VOL. IV (XXI) 2009 - Departamentul de Filosofie si Stiinte ale ...

102 “CONSUME OR DIE”: MEDIA, NECROPHOBIA AND HYPERCONSUMERISM
and eventually leads to economic growth due to all the resources mobilized
for its handling. Analogously, Jack’s illness is also eventually profitable,
because it implies an increase in the consumption of medications and
healthcare services, according to Baudrillard. Furthermore, this medical
spending, that also includes “psychopharmaceuticals” such as Dylar, is
meant to help “cope with dysfunctions rather than increase positive
satisfaction” and it is a natural part of an increased standard of living 37 .
Hence, it is directed towards treating the signs of the disease, rather than the
disease as such.
The commodification of aesthetic production as theorized by Jameson
seems to be particularly relevant in how DeLillo presents the educational
industry in White Noise. The rush for increasing production in all domains
applies to education as well, since Jack reflects at one point that “there is a
teacher for every person” and “everyone I know is either a teacher or a
student.” 38 He teaches “Hitler studies,” Babette has a class on “correct
posture” and Murray is a visiting lecturer on “living icons.”
DeLillo’s obviously ironical standpoint in presenting education in the
age of consumerism is further explored in conversations of professors at
College-on-the-Hill who question each other on issues ranging from, “Where
were you when James Dean died?” to “Did you ever brush your teeth with
your finger?” 39 The shift of academic concerns to minor events and trivial
data is perhaps best illustrated in the description of the lecture co-hosted by
Murray and Jack, dealing with a comparative look at Adolf Hitler’s and Elvis
Presley’s relationships with their mothers, spoken with the ceremonial
pretentiousness of a highly important matter and gathering a considerable
crowd of students. In fact, Jack’s entire career as head of the Hitler Studies
department speaks about the orientation of university subjects toward topics
that have a strong image potential. His course on “Advanced Nazism” lays
an emphasis on visual aspects such as “parades, rallies and uniforms” and is
based on background footage of “propaganda films, scenes shot at party
congresses, outtakes from mystical epics featuring parades of gymnasts and
mountaineers,” edited in an “impressionistic” manner 40 (thanks to
documentaries such as those of Leni Riefenstahl, as DeLillo seems to imply).
Similarly, Murray teaches a class on “the cinema of car crashes,” which
consists of watching “hundreds of crash sequences”—“Cars with cars. Cars
with trucks. Trucks with buses. Motorcycles with cars. Cars with helicopters.
Trucks with trucks. My students think these movies are prophetic.” 41 Though
obviously overemphasized for an ironical effect, this visionary quality of onscreen
accidents is also observed by Baudrillard, who associates it with the
production of waste in consumer society and defines it as a “spectacular
37 Baudrillard, 1998, p. 41.
38 DeLillo, 1986, p. 24.
39 DeLillo, 1986, p. 30-31.
40 DeLillo, 1986, p. 10.
41 DeLillo, 1986, p. 98.