
With the media‘s omnipresence in society, their role shifts from providing
people with information, phase one on Baudrillard‘s scale, to providing
them with reality, phase four. On that same token people turn to the media
in order to find acknowledgement for the real as experienced by them. This
results in a situation in which the media project reality as it should be
accepted by postmodern society; besides, it appoints importance and truth
value to the real as experienced by the people.
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Reality is not acknowledged as such unless it is validated by the media.
The validation of reality by the media plays a large role in this novel. The
characters‘ need for confirmation that what it is they are experiencing as
the real is, in fact, real, is recurring, but it takes different forms.
A detrimental impact of media which is mostly evident in Underwold is the
numbing effect exerted by media on people due to the saturation and
overexposure. The reducing shock effect as a result of overexposure is
exemplified in Underworld by the videos of the murder committed by the
Texas Highway Killer and the Zapruder film. The Texas Highway Killer is
a minor character in the novel Underworld. His character is one of the
elements in the novel taken from real contemporary society in order to
establish the time frame, drawing on the Freeway Killer, a serial killer
active in the USA during the late seventies and eighties. The fictional
killer, identified as Richard, shoots his victims while they are driving their
cars, hence his nickname. One of his murders is filmed by a young girl
playing with a video camera in the backseat of the car driving in front of
the victim. The footage is repeatedly shown on TV and Nick Shay‘s brother
Matt is one of the viewers watching it. When Matt describes his experience
of watching the footage of the murder, his reaction reflects the numbing
effect of mass media exposure. Matt is fascinated by the tape, watching it
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over and over, remarking that ―it is awful and unremarkable at the same
time‖ (Underworld, 158). This conflicting assessment demonstrates that
although Matt knows what is happening on the tape is horrible, he lacks an
actual emotional response. His pointing out that in the scenes in which the
victim is being shot ―the twist of the head only gives you a partial profile
and it‘s the wrong side, it‘s not the side where he was hit‖ (159) breathes a
sense of disappointment at not being able to actually see the shattered skull.
This craving for more detail has replaced the shock of watching another
human being die. Mass media exposure has ensured society to have
witnessed such instances on repeat, or as Matt himself puts it ―this is why
they‘re out there, to provide our entertainment‖ (160). What this remark
shows is that the reality that someone has died is not registered by Matt in
any other sense than as a form of entertainment. The conflict here is the
function of the media as providing information and reality on the one hand,
and entertainment on the other. As postmodernity in society progresses
these two become more and more intertwined, because reality fades and is
replaced by simulacra. Confusion with regard to the function of the image
results in reality as presented by the media to be interpreted as
entertainment. Matt is going through this process, which is demonstrated
by his acknowledgement that ―the tape has a searing realness‖ (157). This
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illustrates how he thinks the tape seems real, indicating his
incomprehension of the fact that it is. His statement that ―the tape sucks the
air right out of your chest but you watch it every time‖ (160) exemplifies
the conflict of the function of the media.
The Zapruder film demonstrates real violence presented as
entertainment and the numbing effect of overexposure. The Zapruder film
is the home video of the Kennedy assassination in 1963. In Underworld,
one of the main characters, an artist named Klara Sax, attends a show at an
art studio held especially for the showing of the film, meaning that its sole
and only purpose in that context is to provide entertainment for the guests.
Although the initial response of the viewers is one of shock, this effect
wanes fast. The reason for this is the fact that none of the guests, apart from
Klara, knew what it was they were about to see. The numerous televisions
divided over multiple rooms relentlessly bombarding the guests with the
film on repeat causes for the novelty to quickly wear off. Like Matt, the
reality of the death of a person is not registered in the context of it being
projected as entertainment at an art show. Klara herself is not shocked by
the footage because she already knows what is about to be shown as is
clarified by the narrator of the scene: ―she‘d begun detaching herself from
the event long before she got here because she‘d been told what it was at
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some point but still had to see it‖ (488). Her foreknowledge of what is on
the tape results in her inability to be shocked because for her the novelty is
not there to begin with. The fact that she goes to the event anyway, not to
participate but merely to see the tape, shows her desire to be entertained by
a video of a man being assassinated. As genuine consumers, once the
entertainment value of the film has worn off, the guests of the exhibition
continue on their way, go out to eat, play cards and do not think about it
again. This provides a powerful contrast between the reality of the
Kennedy assassination and its representation through the Zapruder film, as
rather than being a life changing event, such as the actual assassination
was, the Zapruder film is forgotten by the time the sun goes down.
The existence of the Texas Highway Killer is validated through the
media‘s conflicting roles of providing the people with reality and
entertainment. At a certain point Richard decides to contact the news
station that covers the story of his killing spree and continuously broadcasts
