Abstract

This study is about postmodern dread as present in Danielle Steel’s novel Silent Night (2019). This is the latest novel by Steel that has an emotional and gripping story that involves its reader from the first till the last word and the ray of light against all odds. Moreover, it is a story of resilience and family integration. The selected text Silent Night was interpreted with an insight taken from cultural studies. The theorist for this study is a famous Caribbean cultural theorist Stuart Hall. For this study Hall's ideas of popular culture and media, culture were taken for insight. These two ideas were simultaneously exploited for data interpretation. The primary text Silent Nights are fundamentally about the postmodern dread of technology along with the media craze and its use by the characters in the novel. He presents his model of encoding/decoding that deals with the reproduction of cultures by media. Hall’s framework in turn helps illuminate important characteristics of how journalism is ascribed meaning in a digital landscape.

Key Words

Postmodernism, Dread, Popular Culture, Media Culture and Craze, Freedom, Fame, Reality, Circuitry, Manipulation

Introduction

The present study is a postmodern dread and critique of the media craze as projected in the novel Silent Night by Steel. Hence, this study deals with postmodern fiction interpreted in light of the postmodern theoretical framework. In other words, this study is about contemporary postmodern American fiction that is predominantly a mixture of many incoherent ideas and objects. Postmodern contemporary society is excessively dominated by advanced technology and postmodern culture is dominated by scientific inventions and technological upheavals that generally come through media culture. The twenty-first century is absolutely in the grip of scientific method and technology and it is growing so rapidly that is shaping and changing the world quickly. Within the first two decades of the new millennium the world is not what it seems to be by the end of the last millennium. The romantic cult of the previous centuries has now been replaced by an even a bigger romantic cult of media culture. Thus this study is an interpretation of Danielle Steel's novel Silent Night in terms of media cultural studies that is taken as an umbrella term for a more precise and narrowed-down media craze.

This study is about postmodern American life as it is depicted in the text Silent Night. It deals with the general attitude of the people towards Hollywood, media, and celebrity. Moreover, it explores several motives that instigate such a behavior based on hyperreality constructed by media. In contemporary world societies, media has a tremendously strong existence. Its role is vital in the affairs of the state and the public alike. Its importance cannot be denied. Its role cannot be neglect. Hollywood is the biggest center of the film industry in America and there is any youth not interested in it. This study focuses on the general behavior of the minor characters that depicts the media craze of the American people. Moreover, it also explores the central characters with reference to media craze, popular culture and celebrity culture. Silent Night is a postmodern text and deals with postmodern dread in many respects specifically with respect to media craze and popular culture. 

Postmodern dread is many things to many people/ scholars but in this study is equivalent to media craze, Hollywood syndrome and hankering after fifteen minutes of fame. It is so as the primary text for this study is about Hollywood, media craze, fame and glamour as the particles of postmodern American culture. To see human relations being monitored and controlled by media and money in Silent Night excites to dig out the underpinnings of the media craze in the text. Postmodern American culture is the epitome of glamour, and media. It is an established fact that media not now but from many decades has become the fourth pillar of the state. It is so powerful that people rely on it, believe in it, it makes and unmakes reality. It controls the minds and actions of the people. Things that appear lustrous and bright on media are taken as reality. In this context, the reality d consistently constructed in Hollywood. Although nothing is real about Hollywood still people in postmodern American culture are dying to be part of it. Silent Night revolves around Hollywood royalty and the Watt sisters as the central characters reveal the mindset of the American people about media and Hollywood. This is dreadful and this postmodern dread is every here and there in the course of the text of Silent Night. Since it emerges more prominently from the fabrics of popular culture, it finds expression in all manifestations of such culture. Literature, particularly, fiction imitates the life in which it is produced. Likewise, Silent Night is a vivid picture of postmodern popular American culture. 

