Depiction of Malls in Fiction

The American Shopping Mall in Fiction

An analysis of the American shopping mall in fiction regarding authenticity, community & consumerism.

As we all know, movies and series are a diversely proportioned interplay of reality and fiction, combining existing and experienced aspects of certain phenomena with imaginary plots and exaggerated features, shaping tropes and our expectations as a viewer. This is also the case for the phenomenon of the American shopping mall – both a popular cinematic setting and trope, which, while its depiction varies greatly across different genres, times and plots, displays some overarching interconnected threads. In this article, we will try to detangle some of these threads and follow their patterns throughout various genres and times, while identifying the major knots of reality they were influenced by.

Authenticity of the American Shopping Mall

This section is interested in theatre movies that made use of shopping malls and how authentic and/or realistic particular aspects are depicted. We have chosen singular examples for this purpose. What we are trying to find is the spark of reality in different scenarios by looking at a discussion of a cookie stand, how those films have had an impact on their surroundings and on ideas for malls that may have had their start in film.

We will present facts about singular aspects to food court regulations in 1995’s film Mallrats. Another interest in the realistic elements in the film lies in Officer Lafours’ image drawn from the character Jay in it. For starters, on the realism-scale, Mallrats was shot in an actual mall that still exists today: The Eden Prairie Center Mall. More importantly for Mallrats here is the cookie stand debate. Besides the passionate discussion, we need to determine whether a cookie stand above the food court is (not) a part of the food court. And factually, it can be an act of arbitrariness according to Law Insider! The food court requires a preparatory food area, including either shared seating opportunities for customers or own seating, which however can be reduced and relocated as a landlord sees fit, depending on the lease that was agreed upon, as far as the Law Insider entries are concerned. Therefore, a cookie stand as it is depicted, could be reduced by virtue of the same website to a snack bar, by which we only could perpetually debate about whether a landlord should be allowed to decide that way or not. That is, the verdict over the state of the cookie stand in Mallrats would be equal to the theoretical dilemma of Schroedinger's cat:

the cookie stand cannot be clearly determined as a part of the food court.

Now on a more serious note, the shopping mall security can be another authentic factor when referring to the depiction of reality in mall movies. Though, the depiction of mall cops in Mallrats by itself will not be enough for a convergent image of these officers to make their properties appropriately comparable to reality. Next to the brutal picture of LaFours in Mallrats, there is also Kevin James in Mall Cop, representing a softer and corpulent mall security officer with hardly any authority. Both fictional characters LaFours (The LaFours Plan 0:24 – 1:02) and Paul Blart (Air Vent Attack Scene 0:12 - 0:41) encounter (life) threatening situations, which can be transferred in their essence to real life: abc7 Chicago Eye Witness reported that Norman Thomas, mall security officer in Chicago, was killed, allegedly because robbers were armed and Thomas was not able to sufficiently defend himself. That is, the threat and the hyperbolic circumstances in Mallrats and in Paul Blart: Mall Cop can be regarded as real enough for severe consequences for the employees. It is unfortunate that mall cops are ridiculed instead of acknowledged for the dangers that can occur while being on duty. However, even though mall security officers seem to be ridiculed by default, Michelle Crouch unravels in 13 Things Mall Cops Won’t Tell You how valuable these employees are in malls, which can give us a look beyond their reductions to stereotypes in mall movies.

That is, the limit of mall security officers' power is realistic,

as much as their exposure to danger.

