White Noise: The Invasion Of Consumerism In A Post-Modern Family Essay, Research Paper

The Invasion of Consumerism into the lives of a Post-Modern Family

Consumerism is taking topographic point everyplace. Whether we like it or non, it has come

to occupy our mundane modern lives. Steven Miles, a lector in sociology at the

University of Plymouth says & # 8220 ; How we consume, why we consume, and the parametric quantities

laid down for us within which we consume have become progressively important

influences on how we construct our mundane lives & # 8221 ; ( 1 ) . Consumerism has even gotten to

the point of impacting the manner we go about life and commanding our personal and societal

lives ( Miles 5 ) . Wherever we go and whatever we do, consumerism is praised as the

reply to all of our jobs, an flight from some of the rough worlds of our lives.

Don DeLillo & # 8217 ; s White Noise depicts the different facets of consumerism and the

effects it has post-modern household that it invades. That specific household is the Gladney & # 8217 ; s

from Blacksmith. For the Gladney household, Jack, Babette, Heinrich, Steffie, Denise, and

Wilder, consumerism is a manner of life. It is something they are ever taking portion in, even

if it is unconsciously. Consumerism is incorporated in with virtually every activity the

household takes portion in, whether it be eating out, passing a twenty-four hours together at the shopping

promenade, or doing a speedy halt at the supermarket.

Jack Gladney is a frequenter of supermarkets and shopping promenades ( McInerney 36 ) .

Jack entirely, but more often with the company of one or more household members,

makes trips to the supermarket. The supermarket has come to be a major point of

intersection in today & # 8217 ; s civilization ( Conroy 97 ) . Among the busy and hustling crowds of

people, Jack frequently runs into familiarities, most normally a co-worker from The

College on The Hill, Murray Jay Siskind:

The two misss and Babette, Wilder and I went to the

supermarket. Minutess after we entered, we ran into

Murray. This was the 4th or 5th clip I & # 8217 ; d seen him

in the supermarket, which was approximately the figure of

times I & # 8217 ; d seen him on campus. ( 35 )

Even Jack & # 8217 ; s girl, Denise, runs into a group of friends during one shopping trip.

They all gather together to look at books and talk. Jack besides has many important

conversations with Murray while casually sauntering up and down the aisles of the

supermarket. On one such juncture, Murray tells Jack how happy he is to be & # 8220 ; in

Blacksmith, in the supermarket, in the rooming house, on the Hill & # 8221 ; ( 36 ) . He continues to

state & # 8220 ; I feel I am larning of import things every twenty-four hours. Death, disease, hereafter, outerspace.

It & # 8217 ; s all much clearer here. I can believe and see & # 8221 ; ( 36 ) . With Murray showing his feelings

to Jack, it is about as if these brushs at the supermarket are replacing customary

societal clip.

Aside from being a meeting evidences, the supermarket is filled with many

consumer goods handily in majority. Jack describes this in one of his many trips to the

supermarket:

There were six sorts of apples, there were alien melons in

several pastels. Everything seemed to be in season,

sprayed, burnished, bright. ( 36 )

This sort of copiousness of goods is seen in merely about everyplace. Ten old ages ago, most

supermarkets stocked about nine 1000 points and now today & # 8217 ; s shops carry over 24

1000 ( Wolkormir ) . Most of these points come from a can or package and can be cooked

in the microwave or necessitate no cookery at all. This explains why the figure of hours

parents spend cookery is traveling down at an progressively rapid rate and why McDonald & # 8217 ; s

so proudly shows outside their eating houses, & # 8220 ; Over 1 Billion Served. & # 8221 ;

Fast nutrient eating houses play a large function in today & # 8217 ; s turning consumerism. Americans

enjoy more restaurant prepared nutrient than of all time before. Carrie Reynolds, a fast nutrient

eating house adviser says, & # 8220 ; we eat out today more because it fits our high-speed,

consumer-mad life styles & # 8221 ; ( qtd. in Silver 42 ) . Almost half of every dollar spent in 1999

was spent eating out, and that figure is expected to up 53 % by 2010 ( Silver 40 ) . The

Gladney & # 8217 ; s are seen eating eating house prepared nutrient often, whether it be Chinese

take-out dark or dinner in a auto outside of a commercial strip of fast nutrient eating houses.