the video of his latest victim. The paradox here is that he disagrees with,
and challenges, the way he is being depicted in the media, being judged and
portrayed as an individual rather than a generic concept echoes Lyotard‘s
notion of prioritizing diversity and individuality over the collective and
grand total in postmodern society. Richard‘s preference of isolation over
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companionship and his general dislike of human interaction demonstrate a
(yet) unmatched detachment from other people. The statement that ―the
only person he ever talked to from the heart was Sue Ann. She made him
feel real, talking on the phone‖ (269) not only confirms this detachment,
but also shows how images and representations have become his reality.
Not only is their conversation taking place whilst at the same time
acknowledging that they validate his existence. In the phone call Richard
makes to Sue Ann, the news anchor of the station, he indicates that he feels
his person is being generalized based on already existing profiles, rather
than on him personally. This generalization is expressed through
characterizations such as low self-esteem and childhood abuse which are in
turn countered by Richard in the interview in an attempt ―[…] to set the
record straight‖ (216). Richard‘s insistence of over the phone, therefore
void of any actual visual interaction, but Richard uses a voice distorter to
ensure she will never really hear his voice. Furthermore, unlike a normal
phone call, Sue Ann is broadcasting the conversation live, not actually
holding a phone but solely hearing Richard‘s words resound through the
studio: ―he talked to her on the phone and made eye contact with the TV.
This was the waking of the knowledge that he was real‖ (270). Based on
this, Richard‘s live is saturated with postmodern notions of individuality
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‫‪and images to such an extent that he has no need for actual human contact‬‬
‫‪to feel real, but merely requires the validation of his existence in the‬‬
‫‪representation of contact through the media, or in this case Sue Ann.For‬‬
‫‪Richard, the hyperreal, or fourth phase of the image, has become his‬‬
‫‪reality.‬‬
‫‪107‬‬
‫‪Chapter IV: Technology, Mass Media and‬‬
‫‪Terror in Mao II‬‬
‫‪108‬‬
Mao II
The novel is arguably one of the best works of Delillo, if not its magnum
opus. It is many dimensional recounting of a short time on the life of a
novelist Bill Gray who lives in solitude. The novel tackles many political,
social and aesthetic questions and issue including some terrorist attacks like
the one in Beirut.
There is a prologue to the book where it talks about the mass
wedding of many followers of a cult leader called Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, however, we see a middle-aged
businessman who, escaping from his querulous wife, meanders in the
streets of New York to go to Yankee Stadium to see her daughter Karen.
However, now we hear the story from Karen as she is flooded with her
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thoughts and memories and later she thinks about the cult marriage she had
the same day.
At the beginning of the first part of the novel, Brita Nilsson shows
up; she has been a successful photographer but getting tired of the many
evil attacks and scenes she has photographed, she decides to try her hand at
depicting writers who are full of energy and to that end she meets Scott
Marineau who is Billy‘s assistant who takes her to Bill‘s whereabouts.
Brita takes some pictures of Billy and they talk for some time where they
talk about the last novel Bill has written but not published. There are sexual
undercurrent themes in their talks and Bill also talks about the similarities
between writing novels and terrorism.
Bill is asked to negotiate with some terrorists in Beirut in favor of a
poet who has been taken hostage. There is a bomb to be exploded in
London but later put off and this interests Bill after which he comes into
contact with someone called George Haddad who has been somehow
responsible for the bombing and has also been involved with the issue of
taking hostages in Beirut. Bill is seduced by Haddad to travel with him to
Greece and meet the terrorist group leader who is called Abu Rashid.
Going to Lebanon in hopes of seeing Abu Rashid, he becomes ill and dies.
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The novel has also an epilogue which is narrated by Brita who is
going to meet Abu Rashid soon. There she witnesses terrorism, terrorist
attacks and terror dictatorship and sees her son there. In one of the best
parts of the novel, Brita is sitting on the balcony of her apartment that is
bombed and looks into the street where a wedding is going on and the
groom and bridegroom are on a tank to get to their new house.
4.1. Technology and Mao II
Bill, the novelist in the novel Mao II, cannot finish his recently written
novel nor can he publish it; however, the cause of such inertia stems from
the fact that he has come to the understanding that there are no ways
remaining to impact people and their culture through writing. In one point
in the novel, Bill utters the following words:
The novel used to feed our search for meaning. Quoting Bill.
It was the great secular transcendence. The Latin mass of
language, character, occasional new truth. But our desperation
has led us toward something larger and darker. So we turn to
the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe.
This is where we find emotional experience not available
elsewhere. We don't need the novel. Quoting Bill. We don't
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even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports
and predictions and warnings. (Delillo, Mao II 72)
Bill has a special outlook regarding literature and the meaning it
affords to spread; that is to say, he believes that when the masses get access
to the piece of literature and, in this case, his not published recent novel,
the meaning of the piece gets modified and changed and the meaning is no