The next aspect will involve the impact of pop-cultural movies on shopping malls and/or surroundings. The following movies carry an overwhelming amount of pop culture, according to Google searches. To demonstrate it more concretely, there is, among others, a pop-cultural fanbase around the movie Dawn of the Dead from 1978 on The Living Dead Wiki. Vladsuperman2's comment provides a hint towards a continuous phenomenon of paying a visit to the scenery of the movie on TripAdvisor. Not only was the movie filmed in an actual mall, but the shopping mall still exists, unlike the other mall we will mention in this section. It is hard to determine from an exterior perspective whether the Monroeville Mall in Pennsylvania is explicitly profiting from a classic horror movie from the 1970s until this day or not. However, the Monroeville Tripadvisor website profile editors do not bother to update the comments section, continuously referring to Romero’s zombie-mall-movie, even though “a lot has changed” (TripAdvisor). Tampa Jay is part of that fanbase and manages to compare the current state in his video to numerous scenes from the 70s movie (Dawn of the Dead Filming Locations). Also, the Monroeville mall made use of the movie’s popularity by creating a museum around the movie, depicting the remade iconic movie puppets that found their place in the iconic facility. It could be considered a huge success for franchise to survive as more than a sheer internet meme but a museum built around one singular movie within a mall, of all places.

Success will not always have the same impact on a facility a movie was shot in, as we will see with the second successful pop-cultural movie and still leaves a story worth telling. Equally iconic and potentially even more popular than Dawn of the Dead is the movie The Blues Brothers, since the box office earnings show a discrepancy of several tens of millions dollars between Dawn of the Dead ($55 million) and The Blues Brothers (Forbes), differing by $55-60 million. Even though the building is gone, the history of the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois remains. This has-been shopping mall was torn down in 2012 according to Sometimes Interesting, even though it enjoyed the popularity of a famous movie. What this mall was more concretely known for is the mall car chase. Elwood and Jake (yet again) into trouble with the police over a stolen car from which they manage to lose the authorities by causing huge damage and chaos within the mall so the police are hindered from continuing the chase. Most interestingly, the mall in the movie had already been closed down one year before the release of The Blues Brothers, as Orlove noted in 2013 (The Story Of The Trashed Mall From ‘Blues Brothers’). That is, everything inside the mall needed to be reconstructed to be demolished properly. Unfortunately, there is no available footage of direct comparisons between the film’s re-establishment of the mall, compared to the original setup. The only footage available is form decades before or after the Blues Brothers production occupied the building, which would leave it to contemporary witnesses to judge the degree of authenticity. This leads us in this article to trust the film crew and their effort they put into the scene, if we want to judge about the authentic factor of the mall scenery. We can only judge by the information in the article “The Decline of American Shopping Malls” and further digging into the profitability of reusing the Dixie Square Mall, if there had been a chance to maintain the building and use it alternatively. Since the Monroeville Mall still exists, we can conclude that the amount of success a movie has is relatively independent from the survival of a shopping mall.

The last aspect will involve our past and future of (dead) mall buildings, with a little twist. It is no secret that many mall buildings continue to be closed and turned into dead malls. Even more so, maybe a movie found a solution before the buildings would remain empty and find no further use. The movie Earthquake, yet again from the 70s, showed the use of a shopping mall different from retail has been ahead of times! What happened in Earthquake is that an area with a shopping mall nearby suffered horrendous losses through shaking of the earth and that there is a struggle to survive and/or be saved from danger. The plot of the movie continues to switch back and forth from other places back at different areas of the shopping mall and communicates through people’s behavior the struggle to survive and find a new purpose for the complex, that being to improvise a trauma center out of a shopping facility, as a doctor states in a scene: “[…] the army medics have set up their field X-Ray trucks in the third level garage”, even if that might have been a sarcastic note, which can be seen in the Earthquake video footage.

Back to reality, the local state economies in the United States are not necessarily only worried about earnings, jobs or rural vitality with regard to shopping malls, but also about future projects for shopping malls that have already been closed due to their lack of visitors and the costs behind such a building. Instead of tearing further buildings down (as it still was the case for the dead mall used in Blues Brothers in 2012), there are plans on the not-so-fictional table to create medical complexes and refurbish these buildings to state-of-the-art criteria, as it is the case for the Capital Hill Mall in Helena, Montana and other former shopping facilities. The reason we are finding significance in real-world drama movies is that an artistic license can disregard the direct application of such ideas, since pseudorealistic circumstances seem to work as an idea by itself. Yet, the realization of it is always to be taken with a grain of salt. It seems unlikely that the idea to establish medical complexes from (dead) malls was taken from a movie, yet the two aspects of reality and movie history next to each other make it once more surprisingly clear that there is rarely anything new under the sun, not to mention the first impulse to directly apply a movie idea to the real world.

