The postmodern in Swift
... entertainment; the filmed crime is replayed over and over, enticing viewers to watch. In Underworld, the Giants-Dodgers game represents an almost-hallowed place that exists prior to the "infotainment" phenomena exemplified by the Texas Highway Killer's execution of a motorist, captured on video by a young girl the media nicknames "the Video Kid." Though not idealized because of its undertones of anti-Communist paranoia and mass death, the Giants' victory delivers "the power of history" because it exists prior to the commodification and trivialization of history that became so common in late twentieth-century America. As DeLillo writes in "The Power of History," "the shakier and fuzzier the picture [on the newsreel of Thomson's home run], the more it lays a claim to permanence" and radio announcer Russ Hodges' broadcast "is beautifully isolated in time" because it has not been "subject to the debasing process of frantic repetition that exhausts a contemporary event before it has rounded into coherence." In Underworld, as in DeLillo's essay "Total Loss Weekend" (1972), and the short story "Human Moments in World War III" (1983), radio has the power to unify people, to cut through cultural boundaries and create a shared experience. The key difference between footage of the Texas Highway Killer or of the attempted assassination of President Reagan, on the one hand, and these earlier films, on the other, is the mystery and the long time that has elapsed between the filmed event and its public viewing. In Underworld's depiction of these films, it is because the Kennedy assassination footage was not seen for a decade that its images retain the power to shock. When artist Klara Sax and film buff Miles Lightman attend a private screening of the Zapruder film in the 1970s, t...