longer controllable by Bill himself. Bill has decided to lead a life of
solitude when he realizes that the masses and their culture will eventually
impact his writing, style of writing, and even meaning production.
In such a situation where the terrorists use media to communicate
and get their meanings and messages across, the writers have merely some
images that are interpreted in many various and different ways none of
which are controlled by the author and therefore, they have the upper hand
in the one-upmanship in the competition between writers and terrorist to
influence people. This point is clearly delineated by Brita, a photographer
in the novel, who starts taking photos of the novelist at the beginning of the
novel only to turn to taking photos of the terrorists at the end of the novel.
In this novel Delillo aims at introducing a new meaningful concept in
terms of media and people‘s identity; that is to say, Delillo explores more
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the relationship between images and reality and comes to the conclusion,
by the end of the novel, that images are taking the place of reality and they
have replaced it. After many years of living in reclusion, Bill allows to be
taken some photographs and when this happens, it actually modifies his
identity; that is to say, the photographs become Bill‘s new identity. After
he is photographed, something epiphanic happens to Bill; in other words,
being photographed, Bill loses his identity, least of all he loses control over
his identity.
Although the novel has the undercurrent theme of the unavoidable
power exercise of media, there are two important phases in the novel. The
first phase of the novel deals with a Bill who is totally far away from the
happenings of the world and he occupies himself by writing and finishing
his recent book; in other words, he has book to read and many manuscripts
to consume and exhaust.
The second phase is when Bill gets rid of his books and seclusion
and decides to have a more multi-dimensional position in a world at stake
due to violence and misunderstanding. As Bill explores the wider world
once more, he discovers that the world is full of political violence. It is
through and in this phase that Bill appreciates the piecing importance of
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media; that is to say, as he reenters the wider world and travels to London
and Beirut later on, he finds out that the entire world taken over by
ideology, violence, political one-upmanship and killing, all of which are
communicated by the same thing that has made him sluggish which is
media. During his short residence in London, Bill meets the representative
of a Maoist terror group George Haddad and there Haddad argues that:
George was saying, ―The first incident was unimportant
because it was only a series of phone calls. The second
incident was unimportant because nobody was killed. For you
and Bill, pure trauma. Otherwise strictly routine. A few years
ago a neo-Nazi group in Germany devised the slogan 'The
worse the better.' This is also the slogan of Western media.
You are nonpersons for the moment, victims without an
audience. Get killed and maybe they will notice you.‖ (Delillo,
Mao II 130)
Here, in this extravagant claim by Haddad, he compares western
media and its ways of representing reality with Nazi methods of
manipulating and brainwashing people which points to the overly cruelty
and violence both media and Nazi used to propagate. Here, Delillo points
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to the fact that Western societies are led to a state of repletion with senses
and feelings and they no longer feel anything to be too bad; in fact, they
deem violence and killings as usual things that happen every day in front of
their eyes.
4.2. Technology and Writing
Media is playing an uncontrollable role in today‘s world; that is to say,
once media reflect what is happening around the world people start to
attribute some specific meaning to those events and therefore it is the
people who own the information and they tend to interpret them in the
exact way they desire. In the same way, in Mao II, we see Bill willfully
refusing to get his book published, a book which he has been writing for a
couple of years. Bill is afraid that the exact moment his books gets
published and it spreads in the entire world, it gets a life of its own and
consequently it is prone to divergent and untrue interpretations by people.
The book will be read around the world and instead of being a book written
by Bill, it turns to a book which has no author and it has a life of its own
without any author. Brita, the photographer of the novel, who first makes
Bill reenter the wider world and out of seclusion due to her photographing
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of him, asks Bill about the reasons he doesn‘t like to publish his boo k and
Bill‘s assistant points out that:
―Bill is at the height of his fame. Ask me why. Because he
hasn't published in years and years and years. When his books
first came out, and people forget this or never knew it, they
made a slight sort of curio impression. I've seen the reviews.
Bric-a-brac, like what's this little oddity. It's the years since
that made him big. Bill gained celebrity by doing nothing. The
world caught up. Reprint after reprint. We make a nice steady
income, most of which goes to his two ex-wives and three ex-
children. We could make a king's whatever, multimillions,
with the new book. But it would be the end of Bill as a myth, a
force. Bill gets bigger as his distance from the scene
deepens.‖(136)
However, Bill hopes that by not publishing his latest novel, the
masses keep their attention on him and Bill remains the sole author and
writer of the book. At this point, these remarks by Bill show his close
association with that of the French Structuralist Roland Bathes when he
argues that the cost of publishing a book for people is the death of the
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author of that book. Bill does not publish his novel and in this way he
