Malls
Something I read off of Shoutwire, the original article is here, but I'll copy and paste for your convenience :) It's not cited very well, but I thought it was a fun read and worth sharing :D
Mall Mayhem
by KungFu
I recently submitted Stalker Charged in Deadly Mall Shooting and Teen in Mall Drive Through Faces Charges and I thought to myself wtf is wrong with malls? The sad thing is that I have an answers to all of this...to make it short malls suck. For an explanation read on.
Victor Gruen, the original American mall architect, hoped the mall would be like a Greek Stoa. In the Stoa, ancients Greeks would shop and converse among themselves regularly, creating an atmosphere of true community and socialization. But something went wrong with the mall’s basic concept. What happened? Expansion, automobiles, and greater distances all had an influence on the mall’s corruption says Gruen. And then, the mall managers and the greed for money further destroyed the malls’ since of society. So, why exactly do people go to malls, if not for shopping? According to the works of Francaviglia, Gruen, Lewis, and Zepp, mall attendants, who are not there for shopping, are searching in some degree for a community and social life.
American malls are designed after Disney’s Main Street, striving to be guilt free reality escape zones, but visitors actually do get angry, upset, and confused in today’s mall’s environments. These symptoms, Kowinski refers to as “Mallaise” happen due to guilt originated headaches from buying too much, depressing from the lack of not buying enough, and “walking emptiness caused by consistently emphasized, endless greed". Malls built like “ancient labyrinths”, without windows to view the outside world, and an absence of clocks, denoting a clear ignorance of time, infect visitor’s with mallaise. Once stricken with this disease, the individual will wander in a “zombie” like state or suffer from “dismallcumbobulation …which can lead to apathy and hopelessness, loss of consciousness, or fainting". Malls with abundant stores placed closely together creating an endless aspect of shopping appear to upset more people than benefit them with the wide service of various stores.
On a marketing perspective, communities in malls are created as illusions that have the decks stacked against them, says Lewis. Additionally, the mall managers wish to keep these communities limited and seldom active. Communities serve very little economic value to a mall, take up mall space and sometimes attract unwanted members into malls. The only service these groups offer to the mall manager is a fake sense of old farts and “mall rats” in the environment. In Lewis’ article, the elderly and teenagers are the two dominant groups that gather in the mall. These groups are similar in that they are searching for ways to “affirm” their “identity”. Both groups seldom shop, gather around the same areas, serve very little economic purpose to the mall and the teens attract security because of their activities. In addition, these mall communities last for a short time, the older people fade away and the teenagers, in a transitional period, realize there is more to life and move forward and out of the mall environment. With this attraction of outcast and unwanted, mall security has to be extra preconscious. This does not mean security can prevent every crime as is evident in a recent shooting at the Mall of America over something as simple as a “San Jose Sharks jacket”. Three people were wounded because someone lost it over a jacket, with more people becoming upset in malls daily, community involvement in malls should be discouraged.
A place “which jealousy, mistrust and despair are prominent features”, and “getting lost, feeling lost, being lost…are intentional features of the mall’s psychological terrain”, should not be a place for community involvement. Kids who flock to the malls to escape life and elderly people who ponder their existences away in malls are two communities that nobody should wish to become part of.
Source: Various Mall Readings found in Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum
Mall Mayhem
by KungFu
I recently submitted Stalker Charged in Deadly Mall Shooting and Teen in Mall Drive Through Faces Charges and I thought to myself wtf is wrong with malls? The sad thing is that I have an answers to all of this...to make it short malls suck. For an explanation read on.
Victor Gruen, the original American mall architect, hoped the mall would be like a Greek Stoa. In the Stoa, ancients Greeks would shop and converse among themselves regularly, creating an atmosphere of true community and socialization. But something went wrong with the mall’s basic concept. What happened? Expansion, automobiles, and greater distances all had an influence on the mall’s corruption says Gruen. And then, the mall managers and the greed for money further destroyed the malls’ since of society. So, why exactly do people go to malls, if not for shopping? According to the works of Francaviglia, Gruen, Lewis, and Zepp, mall attendants, who are not there for shopping, are searching in some degree for a community and social life.
American malls are designed after Disney’s Main Street, striving to be guilt free reality escape zones, but visitors actually do get angry, upset, and confused in today’s mall’s environments. These symptoms, Kowinski refers to as “Mallaise” happen due to guilt originated headaches from buying too much, depressing from the lack of not buying enough, and “walking emptiness caused by consistently emphasized, endless greed". Malls built like “ancient labyrinths”, without windows to view the outside world, and an absence of clocks, denoting a clear ignorance of time, infect visitor’s with mallaise. Once stricken with this disease, the individual will wander in a “zombie” like state or suffer from “dismallcumbobulation …which can lead to apathy and hopelessness, loss of consciousness, or fainting". Malls with abundant stores placed closely together creating an endless aspect of shopping appear to upset more people than benefit them with the wide service of various stores.
On a marketing perspective, communities in malls are created as illusions that have the decks stacked against them, says Lewis. Additionally, the mall managers wish to keep these communities limited and seldom active. Communities serve very little economic value to a mall, take up mall space and sometimes attract unwanted members into malls. The only service these groups offer to the mall manager is a fake sense of old farts and “mall rats” in the environment. In Lewis’ article, the elderly and teenagers are the two dominant groups that gather in the mall. These groups are similar in that they are searching for ways to “affirm” their “identity”. Both groups seldom shop, gather around the same areas, serve very little economic purpose to the mall and the teens attract security because of their activities. In addition, these mall communities last for a short time, the older people fade away and the teenagers, in a transitional period, realize there is more to life and move forward and out of the mall environment. With this attraction of outcast and unwanted, mall security has to be extra preconscious. This does not mean security can prevent every crime as is evident in a recent shooting at the Mall of America over something as simple as a “San Jose Sharks jacket”. Three people were wounded because someone lost it over a jacket, with more people becoming upset in malls daily, community involvement in malls should be discouraged.A place “which jealousy, mistrust and despair are prominent features”, and “getting lost, feeling lost, being lost…are intentional features of the mall’s psychological terrain”, should not be a place for community involvement. Kids who flock to the malls to escape life and elderly people who ponder their existences away in malls are two communities that nobody should wish to become part of.
Source: Various Mall Readings found in Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum
posted by Jonny at 11:29 a.m.
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