Supermarkets are strange places. They seem to be continually able to buck the trends that are detectable elsewhere. We are living in a time of fiscal rectitude and economic despondency and the evidence is all around us. Half completed housing estates, shabby unkempt public spaces, boarded up main streets, disfigured potholed roads – these have recently become, and will remain, features of our landscape. But the supermarket seems to be miraculously immune to any downward spiral. The supermarket just gets shinier and happier. They get bigger and brighter and more replete when everything else is getting smaller, dirtier and sparser.
And aren’t they a reassuring presence? Essential supplies and essential positive reinforcement. The cosy glow of a million sparkling apples and symmetrically arranged bovine body parts.
"I understand the music, I understand the movies, I even see how comic books can tell us things. But there are full professors in this place who read nothing but cereal boxes. It's the only avant-garde we've got."
Don Delillo, White Noise 1984
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