remains the sole writer and also interpreter of the book alongside the fact
that he has an aura around himself that with the publication of the book he
would become dead.
George who is a Maoist supporter and a terrorist himself tells Bill to
swap his typewriter with a more recent computer at which point it becomes
clear that Delillo is addressing the issue of loss of power of authors and
also the fact that not only meanings are not fixed but also they are so
widespread that nobody can claim them; later on, George says ―Drink your
coffee. There's a new model that Panasonic makes and I absolutely swear
by it. It's completely liberating. You don't deal with heavy settled artifacts.
You transform freely, fling words back and forth.‖ (Delillo, Mao II 224)
The typewriter is very meaningful for Bill because it shows the
concreteness of a machine that can uphold his ideas while he is invited to
use a device that will ruin everything at a click of a button. However, Bill is
invited to use a machine that will figuratively kill Bill and turns his
nightmare come true eventually. George openly advocates the uses of
computers because as a member of a terrorist group he is totally aware of
the power these devices can have on people and their ideologies. This point
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and many others in the novel touch upon the fact that, for terrorists, the
larger the masses the better the messages will get across. For them,
everything is at the hands of the mass media; that is to say, since images
determine reality and all people have access to such images, they are the
owners of information:
But we're all drawn to the idea of remoteness. A hard-to-reach
place is necessarily beautiful, I think. Beautiful and a little
sacred maybe. And a person who becomes inaccessible has a
grace and a wholeness the rest of us envy.‖
The image world is corrupt, here is a man who hides his face.
Yes,‖ she said.
People may be intrigued by this figure but they also resent him
and mock him and want to dirty him up and watch his face
distort in shock and fear when the concealed photographer
leaps out of the trees. In a mosque, no images. In our world we
sleep and eat the image and pray to it and wear it too. The
writer who won't show his face is encroaching on holy turf.
He's playing God's own trick. (Delillo. Mao II 37)
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4.3. Technology, Terror and Media
When Delillo addresses the question of mass media in Mao II, he spices it
up with also exploring in deep his obsessions with authorship and how it is
going to get underappreciated by the postmodern reader in the postmodern
world. Mao II is the story of Bill‘s argument that with the emergence of
visual media which is deemed as a kind of mass communication, terrorists
has taken the place of writers and novelists who are able to create
extravagant narratives, especially due to the fact that they act outside the
discourse of West.
Delillo puts Bill on the opposite side of the spectrum of
representation with that of Brita; that is to say, they seem to be working on
holing a mountain from two different sides but at the end, to everyone‘s
chagrin, it is Brita that seems to win and, here, Delillo is fulminating the
postmodern culture for its prioritizing image over word. In a saddening
scene in the novel, Bill poses for Brita to take some photos of him and
although Bill does not look vet enthusiastic and happy about this act, he
accepts it since it is the last thing he can add to his legacy. When speaking
to Brita in that famous scene, Bill utters:
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―Are you interested in cameras? This is an eighty-five-
millimeter lens.‖
―I used to take pictures. I don't know why I stopped. One day
it just ended forever.‖
―I guess it's true to say that something else is ending forever.‖
―You mean the writer comes out of hiding.‖
―Am I right that it's thirty years since your picture has
appeared anywhere?‖
―Scott would know.‖
―And together you decided the time has come.‖
―Well it's a weariness really, to know that people make so
much of this. When a writer doesn't show his face, he becomes
a local symptom of God's famous reluctance to appear.‖
―But this is intriguing to many people.‖
―It's also taken as an awful sort of arrogance.‖
―But we're all drawn to the idea of remoteness. A hard-to-
reach place is necessarily beautiful, I think. Beautiful and a
little sacred maybe. And a person who becomes inaccessible
has a grace and a wholeness the rest of us envy.‖
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―The image world is corrupt, here is a man who hides his
face.‖
What DeLillo is exploring in this context in prestige of image for the
postmodern world where the novelist has lost the power it could exercise
through using words and his images and pictures have gained importance.
There is an introduction to the theory of importance of the image of the
terrorists to that of the novelists in the consciousness of the Western people
when Brita is photographing Bill:
The novel used to feed our search for meaning. Quoting Bill.
It was the great secular transcendence. The Latin mass of
language, character, occasional new truth. But our desperation
has led us toward something larger and darker. So we turn to
the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe.
This is where we find emotional experience not available
elsewhere. We don't need the novel. Quoting Bill. We don't
even need catastrophes, necessarily. We only need the reports
and predictions and warnings. (Delillo, Mao II 72)
Baudrillard has a well-known and influential concept called ―The
Spirit of Terrorism‖ which, in fact, refers to the point that while writers are
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assimilated into mass media and their yielding power to bring about any
cultural change has been substantially decreased, terrorists are placed
outside of the mass media comprehension and even when they seek to
address the entire world, they are successful in doing so without being
caught. No one can create meaning out of the sacrificial self-wanted deaths
