Spring Break
Some of society's ills: malls and monotony
Derick Becker/Staff Columnist
Issue date: 4/11/02 Section: Commentary
Someone once told me that the mall in Manchester is the biggest mall in the state and that got me thinking about something. Namely, malls and mall culture and its pervasiveness in society and on campus. Before reading further put down the paper and look around you. Maybe you notice it too: a lot of people on this campus must shop at the mall because all I spy with my little eye is a sea of "Gap" "Abercrombie" and "American Eagle."
Now I don't have anything against these people (many are my friends). I am sure they are all very nice, interesting and smart individuals despite their rather dreary sartorial tastes. What interests me-and maybe interests you, the reader-is the surprising lack of subcultural diversity on campus and the fact that the dominant subculture is tied to the mall. Let's ponder this for a minute.
I dislike the mall and with good reasons. I come from Minneapolis, the home of the mall to end all malls: The Mall of America (actually, it is in the suburb of Bloomington). The Mall of America is nothing more than a magnificent monument to consumerism and a shrine to the gas-guzzling car culture. It is, like all malls, an extraordinary edifice of suburban blight. The thing is ugly and represents all that is evil in this country. So I hate the mall. Who cares? Before dismissing me, read on. Rest assured that if you are one of those wearing an "Abercrombie" shirt, this is no personal attack on you.
Personally, I think malls are hideous, purely functional eye sores festering in that bigger suburban eye sore. The mall embodies rampant consumerism in a clean, corporately owned, socially antiseptic space free of those annoying community activists and anti-sweatshop protesters. Anything or anyone that distracts you from spending is quietly removed and sent to jail. Malls are eroding our public space and public expression, supplanting it with private property and corporate cultural identity. They want to be a part of society without actually being accountable to it. What used to be a communal and cultural experience, going shopping downtown with all its requisite street performers, colorful streets, angry protesters, outdoor shopkeepers and dirty punks is now a purely corporate shopping experience.
Now I don't have anything against these people (many are my friends). I am sure they are all very nice, interesting and smart individuals despite their rather dreary sartorial tastes. What interests me-and maybe interests you, the reader-is the surprising lack of subcultural diversity on campus and the fact that the dominant subculture is tied to the mall. Let's ponder this for a minute.
I dislike the mall and with good reasons. I come from Minneapolis, the home of the mall to end all malls: The Mall of America (actually, it is in the suburb of Bloomington). The Mall of America is nothing more than a magnificent monument to consumerism and a shrine to the gas-guzzling car culture. It is, like all malls, an extraordinary edifice of suburban blight. The thing is ugly and represents all that is evil in this country. So I hate the mall. Who cares? Before dismissing me, read on. Rest assured that if you are one of those wearing an "Abercrombie" shirt, this is no personal attack on you.
Personally, I think malls are hideous, purely functional eye sores festering in that bigger suburban eye sore. The mall embodies rampant consumerism in a clean, corporately owned, socially antiseptic space free of those annoying community activists and anti-sweatshop protesters. Anything or anyone that distracts you from spending is quietly removed and sent to jail. Malls are eroding our public space and public expression, supplanting it with private property and corporate cultural identity. They want to be a part of society without actually being accountable to it. What used to be a communal and cultural experience, going shopping downtown with all its requisite street performers, colorful streets, angry protesters, outdoor shopkeepers and dirty punks is now a purely corporate shopping experience.