Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum By Mar ...

Even goods with apparent usefulness serve primarily as objects, Baudrillard argues, insofar as they seal the subject off from the world (111). Due to the overwhelming profusion of technology that isolates us from nature—including such innovations as the air conditioner, the refrigerator and television, as well as advances in agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing that provide us with an overabundance of commodities—humanity's relationship with need has become mystified; because we are immersed in a largely artificial environment, mere survival or protection from the elements is no longer a concern. Moreover, what presents itself as technological progress is not progress at all but stagnation. Minor improvements, refinements, and repackaging, or in Baudrillard's words, “anything to enhance the prestige of the object, but nothing by way of structural innovation,” all pass for technological breakthroughs in present-day society (125). As a result, we live in a world of “pseudo-functionality” in which objects are meant not to be used but simply to be purchased (114, 162). Objects are “structured as a function neither of needs nor of a more rational organization of the world, but instead constitute a system determined entirely by an ideological regime of production and social integration” (174).

An example of the kind of regime Baudrillard describes appears in the opening paragraphs of White Noise. Here, a multitude of students descends upon the fictitious “College-on-the-Hill” in station wagons “loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets pillows quilts; with rolled up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts” (3). Upon arrival, these students spring from their parents' cars to remove the objects inside: