White Noise is a novel of America's inherent problem in society of misinformation and obsessive consumerism. Based in the 1980's at a time where television was taken to a higher lever; cable television was introduced as well as the mighty video cassette player. White Noise points out a serious relationship between the main characters and their love and addition to television and it distorted media news, which influences everyone in the family, especially the children. Steffie and Wilder ( children of Jack, the novel's main character and narrator) appear in constant mouthing words at the television, reflecting an attitude that television is the teacher and the parent of an entire generation of children.
Blacksmith is a small town where some in mid contemporary America , fulfilling the cliché` of American lifestyle along with the paranoia surrounded by fear. Small town people have the propaganda of the media as entertainment their only, but what is lost and becomes inbreed in as real life.
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germa...
Mussolini (left) and Hitler sent their armies to N...
Elvis Presley, 1973 Aloha From Hawaii television b...Jack, a college professor of Hitler studies, intrigued by the popularity appeal surrounding Hitler and how he managed to gain such celebrity status and power. The media and propaganda is the interest which influences the children but then again he was raised to believe the propaganda, Hitler was a superstar and a sex idol in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's : he was Elvis, James Dean and John F. Kennedy all rolled into one, not to mention his fascination with death. Since all of these famous people died young and at the height of their careers, this makes Jack crave that absolute power of death and finding the " white noise ." The white noise of emptyness lefted, when every thing stop being mysterious and evrything you ever wanted to know is known.
Murray is a professor...