"The mall is no place to grieve"

[barbara100 at jps.net]

I don't know what to make of this one.  It doesn't sit well with me; I'm not
sure why.  I'm used to the anti-corporate-America "tone," but this author is
making moral insinuations I'm not comfortable with.  I feel like she's
trying to demonize the Economy itself.  Yes, it's gross how we're
manipulated by consumerism, and I don't appreciate the President telling me
to go to Disneyworld either, but, really, is there anything inherently wrong
in circulating our dollars as a collaborative effort to keep the economy
flowing?

I went to the site this article came from, and I read one right next to it
that said the state of the economy was almost completely dependent on
"consumer confidence."  Don't we all benefit from a flowing economy, however
disproportionate?  Isn't it a good thing to do to spend a little money right
now?  Not everybody's mourning like New York.  To me, it's almost as far
away as Afghanistan.  I got sent home from work on September 11 as a
precaution.  You know what I did?  I'm not exactly proud to admit it after
reading "A Mall is No Place to Grieve," but I went shopping.

I've also been thinking-granted I'm a little weird in my optimism--but I was
thinking if we all banded together to save, say, Wal-Mart (now wait a
minute, Doug, bear with me), we might discover a power (a collective POWER)
we never knew we had.  And who knows what a power like that could translate
into.  Today Wal-Mart, tomorrow the World!

Anyway, back to the author.  Here's what I didn't like about her:

"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."

I'm all for considering our impulses; and we do surrender too much freedom
as it is (it's no wonder, though-Jeesh! Look at the heat you gotta take for
it.); and we are consumer slaves.  But what's that got to do with how long
folks have to stay in the unemployment line?  I wanna look beyond her moral
implication at a greater good.  I'm not gonna buy an airline ticket-fuck the
Airline industry, they're gonna get their bail out anyway-but why not buy a
little something of what I like?  To keep the juices flowing so to speak.
Whatever evils are in the Economy are there because we buy them.  Yes,
sometimes we have no choice; but oftentimes we do.  I think there's untapped
power in those choices.  And I'm for trying to find them and use them to
everyone's benefit.


----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 9:38 AM
Subject: "The mall is no place to grieve"


> 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.