The topmost slogan of such a culture is freedom in all its forms and manifestations. Within this freedom there is freedom of woman. In America, women have obtained rights that are more than the rights women have got anywhere in the world. This freedom of the postmodern American culture has stigmatized many aspects of life that are hailed and respected in the oriental world. In this regard, marriage is a holy institution. It has respect and worth all across eastern societies but in America, it has lost its holiness. People no more hail it and stick to it. This is dreadful. In Silent Night both of the Watt sisters as representatives of the postmodern American women abhor marriage. Paige Watt exercises her freedom to the extent that she manages to have a donor. When she dies she leaves her only child fatherless. Likewise, her sister also does not believe in marriage and the responsibilities that come with marriage. This kind of freedom is dreadful and the author projects it accordingly.

Silent Night is a glamorous picture of postmodern American culture that is swayed by technology particularly the media world. In this context, Stuart Hall a cultural theorist is of the view that the lives of individuals are regularly shaped, made and unmade by the world of media (1981). In addition the impact of media sources and its craze roll over the story of contemporary fiction. Cultural studies is a multipronged discipline and it is a combination of social theory, sociology, political economy, communication, film studies, media studies, literary theory, art, history, philosophy, anthropology etc. it aims at studying social phenomena in various dimensions. The focus of attention in cultural studies is any social phenomena that relate to matters of ethnicity, gender, social class, nationality and ideology. It has now a strong footing in literary theories and literature is interpreted with the lens of aspects taken from cultural studies. In fact, literature itself is a cultural phenomenon. Within the cultural theory there is media culture. Therefore, the contemporary theory explores media culture and calls it media ecology. In other words, it is the intersection of communication technologies and a load of information that create the environment of human culture. Human life is dominated by a media culture in a postmodern world where there is a rush of information and ideologies are set and destroyed over nights. It is such a strong cult that has completely taken over human activities in the postmodern world. Silent Night by Danielle is about this sway of media culture. It is an intersection of organizational human behavior and interaction. Reality is constructed by the media. Bignell, J. (2007) asserts that postmodern media does not provide any alternate or secondary representation of reality rather they affect reality, mediate it and produce it. Therefore, in the postmodern world if any event matters it is a media event. Postmodern people have no problem in being simultaneously and indistinguishably live people and media people. These people knew implicitly that the media do not simply report or circulate the news, they produce it. This world of media craze is vivid in the story of Silent Night.

Objectives

The objectives of the study are to:

? Explore the glamorous world of Silent Night with a view of locating postmodern dread.

? Explore the atmosphere of popular culture and media culture in the narration of Silent Night.

? Uncover the media craze that overtakes the lives of the central characters of Silent Night.

? Establish a counter perspective for the peace of human mind.

? Uncover reality created by media in the novel Silent Night.

Methodology

This study was qualitative in nature. The cultural critical theory was used to interpret the data. In this respect, the ideas of popular culture, media culture, and media craze, binaries of us and others by Stuart Hall were explored in the study. The primary data Silent Night was interpreted with the lens of Hall's above-mentioned ideas. To explore the layers of popular culture in the world of Silent Night, Hall’s concept of media craze in a popular and media culture was taken to answer the research questions. Moreover, the supporting texts of culture studies were also utilized to strengthen the argument. Apart from this secondary data was also consulted. It was derived from different books, the internet, published documents in newspapers and literature related to the research problem.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for this study was taken from cultural theorist Stuart Hall. He is a world-famous scholar, teacher and public intellectual. His meticulous works have influenced many disciplines over the world in the fields of arts, humanities and social sciences. Moreover, his role in British policy and political discourse is prominent. He is a founding scholar of British Cultural Studies. His books and essays have contributed substantially to contemporary cultural and literary thought. In his field of Cultural Studies his essays: Encoding/decoding (1980), Notes on Deconstructing the Popular (1981) are of great importance (Shaw, 2017).

