The
Mall of GenericaThe
Mall of Generica
Why? Why would anyone give up the excitement of the city, the vitality, that thing that we call Lust. Why, after living among so many for so long, would one want to live with so few for so little time each day? And why would anyone, ever, want to have a lawn?
The suburb has tremendous riches to offer to vast numbers of people, and not just great houses and malls. There are other benefits too, like cleaner air, more open spaces, and better schools. Too, entertainment like cable television (which most of us take for granted today) actually started out in the suburbs. Warner-Amex, who invented the Qube III system of remote-controlled cable television, tried the service out in a suburb, and was to spawn generations of cable television providers.
Generica happens because with all these highways, there are millions of potential customers on the road every day. To take advantage of them, mall owners need to make it cheap and easy for them to buy goods and services at the malls. Land is relatively cheap in suburban areas, so it costs less to build malls there instead of in cities.
As the suburbs began to grow, people grew less connected. They began to lose faith in their churches, synagogues, or other places of worship, not to mention their gods. The real crunch came when department stores like J.C. Penney and Macy's began offering alternatives to worship. Blue Laws often prevented stores and restaurants from opening on Sunday in New England states like Connecticut and Massachusetts. But by the Bicentennial, most of these Blue Laws had fallen by the wayside, being either repealed or outright ignored. (One exception to this in Massachusetts is the Blue Law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday. Everyone knows that Saturday is drunk driving night, so why doesn't Massachusetts prohibit the sale of alcohol then instead? Go figure.)
Over the past century, we've seen a dramatic decline in the number of church attendees. Is this caused by the moral decay of society? That all depends on your viewpoint. It's clear that the malls of Generica are not as aesthetically pleasing as the great cathedrals of Europe. Too, aging strip malls and plazas are falling apart, wretched-looking piles of dirty concrete and rusty steel. But can we judge the moral condition of humankind based on the look of our buildings? Perhaps we can; perhaps not.
At any rate, the new religion of Generica is here: Its church is the gilded, bejeweled shrine to buying power that is all but visible from space. This is the Mall of Generica, its translucent, shimmering form beckoning us inside, to pray to the gods of commerce, to sacrifice our wallets and our souls on the altar of consumerism. There's nothing wrong with this, I suppose, as long as we are all having fun doing it, and no one gets hurt. These are, however, tall orders to fill, as you shall see in the sections that follow.
It was just before World War II, when the Allies would confront Germany, that then General Eisenhower made an important recognition about the Nazi nation. There was this thing called the autobahn, which means "car road," and which was the first modern highway. Eisenhower became aware of these roads, sometime just before the war (in about 1936) and he was enormously intrigued. These roads connected all of Germany, from North to South to East to West. German troops could move tanks, trucks, artillery, supplies, or whatever they needed from one part of the country to another, without any hindrances.
Now, if you've ever seen footage or photographs of these structures, you may have been utterly astounded. These "roads" were far more than that more like Monuments to a great nation that would never be. The bold, sweeping architecture of some of the bridges, spanning what appear to be miles, is breathtaking.
Eisenhower realized the power of this arrangement, and in his mind was planted a plan. The tree of ideas that sprang forth from his imagination was that of an American highway system, one that would be so vast, that it too would connect every city and town in America, thus giving us the same military advantage. Now, just imagine: Germany, a country no bigger than Ohio, could easily afford this network of roads. But could America, with nearly 60 or 70 times the Germany's geographic area, find the capital required for such a massive undertaking? (Hmm what we need here is a good war to get us out of this slump!)
Just before the beginning of World War II, in about 1936, two of America's top engineers, F. H. Jackson and Harold Allen, were sent to Munich to figure out "what features of German design and construction practice, if any, can be adopted with profit by American engineers."(2) They observed that the Germans had used concrete for most of their autobahns, but that there would be a cheaper way to build these roads in America: asphalt.