by terrorists while this, in turn, makes them to have the ability to exert
more power and make political requests and remark in the mass media.
Later on in the novel, Delillo compares writers and terrorists with the
formers fail to uphold their roles and positions in the society while the
others succeeding in taking their place:
There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists. In
the West we become famous effigies as our books lose the
power to shape and influence. Do you ask your writers how
they feel about this? Years ago I used to think it was possible
for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-
makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids
on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we
were all incorporated. (Delillo, Mao II 41)
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However, there is a major controversy regarding the point that
whether Don Delillo has the same mentality with that of Bill Gray
concerning their ranking of the positions of writers and terrorists in society
and that how effective they may be in exerting power on the society at
hand. However, one way or another this vague point needs to be clarified
that while Bill points out to the terrorists as standing outside the domain
and discourse and therefore not controlled by them while, on the other
hand, Delillo introduces another character, Haddad, who is talking about
the importance of media for spreading the ranks and meeting the requests
his bosses have ordered.
In the same vein, Delillo argues about the relationship between
authors, terrorists and capitalism. He argues that while the authors and the
terrorists seem to be reading against capitalism and human beings servitude
and slavery in such a system, they are both incorporated and assimilated by
that political system. The writers who publish books and claim to be
standing outside any kind of discourse and political structure as an
intellectual writer are all substantially dependent on mass media and its
power to advertise their texts.
123
A closer look at the situation of terrorists, however, evince that the
terrorists have the same foibles; that is to say, although they pontificate
about fighting world domineering capitalism and how it has made all
human beings slaves of the rich, they simply need capitalism‘s mass media
to promote their political messages through images, pictures, live coverage
and portraying their violence in the mass media.
The fact that the terrorists and their actions are also incorporated and
assimilated by the ferocious capitalist system in testified in another part of
the novel; that is to say, as the writer gave its place to the terrorist, the
terrorist gets captured by capitalism in the same vein that the writers got
captured. However, as Bill Gray dies, he is replaced by major character
who is the mastermind behind the plot of Mao II and who is called Rashid.
Brita, who unconsciously perceives the importance of terrorists and due to
the fact that writers and authors have faded into history, takes a new
approach in life and pursues photographing terrorists; this act of Brita is
extremely considerable since it refers to the literal and figurative death of
writers and authors with them being replaced by their successors who are
certainly terrorists. Rashid utters the following words when asked some
questions by Brita:
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Rashid looks into the camera. He says, ―I will tell you why we
put Westerners in locked rooms. So we don't have to look at
them. They remind us of the way we tried to mimic the West.
The way we put up the pretense, the terrible veneer. Which
you now see exploded all around you.‖
―He is saying as long as there is Western presence it is a threat
to self-respect, to identity.‖
―And you reply with terror.‖
―He is saying terror is what we use to give our people their
place in the world. What used to be achieved through work,
we gain through terror. Terror makes the new future possible.
All men one man. Men live in history as never before. He is
saying we make and change history minute by minute. History
is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the
morning and change it after lunch.‖ ((Delillo, Mao II 235)
As it was mentioned before and also as the abovementioned excerpt
from the novel depicts, the role of Brita is ginormous in the novel. As her
conversation comes to end with Rashid, she shakes Rashid‘s hand and also
takes the hood off one of the guards of Rashid who is not surprisingly a
child and she takes a photograph of her. Here, Delillo donates an
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indispensable role to Brita; in other words, she is pontificating to Rashid
that he and his terrorist group are not anything significant was it not for the
sake of her and her art. It is not Rashid who is dictating anything of
importance in the scene but it is Brita who is exerting her enormous power
in this case. All in all, they are the mass media that working in the structure
of late capitalism are the authentic and genuine authors that can easily
inflict power to all the society. It is this point of the media‘s unremitting
power that controls authors, terrorists and also the masses.
Although the terrorists think that they may be outside of the domain
of discourse and ideology of capitalism, they certainly and substantially
rely on mass media to promote their political outlooks and slogans; in
addition, they also need mass media to show their spectacles and images of
their violence. Not only do not they have a status of their own, but they do
depend too much on capitalism in their activities. There are many scholars
and writers who associate the activities of the terrorists to those of clichés
of capitalist programs like reality television serious.
In one of my favorite scenes in the novel Bill Gray comments on the
decreasing power and prestige of literature and names Beckett as the last
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writer who was able to inflict and exert power and influence. Bill utters the
following words:
