Hitler and Elvis: Issues of Race in White Noise

In his postmodern novel White Noise, Don Delillo characterizes Jack Gladney and Murray Siskind as distinguished white male professors who focus their studies on Adolf Hitler and Elvis Presley, respectively. These two controversial subjects of study are powerful white male icons and their presence in the novel dramatize societal issues of race and privilege.

There is a heated scene in Chapter 15 of White Noise where Professors Gladney and Siskind discuss the similarities between Hitler and Elvis. Both were deeply affected by the loss of their mothers and met tragic deaths (Delillo 70-72). But what else do these two figures have in common? They are both powerful, historical, white male figures who each produced a fair amount of noise, namely white noise. In this scope, the novel White Noise “can be read as a novel about the noise that white people make” (Engles 1). Although Hitler and Elvis can be known for the audible noise they made- Hitler, through his characteristic, loud, influential speeches, and Elvis, through the music he created- they can also be recognized for the figurative noise they made. Hitler “made noise” by spreading anti-Semitic views, considered heinous by most today. Elvis “made noise” in the history of American rock and roll with his controversial sexual appeal. Delillo’s choice in these subjects are not meaningless details in the novel; they provide insightful “psychic data” (as Murray would describe) into Delillo’s criticism of society, which gives power to the white male figure and listens to what he has to say.

“White noise” can be defined in this paper as the actions and speeches made by white people. Delillo assigns Hitler as Jack Gladney’s academic focus to underscore society’s receptiveness to white noise. Of all the historical events and figures of the Second World War, Gladney chooses to solely study Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazi Party. In describing Hitler’s speeches, Jack says, “He sucked on lozenges, spoke to people in endless monologues, free-associating, as if the language came from some vastness beyond the world and he was simply the medium of revelation” (Delillo 72). Gladney clearly admires Hitler. In describing him as a “medium of revelation” to the world, he likens Hitler to a savior of sorts, giving him authority over the world. Jack even keeps a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf on his bedside table. Jack’s infatuation with Hitler is never directly rationalized in the novel. When his daughter asks him why Hitler is so important, Jack answers, “But it’s not a question of greatness. It’s not a question of good and evil. I don’t know what it is.” (63). Is it a question of whiteness? Jack idealizes Hitler just as society idealizes the opinions of white men.

As a Hitler Studies professor, it is striking that Gladney fails to mention the Holocaust at least once in the entirety of the novel. Gladney’s exclusion one of the most horrific facets connected to Hitler’s identity signifies his own bias toward white noise. It is almost as if Jack is so oblivious, so deafened by the voice of the powerful white man, that he fails to see his most glaring faults.

The absence of the Holocaust also reveals the prevalence of white noise in the author’s life as well as the reader’s. By failing to contextualize historical events surrounding Hitler in the novel, Delillo makes the assumption that the reader already knows who Hitler is. The reader is expected to know that Hitler was part of the Nazi party and spearheaded the genocide of millions of Jewish people in the Second World War. Although this is not an irrational assumption, it goes to show that once again, society is expected to recognize powerful white men. Hitler, particularly, is instantly recognizable after the sole mention of solely his last name.

Gladney’s lack of historical recognition of the Holocaust reflects American society’s avoidance of its racially charged past. In his essay, Tim Engles eloquently explains:

By interspersing racially inflected moments throughout his portrait of a professor of Hitler Studies who teaches his subject without ever mentioning what most people now consider the most memorable result of Nazism, ‘the Holocaust’, Delillo prompts consideration of a similar severance of both contemporary America from its own racialized past. (Engles 767-768)

Jack praises Hitler and ignores the history surrounding his unjust religious discrimination. Jack Gladney sees his world through the eyes of Hitler, which is, by no coincidence, the white male perspective. He says, “In the middle of it all is Hitler, of course” (Delillo 63). Since the novel itself is told by Jack, the reader is also seeing the world through Jack’s white male perspective. The situation is an ironic one: Delillo, a white male, writes of a privileged white, male professor, focusing all of his studies on a white man (Hitler), who is infamous for perpetuating ideals of white supremacy. There is an undisputable pattern here. As exemplified in White Noise, society gives importance to the ideas and opinions of white men, regardless of their sensibility or actual basis in fact.

