Page 98 - Consuming Media

01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 85

are woven together in the display. In the contemporary store window, the photograph
serves the purpose of enlarging and transforming the object, and represents using it as
an expression of visual, aesthetic pleasure.
Many of the pictures on display in the shopping centre refer to other pictures, in
other media. Disney film characters show up on clothing and accessories, as well as
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in cards, posters and videos in various shops throughout the shopping centre. Harry
Potter’s familiar face on the cover of the bestseller stacked high at the bookstore
entrance also beams out at us from the video store and on posters for sale in the card
shop. James Bond aims his gun at passers-by from a poster advertising a wristwatch
that does everything. In a wall painting next to an elevator, Greta Garbo poses in
front of an old movie camera, a reference to the Swedish film industry that once had
its studios nearby. The list of examples could go on, constant visual reminders that
the shopping centre is an intermedial space.
Another characteristic of the images in the shopping centre is that many of them
represent the private sphere, depicting a domestic scene or a personal relationship.
These representations are evidence of the growing intimization of the public sphere, a
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characteristic commented upon by many media scholars. In the shop windows of the
children’s clothing store hang large posters showing children at play. Children are also
a common theme in the photographic shop, offering visual lessons of what the ideal
family looks like. In the windows of the travel agency hang oversized posters showing
a man and woman enjoying a romantic meal – the heterosexual vacation ideal. These
photographs project an image of intimacy and also a model of media practice in the
sense that consumers should be able to recognize themselves and project their own
desires onto the display. They should, in the words of Solna Centre’s slogan, ‘feel at
home’ in the images that surround them in the shopping centre. We assumed that it
was no accident that the central image in the management’s marketing campaign
showed a Caucasian man and woman and their daughter, seated together on a couch
in the middle of the shopping centre. The image of this ‘family’ appeared on infor-
mation brochures, in ads in local papers, and on the posters and flags hanging over the
entrances and passages in the shopping centre. This was certainly a representation of
the primary target group as seen by the Solna Centre management.
This photograph remained on the information brochures, but was gradually
replaced by a series of other photographs in the ‘feel at home’ displays on flags and
posters throughout the centre. The first of these showed a young bi-racial couple, a
black man and a blond woman, smiling into the camera. Several months later, this
was replaced by a different social grouping, a photograph of a middle-aged woman
standing behind a boy of about eight, a clear representation of a single mother with
her son. This in turn was replaced by a photograph of a young professional-looking
man and woman, both with dark skin and hair (suggesting they are first-generation
Swedes), looking over some papers spread out in front of them. In this case we recog-
nized the woman as someone who worked in the information desk in the middle of
the shopping centre. Who, we asked, is being invited to ‘feel at home’ in Solna
Centre?

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