Hall as a cultural theorist is of the opinion that reality in popular culture is a product of media for they produce it. Hence, nothing is flux rather politics, technology and culture are in flux and ever-changing and in this context theory has to keep up (Sender and Decherney 2016). In addition, Hall challenges and troubles extremes between high culture and popular culture by showing that everyday life changes under the influence of communication, distribution, production, and reception. Moreover, he describes identities that have fluid and negotiated makeup. In other words, he has given a new life to the ideas of Marx, Althusser, Gramsci and other philosophers in the twentieth-century postmodern world (Grossberg, 1986).

Hall (1997) asserts that in the formation of cultural values along with circulation of cultural symbolic values and the desired production of these values Media studies has substantial and influential role within the bounds of cultural studies. This culture reinforces the media craze and sets the ideology of people for their future course of action. Specific political, cultural, and economic groups make use of media culture and regulate the lives of the general masses. Hall (1980) also puts that literature and arts project popular media culture that presents the forms of political ideologies. To him the forms of media culture are excessively political and ideology based. Therefore, the readers must read them politically.

Postmodernity and Media Craze

Postmodern American fiction is a picture of contemporary American society. Broadly speaking American culture is a salad pot that has a variety of ethnic and linguistic communities. However, there is one thing common among these communities and it is craze for popular culture chiefly dominated by showbiz and celebrity culture. The lives of the people are formulated by media and their opinion as well ideology is formed by popular TV shows. In terms of location this culture is spread over a large area that contains multiple communities and societies. It has a hierarchical diffusion. By means of same activities they are connected. Psychologically people are in search of their role and position in society. Sociologically it is youth focused and are of the habit to break free from the past. Clothing and fashion of such a culture undergoes change consistently. Love is in the center and it is coupled with entertainment and high level professional skills. Hall (1981) is of the view that popular culture is a combination of several social, economic, and political changes that strive to surpass each other and their participants are dynamic and ever changing. Their ideologies are shaped by mass media and sources of entertainment. The ideals of the people are celebrities. 

The celebrity is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness which is improved in its frequently misquoted form as a celebrity is someone famous for being famous. (The other well-known quotation on this subject is Andy Warhol’s in the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes which is also frequently misquoted as everyone will have his fifteen minutes of fame. Presently, celebrities are perhaps best thought of as bold-faces, for as such do their names often appear in the press. But to say that a celebrity is someone well-known for being well-known, though clever enough, is not, I think, sufficient. The first semantic problem our fetching subject presents is the need for a distinction between celebrity and fame—a distinction more easily required than produced.




Paige and Media Craze

The world of Silent Night is that of a world of glamour that is dazzling from outside but contagious and hollow from inside. The worldly pursuits of the main characters in the Hollywood reduce their lives to merely mechanical routine. The novel is a beautiful tale of contrasts among the taste and life style of a Hollywood family. In the centre there is Emma Watt a young girl and a TV star. Her mother is Paige Watt and her only aunt is Whitney Watt. Emma the young TV star is on contract in a famous TV show the Clan. She belongs to Hollywood Royalty. The grandmother Elizabeth Winston of Emma was one of the biggest stars of her day, a very popular heroine. Her two daughters remained in a world of colours and lights and they grew up in that atmosphere of Hollywood but both of these two have absolute cont4ast with each other of they are pole apart from each other.  “Paige grew up watching her mother on the set of her movies, when she was allowed to” (Danielle, 7). The first tragedy that postmodern American society of the film industry suffers is time management. Time is so precious for the parents that they sacrifice the education and training of their children for dollars. Hollywood celebrities have to undergo such turmoil too that seems impossible in normal working class families. Both of the sisters of Elizabeth Winston were brought up by nannies. 

