Union Carbide toxic event killing two thousand five hundred human beings…against mud slides in California … against any great adversity; adversity juxtaposed against the detached backdrop of blue-screen bleach-white toothed television. DeLillo cautions that we should not be frightened or repulsed by our vulture-like tendency to happily consume the bloodshed and gore of the disaster epic. After all, it is not true misery we are witnessing; it is only a copy of their copy of how the misery should be. It is only a televised simulation of the expected responses of “people” shocked out of their reality. Why should we fear a copy, it cannot harm us? Why should we fear our fascination with that copy; isn’t that fascination only human and in a way life-affirming? Our safety is in our distance from the actual object if ever there was such a thing; the Simulacra protects us from its danger. DeLillo writes about the Gladneys witnessing TV disaster: “For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is” (66).The Toxic Event montage in White Noise can be paralleled to the Simulacra of television and the comfort it brings to those who experience it. The Toxic Event is not an event in and of itself but only becomes an event when it is made one through the official filters of media. Jack and Babbete discuss this perplexity during the onset of the Event: “What if the symptoms are real?” “How could they be real?” “Why couldn’t they be real?”“They get them only when they’re broadcast” (133).The power of the media Simulacra is so convincing that even a lesser source, such as the radio, can control the symptoms of its participants. The responses of the Gladney children to the Toxic Event are only materialized wh...
