Malls R Us

There are some interesting tidbits in this doc about malls (covered malls with no doors into stores were built that way to overcome shoppers’ “threshold resistance”). But Klodawsky relies too heavily on a few self-appointed experts, like theologian Jon Pahl, whose analysis of malls as the new sacred spaces is a egregious example of the misuse of postmodern theory. The take-home pay of Malls R Us is that malls, faltering in the United States but on the rise in Dubai, India and China, are a complex symbol of consumer capitalism in all its grotesquery. We know; we were shocked, too.