Mallrats

Mallrats

http://www.jumpradio.ca/files/2015/03/Mallrats-Movie-Poster-imdb.jpg

Prouty (2009) stated that Flâneurie isn’t possible in a department store.  I say Prouty has never been to Stockland on a Thursday night.  The slogan of the Mallrats film says it all (40g.com, n.d.):  “They’re not there to shop.  They’re not there to work.  They’re just there.” 

Mallrats and Flâneurs aren’t exactly the same thing, of course; the concept has necessarily evolved over time.  Bardin’s (2013) video recreation of the Flâneur highlights the differences, but there are still numerous similarities.  For example, the very fact that these personalities are only present on Thursday nights.  Prouty offers an explanation for this, in the form of an alleged police officer’s report that “it is almost impossible to summon and maintain good moral character in a thickly massed population”.  A rowdy or idle teenager would stand out on any other day of the week, but on Thursday nights the “anonymity of the masses” provides them with the necessary freedom. 

The mallrats aren’t dandies, exactly, but they do tend to dress in the most foppish clothing they have available.  They aren’t there to shop, only to take in the sights and for the social aspect, and there are no turtles on leashes although baggy pants and ill-fitting shoes suffice to enforce an adequately slow pace. Modern mallrats share the Flâneur’s ambiguous social position; the cheap prices afforded by industrialisation and foreign labour means that the lines of social stratification are blurry, particularly in the mallrats’ typical age bracket. 

Unfortunately, whereas the Arcades Project that brought about the Flâneur may have been conceived in an attempt to reduce criminality by invoking a panopticon-esque notion of constant social surveillance, it is unclear whether the modern mallrat, who has been brought up in such conditions, is affected in a similar way.  Certainly, the behaviour exhibited by these persons on Thursday nights as opposed to any other time, seems to bely this notion.

References

40cg.com (n.d.).  Mallrats poster [image].  Retrieved from http://www.jumpradio.ca/files/2015/03/Mallrats-Movie-Poster-imdb.jpg

Bardin, S. (2013).  Flaneur.  [Video] Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/64929772

Prouty, R. (2009).  A Turtle on a Leash.  Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html

Note:  There was no relevant content in the lecture other than a link to more readings regarding the Flâneur.