"It is bigger than the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Panama Canal, the Grand Coulee Dam, the Egyptian Pyramids, and a lot of other big projects that you can think of, all rolled into one." Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy, 1957.In 1956, then President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched construction of the Interstate Highway Program. This was to be the largest public works project in history. When it was done (though it's never really done) it would produce a whopping total of 43,000 miles of roads. It is the great connector, the system of arteries that lets the blood of commerce flow from state to state, city to city, and city to suburb.
So why did we like Ike? Because without his plans for the Interstate Highway Program, we never could have gotten the Mall of Generica off the ground.
The modern supermarket, by the way, is actually an outgrowth of the chain store. From 1928 to 1933 or so, there was a great deal of public sentiment against chain stores, which at the time sold food, dry goods, and general merchandise. It was probably fear of monopolies (and therefore an anti-trust mentality) that led to legislation against large chain-store operations.
The chain store owners, not ones to give up the ghost so easily, began creating supermarkets. Just one supermarket could do the business of several smaller chain stores. Self-service was the overriding factor in making these stores profitable. If you don't have to pay lots of pimply-faced young boys to get things for customers, you've cut your costs dramatically.
Today, supermarkets like Star Market and Purity Supreme in the Northeast, Kroger in the South, and Save Mart in California all continue this philosophy of self-serve, large store operation. These supermarkets exist as chains. With a booming economy, and with the anti-trust spirit apparently in remission, the modern supermarket has flourished into a chain store once again.
Since then, the automobile has captured the imaginations of every generation of drivers. Cars of the 1940s were sleek and romantic, while those of the 50s looked to be jet-fueled, ready to take off into the skies at a moment's notice. Those of us who are under 30 have dim recollections of cars from the 60s, unless you mention the Shelby Cobra or the Corvette Stingray. 1970s cars were mostly gas-thirsty hogs, though some people still hold muscle cars like the Mach 2 and the Camaro in high regard. The 80s cars had a fuel-efficient sensibility, owed largely to the rust-prone Japanese imports, which were still a vast improvement over many of the ridiculous 70s beasts. And finally, the cars of the 90s look better than most cars of previous decades, are more comfortable, are safer, handle better, often have better gas mileage, and are just pretty darn cool.
What could be bad about that?
Just imagine: Automobiles, with their black jets of muffler-haze, cause more smog than most factories. Or, imagine the white-metal fury of a car slamming into a Mack truck at 50 miles per hour. Add to this the sad fact that many Americans find themselves alone for hours every day, trapped inside their cages of steel and glass, walled off from the universe around them. The air-conditioned-heated-CD-playered-cell-phoned-leather-upholstered-laptop-powered environments that so many of us spend our commutes in are silent chambers of the antisocial.
What could be good about that?
As it turns out, people have always had a love-hate relationship with their cars (and with malls too, curiously enough). But one thing is clear: People do love their cars. And not just for the clichéd reasons, like "I love the way it handles" or "I love the cup holders." Think about it: You've probably had some wonderful experiences in automobiles. Lots of us have gone on road trips with our friends, on secret missions in Dodge Darts at midnight, or in the back of an El Dorado, whipping along the coast of Puget Sound. Or maybe just on a bright, sunny day, we've eased the old Chevy Suburban out onto the highway for a trip to Castle in the Clouds, or the St. Louis Arch, or the Grand Canyon. Or perhaps we just jumped into our Toyota Tercel wagon, and headed off to the Mall of Generica.
The way that a car feels can be special, too. There's nothing quite like the feel of warm sun on a plush seat in the spring, or the rush of wind that blows your hair in every which way while riding in a convertible. Nor can you beat the thrill of racing down a dark, winding road in the middle of a moonswept night, feeling the wheels leave the earth for just one second as your generally earth-bound car sails over a small hill.
It's a hallmark of Generica that cars are such a big part of it. Generica gives cars their lifeblood, their mother's milk, as they gently suckle at a concrete breast full of gasoline and oil. And Generica does us one better with loads of free parking, 65 mile-per-hour speed limits, and drive-in windows at restaurants like McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King.
