Reflections on Shopping Malls
What Malls Might Signify in India
To those of us who grew up in Indian cities in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s, shopping malls were unfamiliar spaces. Since then, there are perhaps few other spaces that are as ubiquitous, both in large metros and in smaller towns. Indian malls carry a different sort of significance than they would in the U.S., the forerunner of modern consumer culture.
Despite the growing presence of many desi brands, it is difficult for those belonging to earlier generations to not associate malls with “Westernization”. After all, many of the erstwhile consumer brands were founded in France or Spain, in the U.S. or Japan. For us, entering a mall is like crossing a threshold into a foreign geography with all the disquiet and stirrings this might imply – unfamiliar symbols, out-of-reach products and experiences, the crafty seductions of commerce spritzed into perfumes or instore music.
Malls simultaneously exacerbate and shrink class differences. While most reasonably well-dressed folks would be ushered in by security guards, not all entrants can afford the wares on display. The most buzzy spaces tend to be food courts, where paneer pizzas and samosas alleviate the anxiety evoked by Louis Vuitton shoes or Cartier diamonds. As a counterpoint to densely-populated food courts, some shops stay eternally vacant, their air-conditioned voids like exotic islands where the deluxe crowd congregates.
But malls in India don’t just distort place and space; they alter time. If the teeming cities, with their treacherous pavements and bumpy roads signify the present, malls escort you to the future. Even if that future has already frayed in many places, or is being ghosted by shoppers, in the age of widespread Jio and e-commerce.
Ricocheting between instant-gratification (the future for many aspiring entrants) and withheld desires (the past, yoked in by parental strictures or limited family means), the mall becomes the liminal, dreamy present where one can try on haute couture or bizarrely-priced watches. Even if many have to shed these pretensions before exiting beeping sensors.
A Writer’s Relationship with Malls
Matthew Newton, the author of Shopping Mall, grew up in the U.S. To him, the mall has played different roles, at different stages in his life. He was a shy child, and the mall permitted socializing without too much close interaction. As a teenager, it offered “invisibility” as well as an escape from isolation. As an adult, it felt like a return to “simpler times.” Even while writing the book, entering different malls ushered a “kaleidoscopic rush of memories.”
Newton had always been drawn to public spaces – to empty parking lots, vacant houses or even to the underside of suspension bridges. Such trips allayed troubles with depression and anxiety during his teenage years, with the hum of traffic or repetitive movements staunching his thoughts. Malls were even more attractive, soothing. They seemed to embody happiness, the fulfilment of desires – while allowing for teenage pranks that evaded security guards in “hidden passageways.”
The First American Mall
The first American mall opened in 1956 in Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota. Designed by Victor Gruen, it was the first enclosed shopping space of that size. As an immigrant from Vienna, Gruen attempted to recreate European styles in America. He grasped that entrants were not there merely to shop, but also to hang about. To stare into windows while they soaked up the sounds of fountains, the sights of indoor gardens and colorful birds, manicured Nature amidst the heartwarming “aroma of fresh-brewed coffee.” Time magazine called it a “pleasure-dome with parking.”
When the mall was inaugurated, Herman Guttman who had assisted Gruen with its construction said: “People came in and looked and their mouths opened. The impact was phenomenal. There was nothing like it.”
The Ubiquity and Homogeneity of Malls
Since then, mall experiences are both “predictive” and “repetitive”. Whether you enter a mall in Prague or in Lagos or Mumbai, apart from local embellishments in architecture, décor and products, it’s “…like looking at a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.”
Malls have a particular combination of sounds, smells, sights and textures that induce a zombie-like feeling on entrants. The intent is to seduce and hypnotize, so that people feel they have “choice” – but are in reality, tugged by forces that operate at subliminal levels. This feeling also has been labelled the Gruen Effect after the original architect of the first American malls.
Sort of like Hotel California, malls offer what the cultural historian Norman M. Klein calls “happy imprisonment” – or “infinite choice, but seemingly no way out.” These elements work on more insidious levels too. Gruen deliberately wanted to create a sense of “community” – Europeanized streets and ancient marketplaces, where you know all the townspeople and hence feel secure enough to open up your wallet. Unsurprisingly, many horror movies played off the zombie effect induced by malls – like Dawn of the Dead by the director George A. Romero.
When Newton’s family moved to a different neighborhood, the mall remained an anchor in his life. It was the only space that still felt familiar. A public realm, where he wore a favorite white denim jacket, even as he tried to cultivate a distinct adolescent identity – a teenager who loved rock and roll as much as basketball. Was that identity even valid, he wondered, masking his self-consciousness inside his denim bravado.
In the 1980s, American consumerism was at its zenith. Malls were seen as a reprieve from other crises in the nation – the AIDs epidemic, the Cold War, the increasing use of crack cocaine. At that point, Milton Bradley launched a board game called Mall Madness, which required players to use paper money and plastic cards to buy six items. Teenagers were no longer apologetic about spending so much time at malls – it was part of the zeitgeist. Malls also became the sites of entertainment and special acts. The pop idol Tiffany became a sensation after performing in malls – directly reaching out to her audience of 12 to 18 year-olds.
The Fading of American Malls
But now, in America, Matthew witnesses the opposite: the decline of malls, with many struggling to stay afloat. Gruen’s original vision of melding “community and commerce” is difficult to sustain in the face of online behemoths and instant drone deliveries. “The shopping mall has also, in many ways, become a faded monument to the aspirations of post-Second World War Americans, whose embrace of the suburban dream was obsessive yet earnest, hard-won but fleeting.”
When the author visits Southdale, its once vivid and lush central square is utterly devoid of the magical excitement that characterized its inauguration. If anything, it’s a drab emptiness with desultory kiosks selling coffee and sunglasses. “No café or fountains or fish-ponds, no birds singing songs amid the din of conversation.”
Gruen himself was to view the vanishing of his original mission with dismay. He watched how commerce overtook everything, turning the mall into a “gigantic shopping machine.”
For Gruen, the “socialization” aspect was as critical as shopping. But with developers keen to maximize profits, the former objective was overrun by the latter. “Gruen’s architectural dream – the perfect synthesis of people, place and things – has been simplified to a capitalist recipe.”
In a project titled “America is Dead” – the photographer Tag Christof captures the decaying of American malls. He says his project is also driven by the notion that societies that define their “progress” mostly in “economic terms” inevitably witness the corrosion of material landscapes.
Matthew suggests that we would be wrong to term these vacant, broken, crumbling malls as “dead” places. “If anything, these vacant malls have entered a new phase, one where trees take root in cracked floor tiles and feral cats pass unnoticed – where curiosity seekers find meaning in the afterlife of a place that has long outlived its original intent.”
References
Matthew Newton, Shopping Mall, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017