It was so because their mother was busy all the time either on stage or in parties. “Their mother was always making a movie somewhere” (7).Therefore, they remained deprived of motherly love most of the time. But in postmodern American culture the glamour world is too strong. So much so that even the deprived children of the Hollywood royalty cannot resist the temptation of the light and they also yearn to be part of it as it happens in the case of Paige Watt. She follows the footsteps of her mother and herself becomes a celebrity. It does not stop here she also throws her young and only child Emma as a child celebrity too. But the chain of connection and hankering after glamorous pursuits do not work on every individual. The aunt of Emma, Whitney resists the temptation, thinks quite different from her family members and chooses the profession of a psychiatrist. Her repulsion from the Hollywood clearly states her strong character and solid thinking. It is remarkable that she does not fall prey to glamour world rather she consciously and untiringly resists it. It is perhaps she has strong sense of deprivation as a child. What Whitney does not want her sister to do her sisters does the opposite. She spoils her personal life in Hollywood and also throws her young daughter to media. Hall (1981) asserts that media forms the opinion and shapes the ideology of the people (33). Likewise Paige Watt also is dragged in to the mud of media. She is so inspired by the fifteen minutes of fame that she stops thinking abnormal. In postmodern American culture legal wedding is almost extinct. It is one of the features now in the postmodern American culture. Following this trend Paige does not marry. Rather she hires a donor for her child. And when Emma was born she started raising her as a single mother. Tragically the donor father of Emma dies a short time after her birth. Paige herself could not become an actress of the stature of her mother but she knew that her daughter had the talent to grow to that and win Oscars and Emmy awards just like her grandmother. This crazy dream of Paige and her ambitious desire are bulldozers that run over the life of Emma. The people on screen are watched and admired by millions. Screen is a quick source in postmodern culture to carry an individual in millions of homes. People are therefore crazy about it and they want to establish their career on screen. This is definitely an ambitious desire that carries away peace, rest and health of life. But the messages on screen are too strong and it is nearly impossible for the media ridden people to negotiate the messages. Hall (1980) explains that every picture and every word on screen has a mass communication property. Messages are encoded on screen and they are decoded by the viewers (44). A large majority of the people fails to negotiate and they accept the popular meaning. As it is the case of Paige Watt that she fails to negotiate the Hollywood and accepts the popular meanings. “She had given up on her own acting career years before, and concentrated on Emma’s as soon as she was old enough to have one… All Paige had ever wanted growing up was her parents’ attention, which was hard to come by. And she longed to be as big a star as her mother one day” (Danielle, 7-8). 

On the contrary her sister negotiates the popular meanings and resists. Hence, saves her life. She always hated everything that had anything to do with Hollywood and media. She never wanted to be star herself. She could not dream of becoming a puppet in the hands of producers and Hollywood agents. Therefore she makes up her mind at a very early stage of life and decides as a doctor who could treat people's mind and body. She knows that her mother went onto the hands of a Hollywood agent who castrated her moves. Her agent Bill was more than thirty years senior to her in age. Brings her on his bed and paves the way of her career as a Hollywood heroine. Power structures in the film industry and TV leave no chance go when they do not exploit the media's crazy people. All the decisions of their mother's life were made by her agent. Similarly, Paige also makes all the decisions of the life of her only daughter. "He made all her decisions for her Just as Paige made Emma's" (Danielle, 8). Where is life? What kind of life is the life of celebrities? The control towers are always behind the screen. (Hall (1981) puts that people are driven by their undue and unseen desires. What attracts them the most is the screen that is shown in public houses and public talks about the people that appear on them? But they do not know the amount of sacrifice and exploitation that the media crazy people have to undergo (46). Hence, the characters in Silent Night are struggling to resist and yield to the world of media. Media craze takes the form of postmodern dread in the narration of the novel and the characters make decisions according to accepted, negotiated and rejected messages of media. 

Coming to the first character that undergoes media craze and suffers the loss of her life is Paige Watson. She is a single mother and herself an actress but not as successful as her mother was. Therefore, she makes up her mind to make her daughter Emma as one of the finest actresses in the country. Hence, she chooses her career and gives her a kick in TV. When the novel opens Emma is a famous celebrity and it is because of her mother Paige. Right in her childhood she falls in love with the red-carpet. She is dazzled by the flood lights, lime light and spot light. She wants to be admired as well as to be popular. But her dreams shatter when she fails to acquire that place in the film industry. She is crazy about Hollywood and media because she was brought up in a Hollywood royal family. Anyways, she does not lose her craze about media life and throws her only daughter to that glamorous world. 

