"The mall is no place to grieve"
Doug Millison
millison at online-journalist.com
Fri Oct 5 11:38:02 CDT 2001
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/05/dont_shop/index.html
The mall is no place to grieve
We are being exhorted to shop our way out of a recession. But to do so
would disrespect our dead.
By Margaret Storey
Oct. 5, 2001 | Now that the dead are gone (though their bodies still lie in
pieces, yet to be recovered, among the ruins), we are daily exhorted to
celebrate their wake with more vigor, to abandon the restraint that the
events have imposed upon us. Or, more accurately, the restraint imposed on
our wallets. [...] But, to borrow a phrase often used by President Bush,
"make no mistake about it": It's still the same old sell. Thus, the
administration encourages us to get on a plane and go to Disneyworld to put
America "back to work." Fancy clothing manufacturers plaster their display
windows with flags, inserting fashionable fall merchandise among the folds
of Old Glory, reminding us that to buy a new pair of leather boots is to do
one's part to get the economy back on track.
Forget the rivet-gun, Rosie! Shop!! The New York Times, in its "Pulse"
section of Sept. 30, notes that for $32 we, too, can acquire the loungewear
of choice "for New Yorkers who feel better staying at home just now":
"skinny scrubs," knockoffs of the medical professionals' standard, are
alluring in light blue and made particularly attractive by their "trimmer,
slightly boot-leg cut, which minimizes hips and thighs." (The author
thoughtfully acknowledges that concerns about hips and thighs might not be
"uppermost" in our thoughts as we "stagger to the newsstand" in the
morning.) The toll-free number to order is provided. Anxiety might keep us
at home, but shopping (and our "pulse"?) can go on unabated. Whether it's a
trip to fantasyland or fantasies about private retreats in one's pajamas,
the airwaves and newspapers are full of options to make us, the people
(otherwise known as the economy), feel better and "get back to normal."
Retail therapy for a nation.[...]
Where in all this is the dignity borne of mourning? In the wake of all our
losses, do we have no greater sense of our purpose than to get people to
spend money, pathetically chasing consumer goods in an attempt to salve our
wounds? Where is the time of quiet, of reflection on life, that death
should always bring? We should consider our impulses carefully, for they
are the best evidence yet that we have already surrendered the freedom that
we say we want to defend. Slaves to the mall, to our own consumption and
that of our neighbors, we find our liberty to abstain has been eroded. Such
restraint is not tolerated, but is feared, even abhorred by some as
unpatriotic.
But traditions of mourning rightly distance us from the patterns of
everyday life; they offer us a way to live out, symbolically, our sorrow,
to represent publicly the change that the loss has brought upon us. We are
told to be patient in the war to come; let us also be patient with
ourselves -- as human beings, not automaton-like economic actors -- as we
strive to understand how to live in light of this loss. Nothing we can buy
will provide the space for that reflection, although the demand that we do
so could well demoralize us even further.
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