자아탐색과 영화 이미지의 실재성

The Self-Exploration and the Reality of the Filmic Image in Don DeLillo's Americana

This paper is an attempt to examine Don DeLillo's optimistic view of the post-industrial society which is different perspective from the established way. Though DeLillo has dealt with the media-consumer society negatively, he also elucidates the positive sides of media images as American force. That explains why this paper argues DeLillo evidently shows the hope in his novel, Americana with respect to Gilles Deleuze's idea of the cinema images as the movement-image and the time-image. Deleuze utilizes those images for the positive power connected to the concept of the virtual originated from Henry Bergson's philosophy: every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images and so purely actual objects do not exist. It means that the actualisation of the virtual always takes place by difference. Thus the images of the cinema are not the ruined copies but the practical signs that make difference. In Americana, welcoming his images taken after the manner of Hollywood stars, protagonist, David Bell, enjoys them reflected in a mirror, whereas suffering from anxiety and the fear of death caused by his deceased mother. David searches for self-exploration by making his troubled memory into a movie and ultimately gains a clue to solve his problem. Highlighting hero's experiments, the author implies that the reality of the filmic images is a means of communication in the late industrial society.