The Audience Under Media Haze

Don DeLillo is one of the most famous writers in contemporary America.His masterpiece,White Noise,depicts the life and family life of Jack,who worked as the chairman of the department of Hitler studies.It is a speculative novel about life and death in American postmodern society.As “the American Book of the Dead”,White Noise has received worldwide praise of critics,whose constructive critical approaches like psychoanalysis,semiotics,eco-criticism and consumerism have been profoundly revealing the practical significance of this creative novel.This thesis pays a further attention to the life situation of middle class in American postmodern society—the spiritual crisis,and mainly analyzes how the ubiquitous mass media in this novel cause characters' spiritual emptiness and self-lost.This thesis employs the critical media theory of Frankfurt School to interpret the text,and argues that in American postmodern society,people under media's influence are commonly in a negative situation and of morbidity that the real selves are lost,but there is a faint hope in this novel that people can get rid of mass media's negative influence.This thesis consists of six parts.The first chapter introduction mainly introduces the creation background and content of White Noise,after analyzing his media background and media in his works,summarizes the research situation abroad and at home.The second chapter is theoretical frame,which briefly introduces firstly mass media in contemporary society,then the critical media theory of Frankfurt School,and finally illuminates the feasibility and necessity of the text analysis under the guidance of this theory.The third,fourth and fifth chapters are the main body of the thesis.The third chapter employs the critical media theory of Frankfurt School to interpret media as the invisible ruler in this novel,including media used as the control tool,false needs infused by media and people's consciousness and cognition manipulated by media.On this basis,the fourth chapter continues to analyze the negative audience under media's influence.Through discussing concretely the confused old men,the terrified middle-aged men,and the violent youth,thispart,on one hand,reveals the two reasons for Jack and Babette's fear of death — media's rendering and media's absence when people are in need;and on the other hand,exposes mediated violence and the spiritual morbidity constructing selves through violent behaviors.The fifth chapter discusses the faint hopeful element in postmodern society,which analyzes Wilder's being free of mass media,his acting as the comforter of the terrified couple and the omen of him in the end of this novel.In the part of conclusion,the thesis emphasizes that mass media,while intensifying human's fear of death,make people become the do-nothing empty being,and because of this,constitute the most important reason for the spiritual crisis of American postmodern society in the novel.But what is somewhat heartening in the novel is that DeLillo shows some faint hope of abating mass media in postmodern society.