3.1.2 Deja vu

In an encyclopedia we find the following definition of the term deja vu: "[franz. >schon gesehen<], Psychologie: unbegründeter Bekanntheitseindruck, Erinnerungstäuschung [...]."(66) In other words, the term describes a perceptual flaw: a subject encounters an object for the first time but perceives it as an familiar object. In a way, this is the kind of perception we encounter in the scene of "The Most Photographed Barn in America". While Jack and Murray gaze at the barn with hordes of other tourists, Murray makes a startling remark: "No one sees the barn." (p. 12) This statement deserves explanation, and after a "long silence" Murray provides it: "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." (p. 12) In other words, once one has encountered several representations and images of an object, one cannot see it as if for the first time. What the tourists experience can thus be considered a slightly altered form of deja vu: they are not overwhelmed with the strange feeling of having seen exactly the same barn before, but they lack any sentiments of looking at a special and new object.

Deja vu plays an important role in the novel. It is one of the symptoms of contact with the airborne toxic event, and several characters in White Noise experience it.(67) I believe that DeLillo incorporated this "flawed perception" to make the reader aware of perceptual processes which pervade the novel. The barn-scene can be understood as a presentation of communal deja vu, as many other scenes in the book. The literal translation of the French term is "already seen", and thus understood the term designates nothing more than a perception in which everything seems familiar. "The conscientous suntans" and "the fire-retardant carpet" are deja-vu-experiences, because they are perceived as stereotypical objects. They are not recognized for their essential and singular details but as parts of larger sign-structures generated in the media.

Deja vu is the perceptual counterpart of Jack Gladney's pervasive use of stereotypical language as reality control. It is as if he constantly tries to produce deja-vu-experiences through his use of language: Heinrich's dangerous chess partner is reduced to a stereotypical figure "already seen" on TV, and the burning of the insane asylum is attributed to reasons encountered elsewhere in the news. One of Jack's little reveries reveals the comforting power of deja vu. After a doctor's visit he fantasizes about a bagboy: "he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing. [...] A thousand people pass me every day but no one ever sees me. I like it [...], it's totally unthreatening, it's how I want to spend my life." (p. 281) This kind of perception leads to an uninterrupted flow of life for the perceiving subject. For the boy everything is literally pre-packaged, nothing ever comes as a surprise: "he sees the completed event before it has occurred, [...] another instance of the containment of the material world by conceptualisation."(68)

The best example of how a media-suffused consciousness perceives the world can be found in the "showdown" between Jack and Willie Mink. The showdown is such a good example because it is an important moment not only for the main protagonist but also for the reader. Both can be said to experience a hightened awareness. The moment in which he confronts his worst enemy is often the moment in which the hero shows and perceives his true self; the knowing reader accordingly reads more carefully.

That his confrontation with Mink has epiphanic qualities (or at least potentials) for Gladney becomes clear right from the beginning. His awareness of himself and his surroundings is heightened: "Elegant. My airy mood returned. I was advancing in consciousness. I watched myself take each separate step. With each separate step, I became aware of processes, components, things relating to other things. Water fell to earth in drops. I saw things new." (p. 304) This short passage is very revealing. The last sentence seems to indicate a true epiphany and a consciousness which perceives objects as if for the first time. The reader expects Gladney to see the essence of the surrounding objects, or, to use Sklovskij's example again, "die Steinigkeit des Steins".

However, Jack's perceptions reveal themselves to be of a different kind. It becomes clear in his ensuing descriptions that he only notices the surfaces and outward appearances of things and never their essence: "On the door itself were little plastic letters arranged in slots to spell out a message. The message was: NU MISH BOOT ZUP KO. Gibberish but high-quality gibberish." (p. 304/305) Jack's perceptions do not reach beneath the surface of things, there are no hidden meanings for him. The newness which he sees in things seems to rest entirely on their surface: "I was moving closer to things in their actual state as I approached a violence, a smashing intensity. Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed." (p. 305)

For Sklovskij, in order to perceive an object as it really is, it is necessary to perceive it as a singularity, stripped of the contexts in which it usually occurs or is presented. Gladney's perception works in the opposite direction. Instead of singularities and details, he only notices "processes, components, things relating to other things." Later on he remarks: "I sensed I was part of a network of structures and channels." (p. 305) The newness Jack perceives in his surroundings concerns their surfaces and their relation to other things. Thus, his perceptions are informed by colloquial language (according to Sklovskij); it is a reduced perception which only notices the most common features of objects (i.e. their "gleaming surfaces") and reproduces them with stock formulas.

The material of the "network of structures and channels" which Jack believes himself to be a part of is derived from televisual narratives. This becomes obvious in his plan upon approaching the confrontation:

Here is my plan. Drive past the scene several times, park some distance from the scene, go back on foot, locate Mr. Gray under his real name or an alias, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim«s staticky hands, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-lenght mirror [...], slip back to the car [...]. (p. 304)

The constant remapping of the real onto a pre-formulated plan leads to a certain self-estrangement: "I watched myself take each separate step." Jack perceives his actions and surroundings as if watching a movie in which he himself is the hero. This is the reason why he seems to be able to anticipate details: "It occurred to me that I did not have to knock. The door would be open." (p. 305) Jack's anticipation, however, is nothing but a false kind of recollection: since he proceeds according to a plan which is derived from media-representations, he always assumes to know what is going to happen next. Jack's great moment is thus pervaded by deja-vu-experiences: he only acknowledges familiar objects which fit into his plan.

The intense moment of the actual shooting is orchestrated with a proliferation of words: "I fired the gun, the weapon, the pistol, the firearm, the automatic." (p. 312) The more that reality spills over into the conceptual world of the subject and becomes a "toxic event", the more urgent the need for words to contain it. It cannot be contained though. Willie Mink fires back hurting Jack, and thereby disrupts his neat narrative: "The world collapsed inward, all those vivid textures and connections buried in mounds of ordinary stuff. I was disappointed." (p. 313) Jack's hurt wrist is not part of the plan, not a deja vu but the return of the real. To be able to cope with this new reality, Jack has to quickly reconceptualize it in a different narrative. He discards his role as the avenging hero to become a saviour: "I know I felt virtuous, I felt blood-stained and stately, dragging the badly wounded man through the dark and empty street. [...] I felt large and selfless, or so it seemed to me as I knelt over the wounded man [...]." (p. 314)

Jack is not alone in creating deja-vu-experiences through pre-formed narratives. DeLillo himself rendered the whole showdown as a kind of deja vu for the reader familiar with Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita: "Damit wird auf der Wirkungsebene die Show-down-Szene selbst als deja-vu-Erlebnis für die LeserInnen inszeniert."(69) Not only are Jack's own proceedings based on previous models but he himself is nothing but the doppelgänger of Humbert Humbert. Both set out to kill the man who had sex with their beloved, both use a gun, both face an enemy who is highly intoxicated and in no way up to their heroic expectations, and both seem unable to kill their respective foes. Perhaps the deja vu experienced by the reader makes him aware of how much his own perceptions and "readings" of the world are already bound up in previous representations which stand between him and the "real".