Paige is supposed to be a good mother, a mother that takes care of her children at any cost. But Paige chooses a different way. She thinks that all the necessary things in life can be achieved at any stage later in life but fame is an object that must be hit at the right time otherwise it is too late. She believes that her daughter is talented in acting. And she has gained good reputation and name over few years. She wants her daughter to keep going with acting. At the expense of her daughter’s reputation as a famous and talented actress at a famous TV show The Clan she neglects all her natural and social needs. What does a child need more urgently than education? But Paige as a mother is far less concerned with education. Straightway she throws her into the world of camera. In this regard it is quite evident that she is not a normal or typical mother.   Postmodern American culture is absolutely material and devoid of natural human bonds and feelings yet there is a code of conduct that is generally supposed to be followed by its participants. Since culture is divided between the groups of power and powerless. Emma as a child is powerless the way her grandmother was powerless at the face of her grandfather Bill. She cannot decide for herself and her mother Paige is too obsessed with media life. She is too much obsessed with the life of media that she forgets the basic needs and rights of her daughter. She deprived her of her father.  Every child no matter living in the east or the west wants to live in the company of parents. 

But Paige selected a donor. She did not marry a person with whom she could raise their children together. Although this trend of partners is gaining more and more currency in America still there are people that love to have bond of marriage and their ration is significantly high. But Paige belongs to Hollywood and such moralities are not questioned there. She as a single parent decides the fate of her daughter. “Paige’s main interest was in Emma’s acting homework anyway. Paige thought Emma could always catch up on school later” (Danielle, 8). This is evident that she is not a good and caring mother. Had she been so she would never neglect motherly duties and deprives her daughter of normal education of school. Postmodern culture of America puts more emphasis on success than on means of success. She focuses more on the name, fame and reputation of Emma as a child star than on her needs. Therefore, as a Hollywood cult she has appointed a tutor for her that wants to teach her but her mother desires that the lessons of the teacher may never come between the acting lines of Emma. She is too concerned with her lines that she has to act on the TV show.

On the contrary she loves her daughter to rise to new heights of the Screen world. She wants to cash the talent of her daughter at any cost. This is a mistaken ambition on the side of Paige that results in mental disappointment of the child with TV at the end. Therefore, Emma is torn apart between her career and the desire of her mother. She is a consummate actress but she misses the life of normal children. She knows at a very early stage that she is a celebrity and people across the country know her very well. At the same time she is admired by millions. Even then she is confused between her rights and duties.  When she complains of her overload of work Paige coldly replies.

Don’t tell me your sad stories, you’ve got Belinda wrapped around your little finger. All you have to do is tell her you have too many lines to learn for tomorrow and she lets you off the hook with no homework. (9)

Hall (1980) asserts that culture is a combination of binaries. These binaries are always at a disagreement with each other. The power structure associated with these binaries pull the weaker side to their end (49).  Likewise, Paige is dragging her daughter to the side of her own mistaken ambition without realizing the primary needs of Emma. A mother cannot go to such extent but the craze of Hollywood and media in postmodern American culture is stronger and more attractive than any other thing in that culture. Her outlook is shaped by media and her vision has been formulated by its craze. In short she is a media crazy mother. The important thing in her life is the light of camera and sound of TV. Therefore, after trying her own luck in the Hollywood she brings her daughter straight to that world. Emma when she made her entry on TV was just six years old. Imagine a girl without father raised by a single mother goes to the artificial world of media. Hence she is far less caring and more concerned with fifteen minutes of fame. Once she was an actress. 