Growth is fleeting; Generica is in a constant state of growth and decay. Since people's tastes are constantly changing, yesterday's grinning strip of mall can become today's old hag, her cracked teeth the empty, rotting stores. The effervescent new indoor mall down the street may better whet the appetite of a buying-hungry public.
For instance, consider the Northgate Plaza in Revere, Massachusetts. Up until the early 60s, the location was an airport, but now it's a large strip mall, containing the obligatory Radio Shack and Toys R Us stores. The enormously wide, tall, white and dark-red sign (which is easily spotted from the highway) seems gaudy and tasteless by today's standards, and its white bricks are covered with a fine layer of filth. It's the kind of plaza that you see in almost every suburb: A sort of squared-off, half-moon of stores surrounding a huge parking lot.
But the Northgate Plaza is eclipsed by the local Square One Mall (which actually used to be a strip mall) just minutes away in Saugus. The Square One mall is now fully enclosed, fully surrounded by its own parking lots, and has the newer, more en-vogue stores like General Nutrition Center, Victoria's Secret, and the Levi's Designs store. The mall's logo is a mix of red, yellow, and blue, a primary-color scheme shared by the banners draped from the high ceilings. It also has attractive shiny railings, marble or granite staircases, and a combination of incandescent and florescent lighting. Plus, it has two levels, a feature that sets nearly any mall apart from single-level indoor malls or strip malls.
The movie Mallrats typifies this problem. For me, it isn't so much the "absolute" immorality of the characters doing bong-hits, or that most of them are goofed-out slackers. If mature, responsible adults were the only people watching this movie, I would worry about it less. What concerns me most is that the image of good kids doing stupid things is powerful enough to affect young minds, so much so that they think it's cool to be mall denizens, middle-class punks.
Middle-class punks?! Who the hell ever heard of such a thing? Or maybe this is exactly where punkdom comes from, because the poorest kids don't have time or money or cars to hang around in suburban malls, getting high, high-fiving their buds, wearing trashed-out clothes on purpose, and giving mall security a run for their toxic money. And of course, the richest kids can get all the drugs they want, but they may not live near the malls, or may have no desire to go there.
This isn't to vilify the middle-class suburbanite kids, and to place the poor, underprivileged kids on a pedestal, the piazza at the mall's center. Sure, the ghettos and poor neighborhoods are still bastions of drug abuse, and many middle-class families are 100% drug-free. But it's clear that the dynamics are shifting. There is a trend toward hitting the middle-class kids where it counts, because they have the money, and because the drug cartels, along with the help of the Mafia, have brought the supply of drugs to an all-time high, and their prices to an all-time low. Add to this that middle-class America is the fastest-growing, largest group of people in the U.S. There's a pile of cash to be made here.
And where will these dealers spend the money that they make pushing? Where else, but at the Mall of Generica.
What's even more disturbing to many, including me, is the newfound mentality that ultra-violent videogames are okay for kids "Aged 7 & up." Games like Doom and Doom2, Mortal Kombat, and the gaggle of games in arcades all over the country that feature pistol-style "shooter-controllers," have our kids becoming small, lethal, killing machines. They have no idea what pain is like, because they've never felt it on the same level as it is inflicted in these bloody, traumatic games. They can't distinguish between right and wrong, because the games don't say anything about it. And what's worst is that these kinds of videogames teach youngsters hand-eye coordination skills that not even many adults know such as how to kill large numbers of people very quickly, without even thinking about it.
This is a really, really stupid way to raise kids.
The Killers Among Us are prowling their natural habitat, the Mall of Generica, dying for style over substance.
This may explain why a few strip malls and plazas are becoming so unpopular. Some of them are increasingly unsafe, in part because they're physically in disrepair. Also, in their dilapidated state, they may attract growing numbers of criminals. They also remind us of the workaday lives that drive us to distraction, by presenting us with gritty or too-pristine shops all lined up in a row, like Neo-Nazi troops looming above we, the people, hunkered down in the trenches of consumerism.
The indoor mall protects us from the cold, the heat, and other stresses, like dysfunctional families and dull, uninspiring jobs.
But in this century, the Mall of Generica is in effect.
