Episode 23: The White Noise Film

Roll film! In Episode 23, DDSWTNP continue our White Noise residency by heading to the movies (or the TV screen) and examining Noah Baumbach’s 2022 film adaptation of the novel. We discuss the drive over the years to adapt the supposedly “unadaptable” DeLillo for the screen, the 2020s context of this film, and our varied reactions to successive viewings of it over the two-plus years since its release. Other topics include the central performances (especially Adam Driver as an unexpectedly good Jack Gladney and Don Cheadle as a refashioned Murray Siskind); Baumbach’s successes and failures at re-ordering DeLillo’s dialogue and visually distilling certain themes; and his shaping of the narrative as a “meta-cinematic” journey through his personal film history and a mixture of genres. Reviews by Tom LeClair, Marco Roth, and Jesse Kavadlo figure in our analysis, and we close by considering whether we do in fact “need a new body” in the film’s concluding supermarket song and dance number, which in our view captures some of the novel’s themes and distorts others. We’d love to hear on Instagram or email what you think of the film and our reactions, too! We also take a little time to correct a historical error in our Episode 19 on Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake. Texts and sources for this episode: White Noise (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2022) (Netflix). Film adaptation pages at “Don DeLillo’s America”:http://www.perival.com/delillo/whitenoise_film_2022.htmlhttp://perival.com/delillo/ddoddsends.html Patrick Brzeski, Alex Ritman, “Noah Baumbach on Getting LCD Soundsystem to Create New Track for ‘White Noise,’” The Hollywood Reporter, August 31, 2022.https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/venice-noah-baumbach-white-noise-lcd-soundsystem-1235209318/ Jesse Kavadlo, “Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’ Remains Unfilmable,” Pop Matters, January 11, 2023.https://www.popmatters.com/white-noise-noah-baumbach-unfilmable Tom LeClair, “The Maladaptation of White Noise,” Full Stop, December 29, 2022.https://www.full-stop.net/2022/12/29/features/tomleclair/the-maladaptation-of-white-noise/ Jon Mooallem, “How Noah Baumbach Made ‘White Noise’ a Disaster Movie for Our Moment,” New York Times Magazine, November 23, 2022.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/magazine/white-noise-noah-baumbach.html Marco Roth, “Don DeLillo on Xanax,” Tablet, November 3, 2022.https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/don-delillo-xanax-white-noise-noah-baumbach