We can now hopefully see better to what extent movies are still connected to reality, how they can have a persisting impact on shopping malls or where unlikely scenarios such as a natural catastrophe can suggest that the potential of a shopping mall lies beyond action, food and retail.

What is more, reality is frequently depicted ironically and therefore, at least in most of the films in this article, used humorously. Mall security officers and both their presence and authority can be ironically real. Films shot in malls can give an impact on their environment in which they were shot, and some ideas realized in film have been refound (even if not through the movies by themselves) and do not necessarily remain in the fictional world. Potential real-world situations are shown in a humorous manner and still carry a certain element of reality. The topic at hand can therefore invite every film enthusiast to dive deeper into each rabbit hole to discover a more sophisticated truth to dissect fiction from reality or to act through contrary purposes. Both approaches would continue to raise curiosity to research them further, without cancelling each other out. That is, they would continue to enrich the world of trivia, fun facts and hypothetical answers towards numerous questions starting with: what if…?

Community in the American Shopping Mall

When analysing the most iconic movie scenes taking place in American shopping malls, we noticed that weaving through the different depictions like a thread and uniting them in the expectations they create for the viewers is the depiction of the mall as a centre of community and microcosm of society. But how exactly is the aspect of community in the mall created and depicted in fiction? And was the mall really the centre of community and social meeting place it is made out to be in the movies?

Let us first have a look at the movies and series we analysed regarding the aspect of community:

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Starting with an 80’s classic, we looked at Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a 1982 American movie that follows the chaotic life of the teenage students of Ridgemont High. In the intro scene above, it becomes evident that most of the movie is set in the fictitious Ridgemont Mall, an homage to the 80’s shopping mall, where all major life events for the teenage characters seem to take place. The mall is depicted not only as a workplace (in stores or the food court) but also as a meeting place to have fun, go on dates and take part in various activities. While every character has their own story, their plots intertwine at the shopping centre, creating the image of the mall as the “hub of life” in the 80s, as described in Huff’s article on Buzzfeed.

Mean Girls (2004)

Then there is the movie Mean Girls from 2004, in which the new girl, Cady, tries to befriend the It-girls of the school in order to take them down. The mall scene above is interesting for our analysis in two ways. Firstly, regarding the context. The scene begins with the three “Mean Girls” picking Cady up from school to take her shopping and buy a new wardrobe so that she might fit into their clique and ascend the social hierarchy in their school. Further, they encounter the love interest of one of the girls, turning their shopping spree into a “See and be seen”- situation. So, the iconic “Get in loser, we’re going shopping” – scene depicts the importance of the mall for the social standing of the high school girls and symbolizes Cady’s transformation from a nobody to an It-girl via one afternoon at the mall.

Screenshot from Mean Girls

Secondly, regarding the well-known reference to the animal kingdom, the scene offers an interesting comparison of the social life at the mall to the behaviour of animals. Cady:

Being at Old Orchard Mall kind of reminded me of being home in Africa. By the watering hole. When the animals are in heat

Cady’s interesting remark on the evolution of mall culture shows us that we are just seemingly more civilized and evolved versions of animals, rendering the mall fountain a watering hole, the meeting place of animals.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

While Mean Girls gives glimpses of a very antagonistic atmosphere of the mall, this deleted scene from the 2016 movie X-Men: Apocalypse, depicts the 80’s mall as an inclusive place, where everyone – human or mutant – is welcome. Nightcrawler (left): This place is like a temple, I’ve never seen anything more beautiful. They don’t fear us.

