Page 44 - The Disneyization of Society

THEMING

The spread of the themed mall poses problems for malls that do not have the
additional layers of attractiveness and meaning. Sandicki and Holt describe a mall
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with a largely dull design and which, as they see it, does little to conceal its essen-
tially commercial nature. Their study of mall users found that many complained
about its ‘aesthetically boring, depressive, and unexciting nature’. 70 As one shop-
per put it: ‘It is a boring mall. It is very small and very average. You can’t do much.
There are only shops, and if you are not really into shopping, there is nothing else
here. It looks cold’. 71 While large themed malls are still a comparative rarity, it is
clear that to the extent that shoppers are familiar with them, they become yard-
sticks against which other malls are measured. This constitutes a problem for the
mall designers who are likely to feel increasingly pushed to add expensive them-
ing to their designs in order to provide the kinds of shopping experience many
consumers are clearly coming to expect.

Heritage shopping

A context for shopping that is highly related to the themed mall is one that occurs
when sites that are deemed to have heritage value are turned into locales for con-
sumption. Very often old buildings are taken over to form the framework for
shops and restaurants and are sometimes added onto in a faux design that is able
to feed off the character and heritage value of the buildings and location. In much
the same way that Main Street USA in the Disney theme parks acts as a themed
environment for shopping that feeds off the feelings of warmth and nostalgia
with which this tribute to small town middle America is associated, so areas with
‘real’ heritage value (or at least a heritage value that is constructed as real) have
been turned into shopping locations that feed off a sense of a valued past and
thus function essentially as themed malls.
This trend is invariably attributed to the festival marketplace movement that is
generally regarded as having begun with the redevelopment of Boston’s Faneuil Hall
which resulted in its being turned into an upmarket shopping location by James
Rouse, an architect who has been a big fan of the Disney theme parks as models of
urban development and architecture and who has been responsible for the design
of some of the company’s hotels. The work of Rouse and his company has been
described as ‘a commercial developer that regenerates downmarket neighborhoods
into Thumbelina-clean commercial strips Walt would have loved’. 72 Faneuil Hall,
which opened in August 1976, is based on three restored buildings of historic signi-
ficance in downtown Boston and in its second year of operation it attracted more
visitors than Disneyland that year. Such developments are often seen as revitalizing
downtown areas and as providing destination attractions for tourists, as well as pro-
viding locals with a safe shopping environment. The historic significance of the
buildings or their locations and the constructed heritage with which they are suf-
fused provides a themed environment which is similar to that of the themed mall.