Growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, malls have always seemed rather unnatural to me. The closest American mall was three hours away making mall trips difficult. Not that it mattered; I had no intentions of going shopping anyway. As I arrived with friends this past Saturday at Woodlawn mall, I was filled with a kind of sick awe. I felt like there were hundreds and hundreds of cars lining the parking lot. It took my friends and me a good five minutes just to find a parking spot. Walking inside the doors of this temple of commerce I wondered to myself, “What do so many people need to buy?”
As I strolled through the bustling palace of human desire, I realized that I had asked the wrong question. Being the rather pragmatic person that I am, I had miscalculated in reasoning that people go to the mall to accomplish the tangible goal of buying specific items they require/desire. From my perspective, malls were counterparts to supermarkets. I thought both had the same idea behind them, with differences involving only the essentialness of the items being sold at each. Instead, I realized that people go to malls for the experience of being there. The ideas we had discussed in class were finally starting to fit into place.
As I glanced around shops, I saw friends and families enjoying a Saturday afternoon. People looked relaxed and seemed to be enjoying taking in all of what the mall had to offer. It was strange to see. Perhaps part of this mall experience is the perceived fulfillment of spending what one has earned. I think that individuals go to the mall on the weekend and think, “Hey, I worked hard all week. I deserve a chance to relax and enjoy the result of my hard work.” This leads me to wonder if in the present climate, individuals are less satisfied by the direct results of their work and more interested in using their jobs as a means to an end. After all, in today’s job market, many people view just about any available job as one worth taking. Instead of finding a job that gives a sense of fulfillment to the individual, people are separating job and fulfillment, using a job to go out and find a sense of fulfillment somewhere else. An interesting thought to ponder, true or not.
As my friends and I departed, I was both amused and disturbed when both of my friends asked where we had to leave the mall in order to find our car. They had both been disoriented as the makers of the mall intended. This was the last piece of evidence I needed to believe everything that the article “The Shopping Mall as ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Leading Nowhere.” Pointing my friends in the right direction and finally departing, I knew more than ever that I hate shopping.
Hmm ... very intriguing. It's interesting to note that your formational experiences (growing up in the U.P.) gave you a different understanding of "normal" than those of us who grew up going to the mall on a regular basis. As such, your visit was much different. For most of us, we need to reorient ourselves to recognize that the mall is not, in fact, "normal" and is getting further and further from it--though you wouldn't know that given our growing familiarity and acceptance of the mall experience.
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