For this story “Videotape” it feels as if Don DeLillo had heard of the term “Mondo film” (or as it is also known Shockumantry) and was inspired by it to write a story of someone who would be a viewer of these kind of films. A “Mondo film” is a sub genre of exploitation films that take a documentary/pseudo documentary style focusing on taboo subjects such as death real or fake. Don DeLillo 's “Videotape” shows us a man who has become desensitized to violence. The character in the story is a man who has been consumed by the media; He can no longer be entertained by fictional programs and their violence, but now seeks out his entertainment in the real world. In “Videotape” DeLillo shows us a a world where one doesn’t blink at violence
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In the story we never hear of her jolt or scream but she just continues to film the events that she is seeing. Though in counter-argument this could be the stories narrator being unreliable and not telling us what he is experiencing. In the story we see the narrator romanticize her anonymity and talk about how famous both her and the tape are. “So the child is involved, the Video Kid as she is sometimes called because they have to call her something. The tape is famous and so is she. She is famous in the modern manner of people whose names are strategically withheld. They are famous without names or faces, spirits living apart from their bodies, the victims and witnesses, the underage criminals, out there somewhere at the edges of …show more content…
He is enthralled by unnamed criminals and their victims and imagining this whole fantasy tale of who famous the child is and what she filmed.
The story shows us two individuals desensitized to violence and what happens when that desensitization goes to far and we start to take real life violence for entertainment and not the trajedy that it is. In one line of the story the narrator encourages his wife to come to the TV quickly or she 'll miss it. “Now here is where he gets it. You say, Janet, hurry up, this is where it happens.” Much like a favorite scene in a movie the husband calls over his wife to watch the scene just like they would a film. The only character in the story seemingly not affected by the violence is the narrators wife Janet. In the stories last line we get the following from the narrator. “You don’t want Janet to give you any crap about it’s on all the time, they show it a thousand times a day.”
Here we can see that the narrators wife presumably has some type of problem with the content he is watching. He lists out that they show it everyday and lots of time because its the reality of the world plus what people want to see. Though if his wife has problems with the content he is watching on Moral grounds or just something else all together is not exactly clear. In one part of the story the narrator speaks the
In the story we never hear of her jolt or scream but she just continues to film the events that she is seeing. Though in counter-argument this could be the stories narrator being unreliable and not telling us what he is experiencing. In the story we see the narrator romanticize her anonymity and talk about how famous both her and the tape are. “So the child is involved, the Video Kid as she is sometimes called because they have to call her something. The tape is famous and so is she. She is famous in the modern manner of people whose names are strategically withheld. They are famous without names or faces, spirits living apart from their bodies, the victims and witnesses, the underage criminals, out there somewhere at the edges of …show more content…
He is enthralled by unnamed criminals and their victims and imagining this whole fantasy tale of who famous the child is and what she filmed.
The story shows us two individuals desensitized to violence and what happens when that desensitization goes to far and we start to take real life violence for entertainment and not the trajedy that it is. In one line of the story the narrator encourages his wife to come to the TV quickly or she 'll miss it. “Now here is where he gets it. You say, Janet, hurry up, this is where it happens.” Much like a favorite scene in a movie the husband calls over his wife to watch the scene just like they would a film. The only character in the story seemingly not affected by the violence is the narrators wife Janet. In the stories last line we get the following from the narrator. “You don’t want Janet to give you any crap about it’s on all the time, they show it a thousand times a day.”
Here we can see that the narrators wife presumably has some type of problem with the content he is watching. He lists out that they show it everyday and lots of time because its the reality of the world plus what people want to see. Though if his wife has problems with the content he is watching on Moral grounds or just something else all together is not exactly clear. In one part of the story the narrator speaks the