Now that your holiday shopping is over, have a look at this change to American consume life: the death of the mall
Filmed summer 2007, the documentary “Malls R Us” takes us to the mall, not just as a destination, but as a powerful profit-making venture. The question of whether or not developers are going too far in pursuit of the next best mall, only to turn their profits and then dump the real estate, with no consideration for what was displaced, is examined here. What the future brings once the mall is abandoned and forgotten is also explored. Careful thought and lessons learned in the United States are seemingly oblivious when the potential for profit is endless in countries that are just now seeing the endless possibilities ushered in by the mall age. Meanwhile, back here at home, the mall bubble has burst and the ramifications are just beginning. I encourage you to watch this film!
This clip features Deadmalls.com, with Peter Blackbird, Brian Florence, and Jack Thomas, filmed live on location in Ohio at Cleveland’s Randall Park Mall and Akron’s Rolling Acres Mall.
Deadmalls.com “Malls R Us” documentary segment
Full documentary after the jump . . .
Malls R US – Documentary
Combining nostalgia, dazzling architecture, pop culture, economics and politics, MALLS R US examines North America’s most popular and profitable suburban destination-the enclosed shopping center-and how for consumers they function as a communal, even ceremonial experience and, for retailers, sites where their idealism, passion and greed merge.
The film blends archival footage tracing the history of the shopping mall in America, visits to some of the world’s largest and most spectacular malls-in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Poland, France, and Dubai-and interviews with architects, mall developers, sales managers, environmentalists, labor activists and social critics, as well as commentary from mall shoppers themselves.
MALLS R US discusses the psychological appeal of malls to consumers, how architects design their environments to combine consumerism with nature and spectacle, how suburban shopping centers impart social values, how malls are transforming the traditional notions of community, social space and human interaction, and shows nostalgic mall fans who commemorate the closing of older malls on their DeadMalls.com Web site.
Visiting the construction sites of several of the world’s largest shopping centers of the future, in Dubai and India, MALLS R US reveals how their gargantuan growth, both in size and geographical expansion, as virtual cities devoted to tourism, leisure and luxury shopping, threaten small shop owners and the environment.
