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Defining
You:
Self and Other in the Mall
Adriana
Valdez Yoto
Graduate
Program in International Affairs
The
New School
New
York
Malls
have evolved from utilitarian shopping enclaves into seductive spaces to
forget. As prominent sites
for the material and symbolic production of empire, shopping malls invoke
the colonial legacy by branding their enclosed interiors with the imagery
of empire's idealized "consumer-citizens."
Just as the colonies necessitated the creation of a model European
identity, the mall’s consumer “self” is strategically cultivated
within a space devoid of history and psychologically distanced from the
supporting physical, economic and social infrastructure mandatory for its
survival. Although one of the
original architects of the climate-controlled shopping mall, Victor Gruen,
envisioned a space in 1956 where shoppers could enjoy the convenience of
purchasing goods and services all under one roof, the mall no longer
simply seeks to serve its patrons, but also to define them. As a case study, I will examine how General Growth Properties,
Inc., owner of over two hundred malls in the United States, brands the
interiors of all of its shopping centers with an omnipresent, audio-visual
campaign entitled Defining You.
This paper examines this advertising campaign as a lens for
understanding the relationship between the “defined” consumer-citizen
and its colonizing “definer.” Through
the Defining You campaign, these
malls perpetuate the fabricated identities and amnesia of a neocolonial,
capitalist empire.
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