Consuming Anxiety: Hyperreal Supermarkets, Media, and Pharmaceuticals in Don DeLillo’s White Noise

This paper examines how White Noise demonstrates hyperreality through supermarkets, media, and pharmaceuticals. Drawing on the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Mark Fisher, and Edward Casey, I argue that these spaces function as simulations that shape perception by masking existential anxiety in the postmodern consumer culture. The analysis progresses from external to internal forms of hyperreal spaces. The supermarket offers an illusion of order and abundance as a space of reassurance through consumption. Media produces a continuous flow of images that structures the mind while leading to emotional numbness. Pharmaceuticals, represented specifically through Dylar, operate at an internal level as a chemical solution to suppress the fear of death. These have one thing in common: they provide momentary comfort while failing to offer genuine solutions. I argue that these hyperreal spaces do not resolve existential anxiety but deepen it, revealing simulation as the defining condition of postmodern consumer culture.

Keywords: hyperreality, consumerism, supermarkets, media, pharmaceuticals