3.2.3 Authority in the age of the media

The threatening ambiguity of the world surrounding the Gladneys seems irreducible to a wholly controllable realm. Death, fear and pain reappear in the form of "toxic events" which do not fit into pre-formulated narratives and stereotypes and thus cannot be watched in a relaxed deja-vu-style. The ambiguity surrounding the events and objects in the world of White Noise is not simply due to a capricious reality. The media itself, which tries to control reality through stereotypical representation, fosters anxiety. The proliferating images of disasters and diseases with their respective symptoms and explanations make the viewer as much anxious as they make him feel secure.

The renaming of the cloud can be seen as a gain in control over the event. At the same time the switched names leave the viewer in doubt about the true nature of the event. It turns into a protean monster instead of a clearly identifiable and limited "thing". This insecurity and its effect on the receiver of the shifting information becomes evident in the bodily reactions to the toxic cloud. The media "upgrade" their information from "skin irritation and sweaty palms" to "nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath" (p. 111), then to "throwing up" (p. 112), "Heart palpitations and a sense of deja vu" (p. 116), and finally "coma, convulsions, and miscarriage" (p. 125). More surprising than these rapid and rather radical changes in the representation of the effects of the cloud is the fact that Steffie develops every single symptom; of course, only after it has been updated. She appears less to react to reality than to the media which shapes her interaction with the world. Instead of being unambiguous and clearly defined, this interaction has become totally ungraspable. Jack is completely at a loss at his daughters suggestibility:

What did it all mean? Did Steffie truly imagine she'd seen the wreck before or did she only imagine she'd imagined it? Is it possible to have a false perception of an illusion? Is there a true deja vu and a false deja vu? [...] Which was worse, the real condition or the self-created one, and did it matter? [...] Which comes first, menstruation or ovulation? Are we talking about mere symptoms or deeply entrenched conditions? Is a symptom a sign or a thing? (p. 125/126)

Sign or thing? Instead of arresting the play of competing interpretations of things, the media has introduced a whole new set of questions about the reality of things. Jack Gladney is unable to form a stable conclusion about the condition of his daughter. The airborne toxic event for him is also surrounded by ambiguity: "In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are. No one's knowledge is less secure than your own." (p. 120) The competing facts and information leave the subject unable to react or take a clear course of action. This is what Jean Baudrillard calls the real catastrophe of today's disasters, for the interpretative overkill of the media leaves the subject stunned: "Darin besteht auch die Katastrophe jeden Sinns: das folgenlose Ereignis zeichnet sich dadurch aus, daß ihm jedwede Ursachen einfach wahllos zugeschrieben werden können."(89) During the evacuation, "remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation" (p. 129), i.e. a state of the "precession of the simulacra," to use Jean Baudrillard's term for the constant repetition and circulation of images and words in a media society.(90)

The degree to which the subject is incapable of sorting out competing messages from the pervading informational white noise and acting accordingly is illustrated in the following scene: "The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence." (p. 8) The passivity of the family is less the outcome of an active choice on their part as of their incapacity to make any choice. Jack's data profile, which is to establish his grade of intoxification, is an even more ambivalent signifying structure than the smoke alarm. It classifies Jack as a "massive data-base tally" which does not mean anything except that Jack is "the sum total of [his] data." (p. 141) Not even the SIMUVAC official is able to generate any kind of definitive meaning from the data:

[Jack:] "Am I going to die?"
"Not as such," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Not in so many words."
"How many words does it take?"
"It's not a question of words. It's a question of years. We'll know more in fifteen years. In the meantime we definitely have a situation." (p. 140)

Scott Bukatman writes:

Delillo mixes diegetic dialogue and TV chatter in a collage reminiscent of cut-ups, but here the collage is not the result of a subversive authorial intervention, but is instead diegetically anchored to demonstrate the blip culture bombardment which already prohibits the reception of information.(91)

Quotation marks can be indicative of a diegetic source. The "'Distran Ultra, Distran Ultra'" (p. 167) which can be heard/read during a visit to a shopping mall is easily assigned to a PA system. Others are marked by their context as associations of Jack: "I watched the light climb into the rounded summits of high-altitude clouds. Clorets, Velamints, Freedent." (p. 229) Other triplets occur without quotation marks and are not so easy to interpret. I suggest that their insertion is indeed an authorial intrusion aiming to defamiliarize the reading process. The reader faced with such "meaningless" information perhaps becomes aware not just of the white noise of the novel but also of his own world, in which the constant barrage of consumerist messages has long since dropped to a subconscious level.