―What terrorists gain, novelists lose. The degree to which they
influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as
shap-ers of sensibility and thought. The danger they represent
equals our own failure to be dangerous.‖
―And the more clearly we see terror, the less impact we feel
from art.‖
―I think the relationship is intimate and precise insofar as such
things can be measured.‖
―Very nice indeed.‖
―You think so?‖
―Completely marvelous.‖
―Beckett is the last writer to shape the way we think and see.
After him, the major work involves midair explosions and
crumbled buildings. This is the new tragic narrative.‖
((Delillo, Mao II 156-157)
127
4.4. Technology, Mass Media and the Future of the United State
Delillo‘s perspicacity and prescience is clear and surprising in the
abovementioned quote where he refers to the moribund situation of
literature and writing in general and to the nascent condition of terror,
explosion and violence which ostentatiously is telling and informative
regarding the many horrific incidents in the twentieth century including
September 11th attacks, the spread of ISIS in the middle east, Charlie Ebdo
Massacre and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, to name a few. Another
captivating aspect of the novel Mao II regarding its undercurrent themes is
comparing United States and Beirut in Lebanon where he seeks to indicate
that in the postmodern world of late capitalism, there are no differences
between places and spaces due to the fact that the entire world is under the
control of capitalism and those that have tried to defy such categorization
either have been or will be assimilated by that juggernaut:
Uptown there were schoolboys wearing ties as headbands.
They widened the neck part to fit around the forehead with the
knot near the right ear and the main part drooping over the
shoulder. Shooting with their schoolbags. In other words
lifting the school-bag to the hip Uzi-style and spraying
128
imaginary fire with their lips pushed out. Only Catholic boys
wore uniforms back home. She remembered nuns in station
wagons and how she walked among them at a football game.
They were in black and white, she was in color.
There were water-main breaks and steam-pipe explosions,
asbestos flying everywhere, mud propelled from caved-in
pavement, and people stood around saying, "It's just like
Beirut, it looks like Beirut.‖ ((Delillo, Mao II 146)
As touched upon before, Mao II has many revealing aspects about
the future of a world dominated by mass media, image and terrorism.
Another enthralling aspect of the novel is its disclosure or, in other terms,
its prediction about many terrorist events that would happen in the near
future, especially about the opening years of the twenty-first century. One
aspect of such a revelation is statements and remarks and also comments
about the concept of place in the postmodern world. The Twin Towers
which were decimated in 2001 evinces facts about this issue:
She was thinking that everything that came into her mind
lately and developed as a perception seemed at once to enter
the culture, to become a painting or photograph or hairstyle or
129
slogan. She saw the dumbest details of her private thoughts on
postcards or billboards. She saw the names of writers she was
scheduled to photograph, saw them in newspapers and
magazines, obscure people climbing into print as if she carried
some contagious glow out around the world. In Tokyo she saw
a painting reproduced in an art journal and it was
called Skyscraper III, a paneled canvas showing the World
Trade Center at precisely the angle she saw it from her
window and in the same dark spirit. These were her towers,
standing windowless, two black latex slabs that consumed the
available space. ((Delillo, Mao II 165)
Up to this point in this chapter, a lot of themes have been covered
and addressed by the researcher. For example, the images about the Twin
Towers which dominated the entire programs in the world are delightfully
and informatively discussed in detail and the question of representation
through image and media have been of great significance to the analysis at
hand. The dark and evil spirit experienced by almost all of the characters
including Bill, Brita, Haddad and, at a wider scale, even Don Delillo
himself are omens of what would happen to World Trade Center and many
others targeted by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and countries
130
including, not surprisingly, America itself. Of unequalled shock in the
novel is actually naming The World Trade Center in Mao II and some
warning about it when Brita, talking to Bills, say that:
―Eventually the towers will seem human and local and quirky.
Give them time.‖
―I'll go and hit my head against the wall. You tell me when to
stop.‖
―You'll wonder what made you mad.‖
―I already have the World Trade Center.‖
―And it's already harmless and ageless. Forgotten-looking.
And think how much worse.‖
―What?‖ she said.
―If there was only one tower instead of two.‖
―You mean they interact. There is a play of light.‖
‗Wouldn't a single tower be much worse?‖
―No, because my big complaint is only partly size. The size is
deadly. But having two of them is like a comment, it's like a
dialogue, only I don't know what they're saying.‖ ((Delillo,
Mao II 40)
131
Here, Delillo finds out the symbolic significance of the Towers and
foresees their inevitable fall. The whole novel, to make it short, is the story
of terrorism in the postmodern world, a world which is overly dominated
by mass-produced images and events which are directly related to media
and its representation. The overarching narratives, images and events have
dominated the entire world while literature has been pushed to a side where
it has lost its power to yield any kind of influence and change. Delillo
addresses the question of capitalist mass media and how it has been capable
of transform terrorist killings and violence into merely commodities and
products for everyday and everybody consumption.
132
‫‪Chapter V: Conclusion‬‬
‫‪133‬‬
Conclusion
The two novels touch upon the point that the western world‘s society‘s‘
