We keep inventing hope.

White Noise (book) + White Noise (movie) — 3/5

I think I could convince myself that the book was great. Not the movie. The movie wasn't great. But the book, maybe if I had better reading comprehension ability, better attention span, or maybe if the book was better, it might be great. I think it's the thing we all go through, the thing we're all heading towards. The dawning realizations. Whether or not this world is ending, your world is ending, and that's such a big idea. It's a notion you cannot prevail against. It's unwinnable. It defeats you. You make sense of all the white noise, trying to rise above the numbing joys, seeing patterns in the fuzz onscreen, only to recede back into its numbing comfort because—what other choice is there? It's that or suicide. Maybe because I'm reading it as I turn 40, it feels like 'ah, this is just the cycle that everyone goes through': surrounded on all sides by serious events, all the ceaseless chattering and nattering. In the book, it's just chatter; in the movie, it's sub-Robert Altman noise. I understand the intention ("white noise" lol): distracting ourselves from the thought of death, between now and then talking in circles, hoping we'll accident into doing something important. I think I can convince myself this was great. It's 1984 except Big Brother is just a feeling in the air of impending doom, and the final act of loving Big Brother becomes the latest in the series of lies we tell to comfort ourselves. We are powerless against the impending... whatever. The end just keeps coming, in different eras, in different forms. And you've got no choice but to let it pass over and through you. It's not just submission, but no choice but to submit. The idea is too powerful, the events too great, everything beyond your ability to comprehend it. It's the inevitability that comes with middle age, of knowing there's really no way to fight the world's innate desire to destroy itself, but to give in is to then destroy yourself—but you've got no other choice than to give in. So you are destroyed, yet you keep going, a walking dead man running laps in a cul de sac. 'White Noise' isn't a 1984-esque vision of the future, it's the encapsulation of an ever-present now. Big Brother isn't outside of us, it's the thing we created to comfort us. He's a smiling, anthromorphic tiger staring back at us from the ceral box as we stuff down the stuff we know will kill us, and returning a smile right back at him. "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

As for the movie, it's stilted and artificial and Adam Driver plays into it well but most no one else does. The final scene in the grocery store is nice and I think finally hits the right mix of playful artifice that the movie had been aiming for throughout but only just then got it.