Carousel Center
To induce a people, hitherto scattered, uncivilized and therefore prone to fight, to grow pleasurably inured to peace and ease, Agricola gave private encouragement-and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and private mansions. He praised the keen and scolded the slack, and competition to gain honour from him was as effective as compulsion. Furthermore, he trained the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts and expressed a preference for British natural ability over the trained skill of the Gauls. The result was that in place of distaste for the Latin language came a passion to command it. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the Britons were gradually led on to the amenities that make vice agreeable-arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. They spoke of such novelties as 'civilization', when really they were only a feature of enslavement.
Tacitus, The Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola
Like Walter Benjamin, over the years I have come to the conclusion that much of what we call “civilization” can be read in our shopping centers—I seldom actually shop there, but I am drawn to these places like a moth to a flame. Thus, when I was feeling a bit “under attack” from the radical shift in surroundings to Syracuse, my first thought was to seek shelter in mall for a moment. I once listened to several papers at a conference that insisted on calling such “common” spaces (in the same category as airports, etc.) as non-places, citin Augé. I thought that was bull then, and I still think it is bull now. There is no such thing as a “non-place,” unless of course you are completely schizophrenic.
I think of shopping spaces as a “universal places,” featuring a sort of comfortable translucence. We see through them, in a completely instrumental way, to find the things we desire. There are subtle shifts across regions. Coming to CNY, It can be seen in the landscape—there are still public phones (nearly absent in the West/Midwest. The Best Buy here has a great deal of its floor space dedicated to compact disks, while in the Twin Cities (headquarters, by the way) there are almost none—most music purchasing is done online. But walking into the bathroom at a Border’s bookstore and finding it tagged was simply beyond-the-beyond for me. It’s as if I’ve entered a sort of alternate timeline for civilization. I’ve been to dozens of malls in the most depressed areas of Minnesota and never seen such a thing—it’s an epic fail.
I’m still exploring, and there are many things to recommend this area I’m moving into—but so far I find myself a bit rattled by this introduction. People are nice, and everything is on a much smaller scale than I’m used to. The local Barnes and Noble bookstore (wow, only one?) was quite fine and well equipped and other shopping facilities like Wegman’s are absolutely mind-boggling with their copia. But I never expected to see such a thing in a Borders.
Carousel Mall, where this Borders was located, boasts of itself as a destination mall that rivals sites like the Mall of America. The only comment that I can make is that the Mall of America does not contain a 99 cent store.
June 6, 2009 6:49 AM
Actually, dear, the only reason that MoA doesn't contain a 99 cent store is because it contains a Dollar Tree. (Which, incidentally, is not so far away from the place that sells fake hair.)
Yea I hear ya, CNY is like living in the US that the news media purports. The people I've experienced so far have been quite rude and unruly. I relocated from another part of the state (not NYC), and I've never seen such a backwater "major" city before. I've travelled all over, and I think CNY is about 20 years behind the times when it comes to realizing that they are not a manufacturing blu collar town anymore. The citizens seem to think welfare and unemployment are ways to get paid to live your life until the next plant moves in (by the way, they aren't). A citizenry that is so entrenched in an "we're owed" philosophy will only implode on itself either through crime or simply migration to other areas by the population that realizes there is nothing left here for them.