This is common for households, particularly because it is convenient for the parents busy

agendas. Fast nutrient may be convenient and seems great at the clip, but in the long tally,

can finally kill. One in five kids between the ages of six and 17 is

corpulence and if current tendencies continue, about half of today & # 8217 ; s kids will finally

dice of bosom disease ( Austin ) . Yet parents continue to promote their kids to take portion

in the ingestion of fast nutrient. On one dark, when no 1 wanted to cook, the Gladney

household went to a topographic point that & # 8220 ; specialized in poulet parts and Brownies & # 8221 ; ( 220 ) . They

didn & # 8217 ; t even bother to travel indoors and eat at a tabular array:

We decided to eat in the auto. The auto was sufficient for our

demands. We wanted to eat, non look around at other people.

We wanted to make full our tummies and acquire it over with. We

didn & # 8217 ; t need illume and infinite. We surely didn & # 8217 ; t need to

face each other across a tabular array as we ate, constructing a subtle

and complex cross-network of signals and codifications. We were

content to eat facing in the same way, looking merely

inches past our custodies. ( 220-221 )

This incident shows how the Gladney household has gotten caught up in the act of

ingestion. Dinner, at one clip, was a sacred clip for households. It was a clip when they

could acquire together and have conversations and bask each others company. Now, for a

post-modern household such as the Gladney & # 8217 ; s, the chief focal point is merely to rapidly make full their

tummies and so go on on with their busy agendas.

Shoping promenades besides play an active participant in consumerism. The promenade

depicted in White Noise, the Mid-Village Mall is described as being & # 8220 ; a ten-story

constructing arranged around a halfway tribunal of waterfalls, promenades, and gardens & # 8221 ; ( 83 ) . It

is common to see such things in shopping promenades ; doing them about fantasy like. The

shopping promenades are intentionally planned out to make an image of & # 8220 ; elsewherness & # 8221 ; ( Miles

61 ) . The promenade lavishes consumerism with about & # 8220 ; spiritual like qualities & # 8221 ; by concealing the

defects that underlie it ( Miles 59 ) . Shoping promenades are given an semblance of being a different

topographic point with the workss, thenar trees, waterfalls, and fountains when truly the promenade is a

castle of mass consumerism. As Miles provinces, & # 8220 ; the shopping promenade seems to supply all

the immediate satisfaction & # 8217 ; s of consumerism but at the same clip shelters the consumer

from the societal and prescription that this entails & # 8221 ; ( Miles 59 ) The shopping promenade can hold

huge impacts on the consumer, both good and bad. In White Noise, Gladys

& lt ;< p>Treadwell dies and the physicians say this is because of “lingering apprehension, a consequence of the four

yearss and darks she and her brother had spent in the Mid-Village Mall, lost and

confused & # 8221 ; ( 98 ) . It is merely in a post-modern society that the idea of a promenade doing a

decease can really be believed.

Jack thought that, & # 8220 ; everything was all right, would go on to be all right, would

finally even acquire better every bit long as the supermarkets did non steal & # 8221 ; ( 162 ) . This shows the

security that Jack feels merely from a supermarket. Mike Featherstone, a author on

consumerism, believes that consumerism provides everybody with a sense of some sort

of control ( qtd. in Miles 24 ) . & # 8220 ; The kernel of consumerism prevarications in the feeling that as

consumers we are all deriving some gloss of authorization over the mundane

building of our lives through ingestion & # 8221 ; ( Featherstone qtd. in Miles 24 ) . The

sense of security and control is gained for many by ingestion, particularly in a

postmodern universe.

Along with the sense of security and good being, consumerism is a speedy hole

against anxiousness and force per unit areas that life brings ( Long ) . & # 8220 ; Not merely can people get away from

their mundane jobs through the physical and mental stimulation of shopping, but by

going portion of a consumer civilization, they begin to experience portion of something existent, when

arguably that experience is non existent at all & # 8221 ; ( Miles 61 ) . The act of consumerism and the

goods that are consumed seem to carry through any human desire wanted at that clip, but it can

ne’er really do so. ( Baudrillard qtd. in Miles 26 ) .

While shoping about at the immense hardware shop near the promenade, Jack runs into

Eric Massingale who is on the teaching staff at the computing machine centre at the College on the

Hill. Jack is non in his spectacless and gown that he wears at the college. Massingale Tells

Jack how otherwise he looks with his spectacless and gown. He tells Jack, & # 8220 ; You look so

harmless Jack. A large harmless, aging, indistinct kind of cat & # 8221 ; ( 83 ) . Jack was hurt by these

remarks because they seemed to endanger his self-importance: & # 8220 ; The brush put me in the temper

to shop & # 8221 ; ( 83 ) . From so on, Jack and his household get down to shop at the Mid-Village Mall.