She said good bye to acting long before the birth of Emma. At the time when Emma is a celebrity Paige was nowhere in the minds of the people. The world of media is short lived and hasty. People come and go and few are remembered when they leave the stage for good. Paige herself has never been a success but she is ambitious enough to install her daughter in the hearts and minds of the people. For that crazy abnormal idea she puts her life in risk. Further fuel is added on fire with the idea that Emma is just a child and she cannot decide for herself. “Giving up a hit TV series was a big decision, and so was starring in a Broadway show with major actors, at nine” (Danielle, 8). Paige is shown highly active in her daughter’s time management. She makes all her decisions. She talks to the producers and the agents and she confirms her roles to be played in famous media shows. She is as busy as a bee in media houses and TV channels. Her craze about media is quite vivid in the beginning of the novel. She knows that her daughter is overburdened yet she thinks hundred times to say no to media companies such as Broadway. “She wanted Emma to be as big a star as her grandmother one day” (Danielle, 8). This is the highest point that Paige has thought about her daughter. She believes that she is making her career and it will be a lifetime achievement not only of Emma but of her as well. She views it in the context of her parents. Her mother was a Hollywood success and her success was actually the success of Paige’s father. Similarly she wants to do something big by promoting Emma as a celebrity. But in doing so she makes many wrong choices and compromises on her daughter’s unknown but growing desires. 

The dazzling exterior of postmodern popular American culture is bleak and gloomy from inside. Paige does not realize it but her sister Whitney becomes repulsive of it quite early in her life. She does not fall prey to the luster of postmodern media life. When Emma was just six months old Paige started her career as a model which was quite abusive according to Whitney.  She thinks that Emma is being exploited by her mother. For that she argues with Paige and tries to bring her round that she is crazy about media and media life. In doing so she is taking life away from her daughter. But Paige rejects all her arguments by declaring them impractical. Paige brings the example of her parents in the arguments and boosts of their success. She remains all her life under the impression that being a celebrity at the cost of one’s life and happy moments is success. But unlike her sister Whitney is nowhere under the impression that media crazy life and hunger for pump and show is success. In response to her sister Whitney insists:

Does it ever occur to you that maybe Mom got early onset Alzheimer’s at fifty-two, and died at fifty-four, because of the pressure she was under, which he orchestrated for thirty years? She had no life, all she did was work on one film after another, and win two Oscars. She had no time for friends except the people she worked with, and she almost never saw us. She was always working somewhere. Mom did everything he told her to, just like you’re doing with Emma now. Doesn’t that ever scare you? Aren’t you afraid she’ll accuse you of stealing her childhood one day? (9)

The realistic picture that Whitney paints is quite drastic and gory. Although in the popular culture fame weighs more than health and happiness yet human aspect of one’s life should not be neglected altogether. But Paige neglects it altogether. She reduces Emma to a media doll deprived of true love and care. The glamorous life her mother was nothing but a constant headache in which Paige is now pushing her little daughter too.  Madness is not a proportionate cost of Oscars. After all Oscars is Oscars. For Paige there is nothing more desirable than to be on screen as a celebrity. The miserable plight of her successful mother means nothing to her. All she likes is the flash of camera light and red carpets. Her obsession with media and industry is not only dangerous for her; it is also devastating for her young daughter. She comes out of the shell of a mother and thinks like a materialistic heartless obsessive woman. Moreover, she is obstinate enough to not to pay heed to any sensible voice. Hall (1981) claims that the impact of media in certain cases completely take over the people and they become forgetful of the reality. Reality is constructed and put forward on media (49). Hence people with postmodern popular culture mentality can easily be found dazed and amazed by media. They structure their lifestyle according to the trends shown on media. Similarly their yard stick for successes is also put forward by media that they take more than serious. 

However, as a leading character in the novel, Paige Watson is an epitome of postmodern popular, celebrity and media culture. The word craze finds absolute expression in her character. “She’ll thank me for it when she’s as big a star as our mother was, or bigger. With social media today, stardom is an even bigger deal than it was then. It’s global now, and everything moves faster” (9). Her mad and crazy desire takes her life and puts her daughter into the life of a handicapped. The life of Paige in the sight of her sister is not a healthy and productive one. She is fixed with Emma’s career. Her focus of attention is on her growing fame and rising celebrity. Apart from this, she has been occasionally enjoying flirtation on the several actors on the stage. But she never took any of these relationships seriously. 