In this scene, the four mutant teenagers who are preparing to save the world get the chance to just hang out and be normal teenagers for a while, enjoying the different stores, the arcade and most importantly, interacting with others at the mall. Especially for the usually feared or frowned upon mutants, the shopping mall becomes a place where they are accepted by everyone and even included in various activities, creating a sense of community.

As we have seen in these three examples (and the list could go on and on), community in these iconic scenes is created via various elements. The setting of the mall is often depicted as the place where major life events happen. People from different backgrounds, and sometimes only groups of the same demographic group, come together, engaging in social activities such as shopping, eating together, working, going on dates and having fun, making it a favourite meeting place for the characters. Further, the mall is often depicted as the place to be and more importantly, to be seen, if a character wants to fit into society or a specific social group,

creating a microcosm of society

where relationships and hierarchies are negotiated.

But the question remains:

Was the mall really the centre of community it is made out to be in the movies?

The teenagers in the movies we analysed would answer the first question with a heartfelt “Totally” – and they would be right when it comes to the ’80s, where, according to Richard Feinberg, shopping malls were one of the most important meeting places and were conceptualized as both a place of retailing and a community centre. As Adam Tschorn fittingly describes it in his LA Times article, “Shopping centers have always been about more than shopping”. They were a place to work, meet friends and, according to an 2011 article in the LA Times, a “pop culture petri dish for the better part of two generations”, especially before the emergence of the internet as a place of social interaction. However, as also mentioned in the LA Times in 2017, with the decline of malls in favour of a modern, more anonymous online shopping and interaction culture, the social function of malls as a community place for the average citizen might be decreasing.

The importance of shopping centres and malls as a centre of community, especially in the 80’s, becomes evident in the US News and World Report Poll referred to by Thomas Musil from the early 1970s, which found that

“Americans spent more time in shopping malls than anywhere else except for home and work”

making the mall one of the primary places for social interactions and community activities. Further, Musil illustrates how local malls were often embraced and tightly integrated as a part of the already established community of a city by giving the example of the Cherry Hill Mall in Delaware Township, which became, as coined by Musil, a “community focal point”, leading to the residents’ vote to change the name of the community to Cherry Hill.

The rising importance of the American shopping mall as a community place due to the creation of a central meeting place and the addition of social and cultural spaces such as restaurants, theatres, libraries, and day-care centres inspired Roulac, as cited in Musil, to write about “the emergence of the shopping mall as the new village centre”. Similarly, Lynn Staeheli et al. argue that

“shopping malls are heralded as the new town square”

which was, historically, a meeting place for people with diverse backgrounds and all social groups and classes.

Community is created in malls by providing a place that allows people to meet, interact and socialize with friends, and, as Kamel EdHedhli states, “to assemble, socialize, and experience a sense of community”. However, both Alexandra Lange and George Lewis mention that malls are ambivalent, multifunctional environments, as they feature both freedom and exclusion, community and consumerism. As Lewis argues, the answer to his question of whether community in the mall is a social reality or a mere manufactured illusion is not an easy one. While the mall might bring together crowds of shoppers in one locale, he argues that these groups often lack common ties, social interactions, and a sense of belonging that are necessary for a real sense of community. Nonetheless, in his 1988 study, Lewis found that especially teens do form these social ties and a sense of belonging which is characteristic of community. According to the author, this might be due to the fact that teens have very few social and physical places where they can meet and “develop their own contacts and social networks” away from the monitoring and restrictions at home or in school. Moreover, due to being in-between kids and adults, teenagers might feel an increased need to create their own identities and meaningful relationships – making the mall with its accessibility to the newest trends, gathering places and the possibility to showcase their identity through fashion, hobbies and activities an ideal place.

Another important factor to consider is the interplay of community and consumerism. While the new shopping culture might have its part in creating community and social interaction, Musil rightly notes that the benefits of the mall as a community meeting place are limited by the malls’ “primary function: consumption.” The importance of malls as the new town squares comes with great responsibility and dangers, as malls are often privately owned and the choices of stores, activities and design are governed by consumerist ideals. Staeheli argues that malls might control these aspects, “creating a qualitatively different ‘civic’ or ‘community’ space in which only certain kinds of people, ideas and behaviours are acceptable in public.”

