Simulacra and Simulation in Don DeLillo's "White Noise" By Jennifer Calvert By proving that its characters, descriptions and

events are simulacra, Don DeLillo's "White Noise" displays how life, in itself, is entirely a simulation. Several instances within the novel corroborate the premises of the essays of Jean Baudrillard and John Frow, both of which assert that the postmodern world has deposited in place of the real, the simulated. Essentially, mankind has experienced all that it will, through personal history or attained knowledge, and exhausted all possibilities for the unprecedented in the current era. Since people are constantly making associations to the past, the present becomes an amalgam of reality and remembered (but uncertain) reality. Man inherently alters the reality he is faced with due to having expectations, forcing it to become a simulation of what has come before. But these, too, are memories of simulacra and not of reality. All concept or memory of reality has been erased and replaced. The only reality is that which preceded all else, and so the postmodern world is filled with simulacra. Baudrillard writes, It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself...Never again will the real have to be produced.1 Simulacra becomes its own reality. This point is brought up repeatedly throughout the novel. One such instance involves The Most Photographed Barn in America. Echoing Baudrillard, Murray comments, Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn...We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision.2 The concept is that man, with the experience he carries innately, overwrites reality with a version of itself so that it can never again exist. Frow makes a similar point: The twist here is that the sense of the inadequacy of representation comes not because of the transcendental or uncanny nature of the object but because of the multiplicity of prior representations.3 Universally, each represented event or individual thing will have been previously represented an infinite number of times in various manners, so nothing that exists today is original or real. Another example of this is Jack's interview with the SIMUVAC employee. The man says that their intention was to use the Airborne Toxic Event as a model for future simulated evacuations. Jack asks, Are you saying you saw a chance to use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation? The man explains that they are trying to mold the actual event into a simulation, thereby replacing the real with simulacra. He says, ...we don't have our victims laid out where we'd want them if this was an actual simulation...You have to make allowances for the fact that everything we see tonight is real.4 Here, the lines of reality and unreality are blurred as the simulation is forced onto the actual. Like all other realities, the event becomes, as Baudrillard asserts, a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.5 The later evacuation simulations replace completely the actual event the town suffered. A separate aspect to the Airborne Toxic Event is the submission to simulacra that Jack's family displays. The radio description of the event is more real than what Heinrich and Jack see of the cloud with their own eyes. The prescribing of symptoms related to Nyodene D precedes their actual occurrence within Steffie, Denise and Babette. Everyone seems to accept that the media representation of the event matters more than the reality of it, as well as that the simulation of illnesses is as real as the illness itself. Baudrillard asserts this idea directly. Since the simulator produces 'true' symptoms, is he or she ill or not? The simulator cannot be treated objectively either as ill, or as not ill.6 As Steffie and Denise feign each symptom, Jack wonders if they might not be really experiencing each one. As he asks Babette if this could be possible, she tells him she's having an episode of deja vu, irretrievably confusing the lines of reality and simulation.

A question that recurs in this situation and in the near-plane crash earlier in the novel is why these events were not shown on television. This is, of course, disconcerting to a population that finds the simulations on television more real than reality. One man says, Are they so bored by spills and contaminations and wastes? Do they think this is just television? ... Don't they know it's real?7 This proves Baudrillard's point that once a simulacrum is derived, it can never again be exchanged for the reality. The population may not be bored by events like this, but they have experienced enough that they will never see this event, remote to them, as real. The airport scene, specifically, displays how reality alone has become inadequate. In order to feel that what they have experienced is real, the travelers must listen to the account of one of their own, as if viewing the story on television, thus overwriting their reality with the simulacrum. As the man in the down vest told the story, passengers from the tunnel began gathering around us. No one spoke, interrupted, tried to embellish the account... It was as though they were being told of an event they hadn't personally been involved in...They trusted him to tell them what they'd said and felt.8 These passengers invite their narrator to provide the simulacrum and make them a part of it, so that the simulacrum is all that remains of the reality. These three instances demonstrate the concept that everything and everyone is melded into a principal, unified version of itself or themselves. As shown throughout the novel, situations, people and things alike are all simulations of some amalgam of the past. Baudrillard writes: The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all.9 A possible synonym for simulacrum in some cases is stereotype. Frow asserts this point in his essay when discussing how DeLillo typifies characters, both central and fringe. Every description depends on universal preconceptions. Frow uses the examples of Jack's descriptions of people on opening day at the College and writes: ...the middle class parents know the ideality they are supposed to represent, and are deliberately living up to it. But this means that the type loses its purity, since it can always be imitates, feigned; or rather that there is no longer a difference in kind between the social category and the life-style which brings it into everyday being: the type ceaselessly imitates itself...10 This echoes Baudrillard's idea of compilations of past reality as present simulations and applies it to humanity. Even people are a product of their representation, of how they are seen by others. They cannot be real because, not only are they an observed simulacrum of themselves, but they also try to accommodate this simulacrum. Jack and Babette, especially, have their moments of simulation. In order to suit the role of professor and creator of Hitler Studies, Jack dons dark sunglasses and robes for an intimidating aura; the look is effective. However, depicting how Jack is only a product of how he is observed, DeLillo gives the perspective of an outside character, a fellow professor, on Jack's image outside of campus. He says, You look so harmless, Jack. A big, harmless, aging, indistinct sort of guy.11 This description shakes Jack and sends him into a buying frenzy to manifest a sense of power he has lost by the removal of his dark glasses. Babette, on the other hand, tries without success to conform to the image of women her age. She is

constantly on a diet, despite how she ignores its parameters, and buys the foods she feels she should buy, even though she does not eat them. A slightly obscure example of Baudrillard's simulacrum is the blandly labeled food that Murray buys. His basket held generic food and drink, nonbrand items in plain white packaging with simple labeling. Murray says of it, Flavorless packaging... I feel I'm not only saving money but contributing to some kind of spiritual consensus.12 This is similar to the way Murray described the experience of seeing the barn. The consensus is that food packaging, meant to seem new and alluring, means nothing because it is an unreal representation. The whiteness is a submission to simulacra, an understanding that everything is unified in its lack of originality. Of course, this kind of whiteness is depicted through the title theme of the novel, white noise. Throughout the story, the narrators words are interlaced with background noise. Supermarket announcements, radio broadcasts, and snippets of television programs are all incorporated into the text without reason or explanation. After dinner, on my way upstairs, I heard the TV say: 'Let's sit half lotus and think about our spines.'13 Once again, this blurs the lines of reality and unreality, of significance and insignificance. These constant and seemingly unimportant references reassert that these kinds of white noise have become more real and more important to the characters than actual reality and their personal experiences. The whiteness, the submission to simulacra, inundates the text and the lives and choices of the characters. If all of these smaller instances are compiled, each proving that they exemplify reality being replaced by simulacra, and life is a union of occurrences, then life as a whole must be a simulation. It is a representation and remixing of all that has come before in the world, a series of regenerated realities which have become simulacra. Baudrillard asserts this concept and Frow depicts how White Noise is a perfect portrayal of the idea of simulacra and simulation.