This afternoon I completed White Noise for the first time. I remember in one of my early philsosophy classes reading the opening exerts of the book. The relative flippancy of the first chapter did not give me a good picture of the book.
Basically, I read the book as a meditation on death as it is excacerbated by the modern condition including the TV, hence the title White Noise. As I read the book I was struck by the relative desolation of the intellectual 1980s. The TV, as the most significant cultural medium, must have been so depressing to the eyes of an intellectual. As its business model is built on advertising, I think that TV will always tend to be (1) unironic and (2) crass.
Today we have the Internet, which while often unironic and crass, has virtually unlimited potential of expression. The hipsters can connect, the fast and too furious can connect, the sons and daughters of rednecks can IM from across the country. The Internet, while still technology is not a mass technology in the sense that we use the term to describe radio and television. Both these technologies force someone to communicate a message that is essentially applicable to everyone. The Internet facilitates communication that is available to everyone, but also can be particular to who it reaches. I think this is because the Internet was not built on a business model, but a communication paradigm, namely, what is the fastest way that we can communicate, large, precise amounts of information.
I saw Shrek 2 tonight. I never saw the first one so I can't compare it to its predecessor. However, I was struck by one thing in watching the film. Shrek is a movie of the Internet age. It is not intended for a single audience. Parents take their kids to see it, and they laugh more than the little ones. Second, it is self-referential, and ironic to an extent that I don't think we would have seen in America prior to the Internet. The movie was constantly making fun of itself, and the real world, while still being a fairy tale. This sort of nuance has been brought to our society, it wasn't always there. I really can't see a movie like Shrek 2 being made prior to today.
One of the most lasting lines in White Noise comes from the narrator's friend Murray, "You could put your faith in technology. It got you here, it can get you out. This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature." Television was a pretty bad idol, because it didn't make the protagonist long for immortality, rather, it made him conscious of his own mortality. On the other hand, take the Internet. No matter what your passion, the Internet can provide an as of yet unexhausted sorce of inquiry into that interest. It is always larger than the individual, as a technology that exists to help us deny our mortality, the Internet is it. Take the self-referential humor of Shrek 2. In seeing Shrek as a movie of the internet age, chock full of references, ironic humor, and over the top zaniness, we see that this very type of humor is our highest form of denial. We use irony as a means to deny death, to laugh at everything, we can laugh at anything.
We live in a society that laughs at anything, including death. To me this is the highest form of rebellion against God. If there is any ultimate reminder of our finiteness, it is the constant reminder on our hearts that we are mortal. God cursed us with mortality for a reason. I think our challenge as Christians is to find good ways to use our culture's mediums. I hate to say this but I think the fundamentalists in the 80s won that round. The ninety's were technologicall too tumultuous for anyone to get anywhere, but I think this decade has some definite potential. Ultimately I think that Christians finding God-honoring uses for the Internet in a way puts the technology in its proper places. The best way to be seen as seperate is to be in the middle of things, but to be marching to a different beat.