Last month this magazine ran a couple of articles on consumerism and mall culture. The pieces were hooked to the advent of the double-super-monster "Mall of America" in Minnesota and to the kudzu-like spread of Wal-Marts, Sam's Clubs, and other Walton family enterprises.
I read these with great interest, because, while I've never been to the Mall of America, I can honestly say that I've never met a mall I didn't like. I don't buy much at the mall. But it's a great place to walk around and sit and drink one Coca-Cola for an hour or so. I especially love malls in the summertime because they are always so well air-conditioned, and my home is so often not. I suspect that a similar climatic impulse, in reverse, feeds the Mall of America's appeal.
But if I love the mall, I need the Wal-Mart. We really do buy stuff at Wal-Mart. And I love Wal-Mart culture. I like the old guy who stands at the door and says, "Hi," when you walk in. At Wal-Mart I can afford two, what the hey, three cokes per trip from those Sam's Choice vending machines. They're only 20 cents a pop.
But that wasn't the point of the articles in question. Their point was that consumerism, that is, an excessive devotion to the accumulation of stuff, is spiritually destructive and that huge-scale enterprises like mega-malls and Wal-Marts are dehumanizing and destructive of community.
I can't argue with the point about consumerism and the spirit. Our mall-TV consumption culture is demeaning and trivializing, and it maximizes the appeal of the seven deadly sins. But imported electronic toys and silly designer garments are not the problem in most people's lives. Those things are really distractions from the real problems people face. As Bruce Springsteen once said in an interview, the goodies are the "booby prizes" Americans get for the loss of meaningful work, self-respect, and a real say in the life of the community.
Also, the commercial culture, bad as it is, is still the only culture that most people have. And they make the best they can of the choices that they understand to be available. For most people the alternative to the mall is not some fantasy island multi-culti open-air bazaar. The alternative is driving up and down the commercial strip from one crowded parking lot to another.
Compared to that the mall is very attractive. It is attractive because it is fun. And it is fun for the same reason that the open-air market is fun--because it is communal. It gets people out of their cars and into an (admittedly artificial and sanitized) semi-public space in which they may interact with their fellows (as long as they don't "solicit").
The mall is a poor substitute for the town square, just as 900-CHAT lines are a poor substitute for real, face-to-face relationships. In both cases the popularity of the phony substitute can rightly be seen to represent something venal about the free enterprise system. But it can also be seen to represent people's best human impulses finding expression wherever they can.
THE MOST dehumanizing force on the horizon in American culture today is not the mall. It is home-shopping. I don't mean the Home Shopping Channel that's on the tube now; that's just a goof. I mean the computerized shop-vote-work-by-phone future that is coming, and coming quickly. When this technology is introduced into a society where communal bonds have always been weak, then the counter-culturalists of the mid-21st century may find themselves waxing nostalgic about the old-style shopping mall where people actually met each other.
There is a danger of counter-cultural snobbism setting in if we start confusing personal cultural preferences, or the styles of a particular historical moment, with questions of moral or political content. For instance, we hear calls from progressive-types to save the neighborhood grocery or the old downtown shopping district from the invasion of the superstores.
That's a nice sentiment. I prefer those things, too, on some whole-grain-aesthetic level. But why, in non-aesthetic social reality, is the neighborhood store really better--i.e., more just or sustainable--than the ring road mall? Well, it is. But only in that it doesn't require nearly so much automobile travel in order to function.
Now, that is a big, big "only." In fact it is, in itself, reason to retool our urban planning and development strategies away from the mall-superstore model. But when you talk about curtailing automobile use, you are talking about redirecting massive social, economic, and political forces. You're talking about reversing the cultural-economic coup d'etat in which the auto and tire companies bought up and shut down urban trolley systems a half-century ago.
I'm all for that reversal. But telling ordinary working Americans that they need voluntarily to pay real-life higher prices now, in order to support a vague notion of decentralism off in an imagined future doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me. People might willingly pay more for their necessities if they perceive it to be in their interest--say, if it will deliver cleaner air and a less stressful life.
It's a revolution we need. But the place to start is not with griping at the consumer. People who want to make that kind of social change need to learn at least one important lesson from the late Sam Walton, "The customer is the boss."
Danny Duncan Collum is a contributing editor of Sojourners.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!