It is no coincidence that Delillo chooses Elvis Presley, another powerful white male (who is also recognized by a single name), as the subject of Murray Siskind’s academic studies. Murray even says to Gladney:

You’ve established a wonderful thing here with Hitler. You created it, you nurtured it, you made it your own…You’ve evolved an entire system around this figure, a structure with countless substructures and interrelated fields of study, a history within history… It’s what I want to do with Elvis. (Delillo 11-12)

To focus solely on Elvis Presley in the context of rock and roll is to completely dismiss his predecessors who practically created the genre of rock. Although Elvis, himself, has never claimed to have invented the genre, he is often dubbed “The King” of Rock and Roll, a title Murray uses in reference to Elvis in White Noise (72).

The beginnings of rock were certainly not racially homogenous. Up until the mid-1950s, the top charts were dominated by African American musicians such as Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, Ray Charles, and Lavern Baker, to name a few. In his article, Jack Newfield writes that early rock consisted of “a black and white alloy” of artists, and goes on to say, “No one person started rock ‘n’ roll”. Yet, somehow, as time progressed, original songs were replaced by white covers, the racial diversity of the genre’s beginnings were forgotten, and rock became white.

Covering other artists’ songs was a common occurrence in the music business in the 1950s. This resulted in original songs, written by African American artists, to be covered and rereleased by white performers. Elvis Presley’s cover of Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog reached number one in the US Billboard Charts and propelled him to fame. Even today, many are unaware of its original version (Unterberger). As “white” covers by Elvis Presley and others topped the charts, rock moved into the mainstream as a homogenously white genre.

Rock ideology is first and foremost an ideology of authenticity: It delineates what constitutes “real” rock music, including who is authorized to play that music and who is authorized to listen to and talk about it. Since the 1960s playing and consuming rock music has offered new ways into being a “real” white person—most often a white man—and in many quarters being a white man became a precondition for making “real” rock music. (Hamilton)

As a result, society began collectively categorizing earlier rock music, mainly produced by African Americans, as “blues” and “soul” and later rock produced by white musicians as true delineations of the genre. For Murray to focus primarily on Elvis is to ignore the whitewashing of black rock music. Delillo subtly addresses American society’s neglect of its own controversial racial past. As Engles writes in his essay, “Delillo evokes the white tendency to turn away from the sense of horror that this history of whiteness can inspire” (772).

In Delillo’s novel, Murray ominously says, ”everything is concealed in symbolism” (37). Delillo uses color throughout the novel to symbolize and underscore the prevalence of whiteness in society. Consideration of “the irresistible ‘something’ in the symbolic background” reveals messages of race in White Noise (Whitesell). Jack makes special note of the “whitewashed stones that line the driveways of newer homes”, the “white houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves”, and the “white stones in driveways” in the college town, ironically named Blacksmith (15). There are seemingly unimportant items described in the novel to be white, and it seems there is no other purpose for these specific color descriptions other than to convey a subtle message about race. Examples include Murray’s “lightweight bag of white items” (53), the “small white tablet”, the “white fences trail[ing] through the rolling fields” (38), and the “white rat” involved in federal lab experiments. In the supermarket, Jack’s wife, Babette, says, “It’s like World War III. Everything is white.” (19) Although she is referring to the monochromatic array of prepackaged cans, this could be a reference to the white supremacy displayed by Hitler in Second World War. The title, White Noise, is also suggestive that all of the background information in the lives of these characters is white. It is white people who are able to create this ambient noise that is present and uninterrupted in everyone’s lives.