dependence on media has led to a new kind of reality where due to the fact
that people are not capable of freeing themselves from the vicious and evil
influence of media and therefore, as a result, no one can separate and
differentiate between fact and fiction. Reality is therefore redefined in a
new way by many people and especially scholars such as Don Delillo
which indicates that although we still experience reality through our
understanding of the world, the fact is that we see a kind of reality that
comes to us merely through representation and depiction in the media.
The ways the media tend to create a new kind of experiencing reality
that is substantially about receiving information which is fragmented and
disrupted which gives way to all people have their own interpretations. It is
such kind of reality that Delillo tends to analyze, investigate and critique in
his Underworld and Mao II; that is to say, he is alluding to the point of
media‘s powerful, decisive and, at the same time, manipulative and
deceitful structure. In this regard, Deilillo goes to the extremes when he
134
uses a nontraditional narrative framework which dovetails the
contemporary experience. These kinds of narratives are essential in
Delillo‘s narratives since they give way to individuals to perceive the world
much better and clearer.
Two masterpieces of Delillo following the same vein, Underworld
and Mao II draw upon an extraordinary range of sources and inspirational
experiences which seek to evince the point that meaning is governed less
by content than by the point of view, outlook and perspective of those
people who present the material and the content in addition to governing
ideas and ideologies running through the society and also the personal and
peculiar mentalities of the receivers. Depicting different angles and
dimensions of inextricability of fact and fiction in the novels in question,
Delillo aims at disclosing and also exploring some different dimension of
today‘ life in the entire world.
In both novels of Mao II and Underworld, Delillo aims at creating
characters whose identity are inextricably bound up with technologies of
mass media. In Underworld, Delillo focuses on the point that technological
environment has dominated the world and the totality of the Cold War
technologies and the danger of atomic bomb are repeatedly dealt with.
135
Although here the importance of atomic bomb and the predicament it
causes are main issues at hand but the importance of information
technologies also skyrocket and relate the questions of bombs to those of
daily lives and the crowds. In such a situation, reality loses its real meaning
and becomes a structure that is made and coded by human beings who are
in power.
In both novels, one main issue that has been persistently and
excessively referred to is the item of news. New stories are prolific and in
an age of new journalism and the dominance of tele-journalism and mass
media the prestige and significance of books and novels become less
capturing. However, it is a built-in merit in the novels that attempts at to
show the world of news, images, videos, and television one that has a life
of its own without much relating to the real world the individuals are living
and experiencing.
In a well-known saying by McLuhan which goes like ―we become
what we behold, we can sum up all Don Delillo‘s writings regarding the
novels in question. That is to say, for all walks of life, the news that they
watch day and night in order to analyze the happenings of the world more
clearly, the unwittingly become what they see. For example, the character
136
of Nick Shay in Underworld is transformed into someone who is merely
responsive to the radio broadcast and to the public spectacle which he is
force-fed by. People are all significantly influenced by the images and
pictures which are the products of the mass media.
The images of Soviet nuclear test which is recounted in the novel
Underworld to be on October 3, 1951 has dominated all mass media and
news and creates a great deal of anxiety, malaise and uproar in the
American society. However, Delillo‘s main focus is on the technological
manifestations and representations of such events and the degree to which
they negatively influence people. The electronic age has created individuals
have do not simply differentiate between reality and representation; that is
to say, they mix up what is going on and what is told to be going on which
yields in a kind of unease which cannot be controlled by any means. Total
reliance on the pursuit of all things in the light of technology has deprived
humans beings of their individuality and Delillo touches upon a time when
people‘s thoughts and desires are predominantly controlled by mass media
leaving people who are hollow and superficial with the consciousness and
knowledge are forged by news, picture and images.
137
It is not surprising to end the whole study by quoting a simple line
from Underworld which goes like this ―which describes pilgrims "flocking
to uranium mines in order to cure themselves"; this sentence refers to the
degree that human beings are manipulated in the modern world and
technology has so much impacted people that they even think of going to
the places that uranium is buried under earth- which is also why the novels
title is Underworld- and people need to pay tribute to this technology
although it apparently seems to be aiming to decimate them.
The conspiracy of the world technology functions at the level of face
value; in other words, technology makes reality come true because it seeks
to make the knowable world seeable and therefore tries to bridge a gap
between seeing and knowing which will eventually mislead human beings
from getting closer to the reality. The fact is that media technologies tend
to present reality as truth and, to do so, they transform pictures and pixels
into pieces of truth, after which people attribute their desired meanings to
them and in this way reality is manipulated.
138
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A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality in Donal Richard Don DeLillo&#39;s Selected Novels