The proliferation of facts and explanations which pervade a media culture leave the subject without a source for "real" knowledge. In such a situation there seems to appear a strong need for authority, a focussing point for one's anxieties and doubts. Babette is aware of this:

Knowledge changes every day. People like to have their beliefs reinforced. Don't lie down after eating a heavy meal. Don't drink liquor on an empty stomach. If you must swim, wait at least an hour after eating. The world is more complicated for adults than it is for children. We didn't grow up with all these shifting facts and attitudes. One day they just started appearing. So people need to be assured by someone in a position of authority that a certain way to do something is the right way or the wrong way, at least for the time being. (p. 171/172)

Jack Gladney as a father is a traditional authority figure. As witnessed during the evacuation however, he is neither one who takes charge nor a person who knows more than others. His and Babette's knowledge appears as nothing but a "rush of confused schoolroom images" (p. 176) inferior to the knowledge of their son Heinrich. Heinrich's "lectures" on Nyodene D. (p. 130) and the radiation of household appliances (p. 174) cannot be refuted by his parents. Their traditional learning appears inadequate when compared to a typical Heinrich-sentence like: "The brain of a white rat releases calcium ions when it's exposed to radio-frequency waves." (176)

Heinrich is a seemingly limitless source of such quasi-scientific information, a focal point for all the information channels pervading his society. He does not have an inner personality to speak of; "Rather everybody and everything seem to be invited into temporary residence."(93) Like Steffie he resembles a "recording and transmitting device"(94) more than an original source of knowledge. He only relays what he has picked up from other sources, mainly television. His "authority" at certain moments is thus probably due to his close attention to the media, not only the information it provides but also the ways it is represented.

Heinrich's great moment during the evacuation is when he holds a speech on the effects of Nyodene D. to an attentive audience. His background can be clearly traced back to his familiarity with the media. When he speaks "in his new-found voice" to a growing crowd "impressed by the boy's knowledgeability and wit," (p. 130) he perfectly impersonates a scientific expert delivering information on TV. Basically, he uses a scientific-sounding jargon which is presented in a comical way. Jack also takes notice of the unfamiliar gestures of his son: "He snapped his fingers, let his left leg swing a bit. [...] He arched his brows and began to twitch comically, his tongue lolling in a corner of his mouth." (p. 131)

Heinrich's impersonation has the power to soothe people, because for a short moment he is in a "position of authority". This authority is not an inherent quality, but appears as the focal point of various codes which Heinrich assumes. His age, clothes, gestures and idioms all create for a brief moment a semblance of authority which people know from television. Whether an individual is in a position of authority thus "depends largely on whether the image they project, consciously or otherwise, fits whatever the particular code of the moment demands."(95) This simulation of authority is enough to soothe the people, to give them a feeling of control over the situation. This is further emphasized by the fact that the information provided by Heinrich is not soothing at all: "In powder form it's [Nyodene D.] colorless, odorless and very dangerous, except no one seems to know exactly what it causes in humans or the offspring of humans." (p. 131) Again, we are faced with the paradoxical logic of television (i.e. its modes of representation): at the same time that it creates fear and anxiety through the coverage of threatening events and its proliferation of ambiguous facts, it soothes these fears by distancing people from the world and themselves by the use of stereotypes, conceptual language and irony.

Jack's other traditionally authoritarian role as a college professor is also threatened. It never seems like Jack truly "is" a professor, but always tries to play the part of one and quite unsuccessfully. Jack tries to counter his inadequacies by remodeling his appearance and his name to J. A. K. Gladney, "a tag I wore like a borrowed suit." (p. 16) Again authority appears not as an inherent trait but as a role, a position in a semiological network in which outer appearance is the main factor. After one important lecture Jack even wonders where his words stem from: "Is this true? Why did I say it? What does it mean?" (p. 26) His lecture does not seem to be the outcome of genuine intellectual insight on his part but apparantly stems from somewhere else, as if Jack were a mere channel. Like a media idol, Jack seems to "gain authority not from any innate ability but from [...] the mere fact of having the enunciative role."(96)

Jack's colleague Winnie Richards from the department of neurochemistry is another authority figure whose authority rests in outward signs. She is aware of why people consider her brilliant: "What else can they say? I do neurochemistry. No one knows what that is. [...] Besides, I'm built funny and walk funny. If they couldn't call me brilliant, they would be forced to say cruel things about me." (p. 189) The nun, Sister Hermann Marie, who treats Jack's wound after he has been shot by Mink, is also very conscious of the authoritative role assigned to her by others: "Our pretense is a dedication. Someone must appear to believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe." (p. 319) The highest authority of all, that of God, appears here as a mere simulacrum, an act, a "pretense". So even one of the most profound notions of the human race as spiritual, deep and essential is revealed as a mere spectacle of signs.