Throughout White Noise, shopping is seen as being a household activity. The household

construction is established in the act of ingestion ( Ferraro 22 ) . The Gladney household goes

to the supermarket and the promenade together and devour eating house prepared nutrient together.

This shows how consumerism is going a household activity that brings intimacy to

kids and their parents in a post-modern society. The household construction is steadfastly

established in the act of devouring ( Ferraro 22 ) . Steven Shepard wrote that & # 8220 ; traveling to the

promenade is a portion of a long and many-pronged wooing, portion of the relentless and powerful

seduction of our kids by that part of our civilization that agreements human existences no

more value than the contents of their wallets. & # 8221 ; This shows how much influence the

kids have their parents, every bit good as the parents influence on their kids, in the act of

ingestion. The kids depend on their parents for the financess to buy points and

the parents make this possible, but & # 8220 ; more crucially, blessing of their kids & # 8217 ; s desire to

consume & # 8221 ; ( Ferraro 23 ) . Children are speedy to follow in their parents foot stairss when it

comes to devouring. This is shown by DeLillo when Jack and his household are at the promenade:

Babette and the childs followed me into the lift, into the

stores set along the grades, through the department stores and

section shops, puzzled but excited by my desire to purchase.

When I could non make up one’s mind between two shirts, they

encouraged me to purchase both. When I said I was hungry,

they fed me pretzels, beer, souvlaki. The two misss scouted

in front, descrying things they thought I might desire or necessitate,

running back to acquire me, to seize my weaponries, plead with me

to follow. They were my ushers to endless wellbeing. ( 83 )

Shoping with his household makes Jack feel like he belongs once more. When with his household

shopping he feels like he plays an of import function in the household and he feels like he is one

of them. & # 8220 ; I began to turn in value and dignity. I filled myself out, found new

facets of myself, located a individual I & # 8217 ; d bury existed & # 8221 ; ( 84 ) . & # 8220 ; The shopping fling is

less a affair of personal aggrandisement or self-importance massage than it is a ritual of conjunct

image. By shopping with his household, he becomes & # 8216 ; one & # 8217 ; with his household, which in bend

achieves its & # 8216 ; oneness & # 8217 ; through the activity of shopping & # 8221 ; ( Ferraro 22 ) . Shoping

concepts the sense of household by moving as an activity that the household can make together

when truly the household is more caught up in what they & # 8217 ; re buying than appreciating

the clip that they & # 8217 ; re disbursement together. This once more shows how consumerism gives a false

sense to the consumer, in this instance, the sense of household.

With that sense of security and household, Jack continues to pass money without

much consideration of what he is purchasing. & # 8220 ; I shopped for it & # 8217 ; s ain interest, looking and

touching, inspecting ware I had no purpose of purchasing, so purchasing it & # 8230 ; .I traded

money for goods. The more money I spent, the less of import it seemed. I was bigger

than these amounts. These amounts poured off my tegument like so much rain. These amounts in fact

came back to me in the signifier of experiential recognition & # 8221 ; ( 84 ) . The consumer obtains more

fulfilment from the act of disbursement money, non from what they are really buying

( Ferraro 21 ) . Not paying attending to what is being spent is really common of the

consumer. Americans live with a batch of denial about their disbursement forms and when

questioned, 65 % of Americans agreed that & # 8220 ; in looking back on my disbursement, I frequently

admiration where the money goes. & # 8221 ; ( Schor 82 ) . Juliet Schor, a author on consumerism and

overspending provinces, & # 8220 ; we spend more than we realize, hold more in debt than we admit

to, and ignore many of the moral struggles environing our acquisitions & # 8221 ; ( Schor 83 ) .

This gives some logical thinking to when Jack says, & # 8220 ; I shopped with foolhardy wantonness. I

shopped for immediate demands and distant eventualities & # 8221 ; ( 83 ) .

White Noise clearly illustrates how consumerism is invariably occupying the lives

of a post-modern household life in a post-modern society. From when we wake up in the

forenoon to when we lie our caputs down to travel to kip, we are bombarded with

consumerism. Consumerism is in the supermarkets we buy our nutrient in, in the nutrient we

eat, and in the shopping malls we walk through. While it may be argued that life would

be instead dull and humdrum without consumerism, the fact that it is literally

everyplace in today & # 8217 ; s society and is so difficult to avoid is a spot overpowering. Because it is

so difficult to avoid, it is up to the household and the person to utilize consumerism to profit

them alternatively of allow it ache them before it destroys the household construction.