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‫‪In the Name of God‬‬

‫‪the Most Gracious‬‬

‫‪system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,‬‬

‫‪Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement of the‬‬

‫‪Degree of Master of Arts in English Language and Literature‬‬

‫‪Yonder the Reality: A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality‬‬

‫‪in Donal Richard Don DeLillo's Selected Novels‬‬

Don Delillo addresses many diverse issues in his writings as a postmodern

writer and critic. However, he specifically investigates the experience of

the masses in living in a late-capitalist and media-governed community.

This study aims at depicting media representations of reality and truth in

II. The discussion of media is profoundly important in the light of

postmodern questions of representation and its relationship with reality;

influences on people and modern culture. Among many other postmodern

contemporary American individual is influenced by information technology

work by Delillo, we witness the technological apparatuses not merely at the

spectrum, they undertake the role of manipulators that seek to force-feed

mentality are forged by them.

It is a delight to thank those who made writing this thesis possible. Of

course, I may not be able to express my appreciation to all of the friends,

siblings, kinships, and instructors; however, I try to mention some of them

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank my family whose relentless

support encouraged me to keep on my studies. Above all, I am deeply

grateful to my parents whose sympathy made me stand on my foot during

To accomplish this project, I am definitely indebted to my thesis

supervisor, Dr. Abdol Hossein Joodaki, whose calmness, patience, support

gratitude indeed for never hesitating to answer my messages and guiding

me at the critical time of need.

I wish to show my utmost gratitude to my dear friends Saman Sadr,

Mohammad Sadeq Najjarzadeha, Salman Hosseini, and Ahmad Hossein

of inspiration and back-up.

‫‪Chapter One: Introduction................................................................... 1‬‬

‫‪1.1. Statement of the Problem............................................................ 2‬‬

‫‪1.2. Significance of Study ................................................................... 5‬‬

‫‪1.3. Review of Literature ................................................................... 7‬‬

‫‪1.4. Key Terms ................................................................................. 12‬‬

‫‪1.5. Methodology.............................................................................. 17‬‬

‫‪1.6. Scope and Limitation of Study .................................................. 20‬‬

‫‪1.7. Thesis Outline ........................................................................... 21‬‬

‫‪Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework .............................................. 24‬‬

‫‪2.1. Postmodernism: Postmodern Era ............................................. 25‬‬

‫‪2.2. Jean Baudrillard ....................................................................... 29‬‬

‫‪2.3. Simulacra and Simulation ......................................................... 34‬‬

‫‪2.4. The Notion of Hyeprreality ....................................................... 39‬‬

2.6. Mechanical Reproductions and Media Simulations .................. 52

2.7. General Overview on DeLillo.................................................... 57

2.8. DeLillo and Media at the Age of Spectacles .............................. 60

Chapter Three: A Critical Analysis of Underworld: The Hegemony of

Spectacles over Reality ....................................................................... 81

3.1. Delillo and Technology.............................................................. 86

3.2. A Critical Analysis of Underworld ............................................. 88

3.3. Surrounding Reality and the Represented Reality.................... 95

3.4. Disappearance of the Real......................................................... 98

3.5. Medially Validated Reality……………………..........................100

4.1. Technology and Mao II ........................................................... 111

4.2. Technology and Writing ......................................................... 115

4.3. Technology, Terror and Media ............................................... 119

Chapter Five: Conclusion ................................................................. 133

Bibliography .................................................................................. 139

―Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary

sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and

promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued

qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and

authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl

A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality in Donal Richard Don DeLillo's Selected Novels

A Critical Study of Mass Media and Hyperreality in Donal Richard Don DeLillo's Selected Novels