Consumerism in the American Shopping Mall

I went to the mall with a couple of friends

I had a whole week's allowance to spend

I want hoop earrings and a Benetton shirt

We came here to shop and we came here to flirt

I turned around and who should I see

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney

He said, "Young lady, I don't approve"

So I had to get down and bust a crazy move

[...]

Let′s go to the mall (Youtube clip - Let's go to the Mall)

Screenshot from How I Met Your Mother

This excerpt is from the American sitcom How I Met Your Mother, more specifically, it’s an excerpt from the Let’s Go to the Mall song from episode nine in season two in which the Canadian character Robin Sparkles sings enthusiastically about the mall in the 80’s. The mall is positively connoted and consumerism seems to be promoted by Robin in this song.

For those of you who are not quite sure what kind of consumerism is referred to here, I have a short definition from the Apa Dictionary of Psychology that defines consumerism as follows:

“[Consumerism is] the purchase and consumption of goods and services in amounts that exceed basic needs. Consumerism is often tied to the socioeconomic behavior of conspicuous consumption [...]’’.

The positive representation and promotion of consumerism are clearly evident in the song. For instance, Robin likes to see her friends at the mall, she likes to shop and spend her whole week’s allowance there. Although Robin’s mall refers to the Canadian mall, the show is still American and it’s not quite uncommon to see malls in American series or movies. On the contrary, the American shopping mall has been a major theme in American fiction. But what about other American fiction with the theme of the American shopping mall? How is consumerism depicted there? Is it as glorified as in the Let’s go to the Mall song or could it be even possible that it’s been criticised? Let’s dive deep into various American movies and series in the late 20th century and see how consumerism is depicted.

On one hand, the shopping mall depicts consumerism positively in teen movies such as Clueless (1995), Mallrats (1995) and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). In Clueless, every time a teenager feels down or is angry, they are advised by friends or even by adults to go to the mall. For instance, when the protagonist Cher Horowitz feels irritated and mad when her whole world seems to crumble, she goes shopping and for a short moment she feels happy. At some point, she is a shopaholic because although her wardrobe is full of clothes, she still goes to the shopping mall alone, with her friends or even with her shopping companion Christian. Stephen Harper states that the shopping mall is the place to be in American teen movies, especially in Clueless. It seems as if going to the shopping mall and consuming the products fill the emptiness of the characters or help them to clear their mind. Therefore, consumption is promoted.

Screenshot from Clueless

Screenshot from Mallrats

Consumerism is also promoted in the movie Mallrats (1995). The consumption of the products is advertised which is also mentioned by Harper and you can see that the people are eating, playing and basically consuming everything in the mall. Food courts are often in the background and everyone, from old to young, is always in the mall.

Even if people time travel, they would go to the mall and be fascinated by consumerism which is seen in the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). For instance, time traveller Genghiz Khan discovers baseball equipment, Abraham Lincoln enjoys the photography section, Beethoven the music department and Joan Arc the fitness section which is seen in the following scene (Bill & Ted Scene) and they’re enjoying the time of their life there. As you can see so far, the American shopping mall plays a huge role in American fiction because it’s a place that everyone goes to and that makes them happy.

Moreover, the shopping mall isn’t only a place for shopping but also a place that has a multifunctional environment which gives the consumer a sense of liberty and happiness. Lewis, in Matthew Bailey’s article, describes the mall as a multifunctional environment that “became a ‘civic center’ for American communities’’ in the late 20th century. This means that you didn’t just go to the mall once in a blue moon but on a daily basis, which promoted consumption behavior in the late 20th century. Besides, in the process of designing malls, the intention of developers and retailers of malls isn’t only to attract consumers but also to keep them there as long as possible which is explained by Richards, in Jon Goss. Just like in the movies, going to the mall means having fun and spending your spare time there with your friends. As we already mentioned in our previous chapter, it’s a place of community and marketed as such a place in advertisement. This basically means that consumerism is depicted as something positive, something that everyone should strive for to fill their void. Bailey explains: “McCracken suggests that we often use consumer goods to recover the ‘displaced meanings’ of our culture.

