Truth in the Hands of the Media
BY SHELLY BRYANT I December 25, 2009
Don DeLillo. Valparaiso. London: Picador, 2004. 107 pages.
ISBN 0-330-42694-X (originally published in New York, by Scribner 2003)
In Don DeLillo's Valparaiso, an ordinary business trip becomes a life-changing excursion all due to an airline mix-up in which the passenger is sent to the wrong city in a different state that shares the same name as his destination. It's not exactly that the mix-up sends Michael into a contemplative state, considering the role of place in shaping our identities, or the sort of parallels that might exist in cities separated by many miles yet sharing a common name. No, this character doesn't engage in such depths of introspection at all. If anything, the experience turns off Michael's ability (or willingness) to think altogether. He finds himself, instead, famous, and right at the center of a huge media extravaganza.
The entire drama unfolds around the experience of Michael and his wife Livia as they juggle their commitments at home around the demands of keeping up their media presence. Family secrets begin to make their way out of the dark spaces where they've been kept; Livia's manic exercise schedule kicks into high gear in an attempt to work off the stress, and Michael seems to scramble frantically just to keep up with life in front of the cameras. The role of the mass media is constantly in the spotlight from beginning to end of the play, and, while it seems to keep Michael from any real thought, it is sure to make audiences stop and consider, if just for a moment, just how noisy the voice of the media has become in our day and age.
I have not seen Valparaiso onstage, but it is easy to imagine how effective it would be in live performance. The language of air travel, the bedroom, and the mass media all work together to form an odd sort of poetry, the cadence of which can really get into the head. If used well on the stage, the dialogue in the play should set a perfect pace for the frenzy the script seems to want to convey — the frenzy that seems to reflect the contemporary media-immersed culture in which we live.
The notion of the truth in the hands of the media on DeLillo's stage is a slippery thing, much like we might imagine it to be in the hands of those who control the real-world media images that troop across our screens and newspapers every day. The play gives audiences plenty to think about on that front and alongside considerations about how this media circus we attend day in and day out shapes our experience of the world.
And that barely scratches the surface. There are still plenty of other loose threads which a careful viewer/reader might like to pursue further — issues like, say, the role of place in shaping our identities or the sort of parallels that might exist in cities separated by many miles but sharing a common name...
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