Delillo metaphorizes American society investigating its own shameful racial past in the scene where Jack digs through the family trash for the Dylar pills. As Engles says in his essay, Jack is “unable to find the symbolic ‘white’ pill that would suppress his awareness of death so instead, he must confront a plethora of colorful trash items” (774). Jack is uncomfortable searching through the trash. He would rather ignore it, as society does in labelling Elvis as the sole King of rock, or as Jack does in solely focusing on Hitler. Jack is searching for the white pill to “suppress his awareness” of the racial monstrosities he tries to ignore. Thus, it is easier for him to disregard the racially controversial past of Hitler. He is too uncomfortable digging through the historical reality of white supremacy. Engles describes a predominantly white society’s denial of history in his essay:

So fully has mainstream American culture repressed the unpleasant aspects of its past that to look back at it would be like being hit with the ‘full stench’ of the garbage that assaults Jack. (Engles 775)
Delillo’s prose surrounding the color white at times in the novel induce a feeling of disgust or horror. He connects whiteness to death. When Jack thinks he sees Death in his backyard, he “felt [himself] getting whiter by the second” (232). He describes Death as an old man with white hair and he asks, “was the white hair purely emblematic, part of his allegorical force? That was it, of course” (232). Here Delillo shows that the color white is an emblem for Death’s power and wisdom. Not only is power associated with whiteness, as seen earlier in the novel, but so is death.

Herman Melville signifies the prevalence of whiteness in society in Chapter 42 of Moby Dick. Ishmael discusses how the color white can have an influential effect on people. “What is there… that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors—the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? ” (Melville 348) It is the whiteness of the Tower that makes it more significant, more appealing than the others? Perhaps its hue gives it a sense of grace and superiority. This ties to society’s fundamental idealization of the color white. For ages, white has represented the pinnacle of beauty, elegance, class, and purity. Grecian gods and goddesses are depicted in white robes. The symbol of the white swan conjures feelings of grace and peace. It is this fundamental establishment of white as an angelic color that causes us shock when whiteness is associated with grotesqueness.

In Melville’s novel, the main character relates feelings of disgust and terror with whiteness. “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me” (Melville 340). This ferocious creature is shrouded in the purity of the color white. The fact that something so white can also be so deathly, makes this an appalling sight.

With reference to the Polar bear… it is not the whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified terror.” (Melville 1047).

The whiteness of the polar bear is so emotionally striking because the bear’s deathliness contrasts with what we expect whiteness to be: elegant, majestic, and pure. It is hard to believe that something so white can be capable of such grizzliness.

Perhaps Jack Gladney was lulled into this pattern of thinking. The whiteness of Hitler and Elvis shrouds Gladney from seeing the reality. Maybe Hitler’s whiteness causes Jack to subconsciously overlook horrors he caused. His whiteness gives him an air of superiority and grace. Perhaps society simply overlooks the horrible actions surrounding these powerful white men in an attempt to preserve the white aesthetic.

Delillo’s White Noise further demonstrates racial homogeneity and the prevalence of whiteness in society when Nicholas Grappa mentions numerous actors in a film. He lists Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan, J. Carroll Naish, Keith Andes, and Marilyn Monroe, all of which happen to be white. If that isn’t glaring enough, he then goes on to specifically mention that the film was in “black and white” (205). Television in the time period of White Noise is not colorized, so Grappa’s comment on the colors was not necessary. His rhetoric is meant to hint at race and not actual colors.

Jack, when speaking of his colleagues, says, “I had the curious thought that these men were nostalgic for black-and-white, their longings dominated by achromatic values, personal extremes of postwar urban gray.” (204). Perhaps the “achromatic values” he speaks of here hints to the white homogeneity in society.

Elvis Presley and Adolf Hitler are linked by their powerful white noise, and are linked once again in the novel, through a conversation between Jack and Murray. “There was only one topic of conversation. Sex and death”, Murray says. “I would hate to believe they are inextricably linked.” (207) Sex and death are, in fact, inextricably linked, through Elvis and Hilter. Elvis made white noise while disrupting conventional ideas with his sexual appeal in performances. Hitler made white noise relating to death through his radical ideas on the genocide of Jews in the Second World War.

