r? What is your place in the marketing scheme? Once you’re out of school, it is only a matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity” (qtd. Frow 50).Frow seems a little distressed by this passage, for how bleak is a society if an individual is only important as judged by their perceived value/commodity relationship with television. Frow says, “The propositions are monstrous, but only because we find it so hard to believe” (426). By falling into the trap of this distrust of television Frow falls into the same trap that Wilder’s students stumble into: “Television is the death throes of human consciousness…They’re ashamed of their television past” (DeLillo 51). Frow does not see what Wilder sees: the beauty of the television medium as a means of escape. In fact, like the students, Frow is embarrassed that a relationship of value between humanity and television could even be established. Frow is astute; however, in noting that DeLillo is not interested primarily in the negative aspects of the television simulacrum, but instead in its importance to the American lifestyle. By saying that when one becomes devalued to television they become full of “loneliness and dissatisfaction,” DeLillo is saying that the reverse must be true. If one is connected to the experience of television one is satisfied and complete. This is seen in the Gladney household; anywhere that the television is located becomes a happy place where the family gathers. The “reality” reported on the television contains an operatic sense of beauty. Describing the Gladneys viewing television DeLillo writes, “Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping” (64). The beauty of the disaster epic is the beauty of the struggle of humanity against flooding in Bangladesh…against ...