Her romances never lasted longer. It is all because of her obsession with Emma’s career as a star. Therefore, instead of having a good relationship she drove normal and healthy men away only for the sake of Emma. It was a mistake on the part of Paige. She believes that she is doing for the betterment of Emma but in reality she is breaking the dreams of Emma.  “I’d like to be on a girls’ soccer team, if you really want to know,” Emma would say dreamily. That sounded fantastic to her” (Danielle, 2019, p. 10). Her ambition has suppressed the feelings of Emma and she is fed up of the mechanical life of a TV star. She wants to escape from such a life and she finds and pins hope in her aunt Whitney. Her love and affection with her aunt last longer than a reader can expect. Although in the postmodern American popular culture such relationships are never stronger but the relationship between Emma and Whitney is unique and non-postmodernist in every sense. It is so because there is no iota of greed and selfishness in it. In the contemporary American culture nobody anything for anyone for nothing. Free services are extinct in that culture. Humanitarian grounds are diminishing and people are materialistically greedy and selfish. Selfishness (Hall, 1980) is surely a hallmark of postmodern American culture (49). Likewise, it is unlikely to expect any free service from anyone. 

But Whitney is not such an aunt to charge anything from her niece, a popular TV star. Instead she encourages her unlike her mother who thinks nothing of Emma but a celebrity. Invariably, she is repressed and time and again she expresses it when she is in the company of her aunt. “Not likely,” Emma said wistfully, “as long as Mom breathes air. She’d kill me if I give up acting, after everything she’s done for me” (Danielle, 2019, p. 11). Paige knows the way to deal with Emma, hence, she puts right amount of fear and excitement in the ears of Emma. She always reminds her daughter of her sacrifice that she left her acting career only because she wants make her daughter a star like her grandmother to win Oscars. Paige does not give her a choice and makes Whitney feel sorry for Emma. The condition of Emma is that of a slave, therefore, as a dependent young one she has to obey her mother. But the kind of life she is on has never been wished by her. Paige also believes that her sister is out of her mind that is why she thinks of everyone at Hollywood crazy. 

Paige is also unaware of the mental health that the young children have to suffer that took up acting at early stage. Likewise, she is also at risk of mental disorder at the later stages of life. There is no fun and play on schedule of Emma. The madness of her mother for a media career has taken away all the possible delight of life. The obsession of Paige is dangerously abnormal. It is she that decides what Emma would eat at what time. She does not set a menu of her for her with a view of her health but of her celebrity career. To her TV star no matter at what age she is has to be diet conscious. Postmodern American culture is not generally diet conscious but the world of media is. "I'm tired of salad. Why can't we have pizza? "Because you're the star of a TV show, remember?” (Danielle, 2019, p. 12). At home Emma after many days wants to eat pizza but Paige wants her to eat salad all alone lest she should get fat and lose her role in the TV serial. This hegemony of the mother is a cultural phenomenon and it is always on the elastic side. Hall (1980) asserts that the opposite binaries exert pressure from their respective end and the weaker one loses to the stronger one. Similarly, Emma loses to her mother.

Conclusion

Postmodern popular American culture is a salad pot with one item most wanted and it is the media. Celebrity culture, Hollywood, and media are in the blood of Americans. Love of media itself is not abnormal and bad but its craze is not healthy at all. Silent Night by Danielle Steel is surely a real picture of the postmodern American culture that has media in its centre. People all over the narration of the novel in the form of main and minor characters exhibit this craze every now and them. The lives of the people are regularly regulated by the media. Media is a driving force that makes and unmakes the lives of the masses and it has a strong presence in Silent Night that is recent text. The story of the novel is perfectly in line with the traits of postmodern American culture as depicted and asserted by Start Hall. Hall is of the opinion that in American culture there are a few forces but the most powerful in all is the media. This force has run deep into the lives of the general public. It is the only source of information that American trust blindly. 

References

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• Steel. D. (2019). Silent Night. Dell, New York