We shop, he suggests, for what we are missing in our lives

- good work, interpersonal intimacy, friendship, virtue,

a sense of purpose, excitement’’.

Hence, consuming in social environments brings happiness and the factor of community has the effect of pushing the consumer or even the viewer of the positive representation of consumerism in mall fiction into the feeling of a sense of liberty and happiness. This phenomenon is also called “fun morality’’ in Bailey. So far, consumerism in American fiction is not only depicted positively but also promoted heavily.

On the other hand, this promotion of consumerism is heavily criticised in the American movie Dawn of the Death by Romero (1978). The Zombie characters go to the shopping mall and consume the products even when they’re almost dying. Even before having ever seen the mall, they straight away intuitively knew that they had to shop, states Lange. She also illustrates that Dawn of the Dead criticises consumerism in a satirical way, especially the excessive consumerism in the American shopping mall. Another example of criticism of consumerism in this movie are the explicitly critical statements from the movie characters themselves. For instance, Lange mentions the character Francis who says:

“You are hypnotized by this place, all of you! It’s so bright and neatly wrapped, you don't see that it is a prison too’’.

This means that the ones who consume immoderately are so blind to their own excessive consumption behavior that they don't see how addicted they are to the mall and that they’re actually not free. So far, you might have noticed how different this representation of consumerism is in Dawn of the Dead. Schott states that the producer of the movie, George E. Romero is an independent American filmmaker which clearly shows that the movie presents a different and almost unusual perspective of the mall.

Screenshot from Dawn of the Dead

In a nutshell, consumerism is mostly promoted in American movies with the theme of the shopping mall and is depicted as glorified as in Robin Sparkle’s song in the American series How I Met Your Mother. However, in some movies such as Dawn of the Dead, this consumerism is heavily criticised.

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“Article 1 by Silicon Entertainment Inc /Ca/.” Law Insider, https://www.lawinsider.com/contracts/6xELCMeehOf#food-court. Accessed 30 Nov 2022.

“Dawn of the Dead (1979) - Financial Information.” The Numbers, https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Dawn-of-the-Dead-(1979)#tab=summary. Accessed Nov 2022.

VanKid. “Blues Brothers - Mall Car Chase.” YouTube, 6 Feb. 2008, https://youtu.be/Bz81ZO0qfvI?t=174. Accessed 30 Nov 2022.

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Movies and Series

Bill and Ted’s Exellent Adventure. Directed by Stephen Herek, Interscope Communication and Nelson Entertainment, 1989.

Clueless. Directed by Amy Heckerling, Paramount Pictures, 1995.

Dawn of the Dead. Directed by George A. Romero, Laurel Group, 1978.

Earthquake. Directed by Mark Robson, The Filmmakers Group and Universal Pictures, 1974.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Directed by Amy Heckerling, Refugee Films and Universal Pictures, 1982.

How I Met Your Mother. Created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, Bays and Thomas Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, CBS, 2005 - 2014.

Mall Cop. Directed by Steve Carr, Columbia Pictures, Happy Maddison Productions, Relativity Media and Sony Pictures Releasing, 2009.

Mallrats. Directed by Kevin Smith, View Askew Productions, Gramercy Pictures and Alphaville Films, 1995.

Mean Girls. Directed by Mark Waters, Paramount Pictures, 2004.

The Blues Brothers. Directed by John Landis, Universal Pictures, 1980.

X-Men: Apocalypse. Directed by Brian Singer, Marvel Entertainment, TSG Entertainment, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Kinberg Genre, The Donners’ Company and 20th Century Fox, 2016.