Crowds came to hear him speak, crowds erotically charged, the masses he once called his only bride. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists as he spoke, twisted his sweat-drenched body, remade his voice as a thrilling weapon. ‘Sex murders,’ someone called these speeches. Crowds came to be hypnotized by the voice, the party anthems, the torchlight parades. (Delillo 72-73)

Hitler had a cult-like following, much like Elvis, who also attracted large, “erotically- charged” crowds that came to watch his shows, to “be hypnotized by [his] voice”, and to listen to his “party anthems”. Both Hitler and Elvis seemed to possess a special influence over large crowds when making white noise. The further connection between these men shows their influence and power.

The song “God”, released in 1970 by John Lennon, states, “I don’t believe in Hitler… I don’t believe in Elvis… I don’t believe in Zimmerman…I don’t believe in Beatles.” “Zimmerman” refers to Robert Zimmerman, the original name of prolific white songwriter Bob Dylan. Lennon subtly nods to the whitewashing of rock by mentioning Dylan’s original name, which he changed from “Zimmerman” to “Dylan” in an attempt to ignore his middle-class Jewish background. John Lennon may have also been getting at a similar point to Delillo by connecting white male rock musicians (Elvis, Beatles, and Dylan) to Adolf Hitler; and the whitewashing of history to white supremacy. Hamilton demonstrates the role of racial identity in the development of rock as a genre:

In historiography this denialism conceals itself more subtly… While many black performers of the 1960s have been relegated to book-length histories of black music generally, white artists like Bob Dylan or the Beatles receive increasingly lavish biographies and isolated critical treatments of musical output. Recognizing white people as individuals while acknowledging nonwhite people only in relation to collectives is a hallmark of racism across all areas of culture: You could argue that the entire history of white supremacy rests upon it. (Hamilton)

Whitened rock culture and white supremacy are codependent. Hitler and Elvis represent the prevalence of whiteness in society. Delillo chooses his two major characters (Gladney and Murray) to be fixated on these two “inextricably linked” historically powerful white male characters (Hitler and Elvis) who both have backgrounds relating to white supremacy. This asserts the fact that in society, it is white men who are privileged to make noise, and it is white men who will be heard. The fact that Professors Gladney and Siskind are white men, themselves, furthers this point. Gladney and Murray will continue teaching about their white male subjects, and like Adolf Hitler and Elvis, their white noise will be heard.

 

Works Cited

Delillo, Don. White Noise. Deluxe Edition, Penguin Books, London, England 1985.

Deriso, Nick. “How Robert Zimmerman Became Bob Dylan.” Ultimate Classic Rock, Ultimate Classic Rock, 2 Aug. 2017, ultimateclassicrock.com/bob-dylan-name-change/.

Engles, Tim. “‘Who Are You, Literally?’: Fantasies of the White Self in White Noise.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 45, no. 3 (1999): 755–787. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/21406.

Hamilton, Jack. “How Rock and Roll Became White.” Slate, Slate Group, Oct. 6, 2006, https://slate.com/culture/2016/10/race-rock-and-the-rolling-stones-how-the-rock-and-roll- became-white.html

Lennon, John. “God.” John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Yoko Ono, Apple/EMI, 1970. Melville, Hermann. Moby Dick Or, the Whale. Apple Books, 1859.

https://books.apple.com/us/book/moby-dick/id427802472Asks
Newfield, Jack. “Who Really Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The New York Sun, The NY Sun, 21 Sept.

2004, www.nysun.com/arts/who-really-invented-rock-n-roll/2037/.
Troedson, David. “Elvis Presley and Racism: The Ultimate, Definitive Guide.” Elvis Australia:

Official Elvis Presley Fan Club, Elvis Australia, 1 Dec. 2017,

www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvis-not-racist.shtml.
Unterberger, Richie. “Elvis Presley: Awards.” AllMusic, Netaktion LLC,

www.allmusic.com/artist/elvis-presley-mn0000180228/awards.
Whitesell, Lloyd. “White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-Garde.” American Music 19.2 (2001): 168–189. Web.