Consumers and Promoters

Readings: –Valentine Ch 7:

Commodity as Spectacle World’s fairs, great exhibitions –spectacular modernity –visual consumption –imperialism as a department store –magical obscuring of reality –pilgrimage –amusement

Consumers and Promoters Readings: –Valentine Ch 7:

Commodity as Spectacle World’s fairs, great exhibitions –spectacular modernity –visual consumption –imperialism as a department store –magical obscuring of reality –pilgrimage –amusement

Great Exhibition, London, 1851

Worlds Fair Chicago

Commodity as Spectacle The Flaneur The Urban Promenade Fashionable social occasions

Doing King, Toronto, 1870

Allan Gardens

Vienna’s Ringstrasse Corso, 1900

The Flaneur Somebody who wanders the streets of the city as an onlooker –watches but does not participate –a cultured observer –the archetype of the urban journalist, writer, academic, cultural critic, cultural consumer –“visual consumers” –do they really exist?

The Flaneuse C19th and C20th cities offered women the chance to escape traditional female roles freedom of movement and association Role of the middle-class woman as a shopper –city becomes an environment filled with things for women to look at –department stores redesigned around women

The Modern Flaneur Modern ways to consume visually: –Tourism –Channel surfing on TV –Websurfing

C19th and C20th Cities Developed as places of production But also as places of consumption

Landscapes of Consumption Emergence of the modern/postmodern city as a place of consumption Structural changes: many traditional production functions lost –from the 1970s onwards schemes to renovate the city as a place of consumption

Commodity as Spectacle Department Stores, Arcades –spectacular modernity –visual consumption –imperialism as a department store –magical obscuring of reality –pilgrimage –amusement

Galeries Lafayette, Paris, 1900

Swan & Edgar, London, 1900s Harrods, London, 1920s

Shopping and Gender Victorian age remade Middle-class woman as a shopper and consumer Shopping environments became feminised

The Mall spectacular modernity visual consumption imperialism as a department store magical obscuring of reality pilgrimage amusement

Yorkdale 1964

Yorkdale 2001

Minneapolis

West Edmonton Mall

Commodifying Spaces marketing landscape & place as something to consume

former slum area gentrified in 1960s expensive boutiques allure of Hollywood stars

Eating Place consumers rarely know where their food comes from marketers mythologise the origins of food