In Don DeLillo’s pivotal postmodern classic, “White Noise,” professor Jack Gladney contemplates the inevitability of death, musing, “All plots tend to move deathward.
This is the nature of plots …
We edge nearer death every time we plot.
It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.” As a novel that functions as the cornerstone of postmodern literature, “White Noise” situates death anxieties at the heart of its remarkably absurdist core, a theme that is interconnected with late-20th century socio-political and cultural shifts, including rampant consumerism and the obsession with television screens.
DeLillo’s novel is pretty heavy and saturated with too many themes, and a film adaptation of such a tonally wild text is as tricky as it gets.Director Noah Baumbach rose to the challenge and created a faithful reflection of DeLillo’s world in his “White Noise,…
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