Things To Do In Shopping Centres

Behold West Edmonton Mall!
- Two pictures are needed capture this monster of a mall, which rumour has it owns more submarines, at least ones that work, than the entire Canadian military! In another article from Feminism and Cultural Studies, Meaghan Morris puts post-structuralism to use in her look at "the management of space vis-a-vis shopping malls . I'll just get out of the way the fact that this was one of the more challenging reads of the semester. Morris does not make my intellectual quest to engage with semiotics an easy one. The language she uses feels unnecessarily complicated, which frustrates me mostly because I could not understand points that seemed interesting and relevant, at least from what I could decipher. I know Morris looks at the changing functions of shopping malls. She tells us she is most interested in "looking at how particular centres produce and maintain a unique sense of identity, or a myth of identity" How she incorporates feminist analysis into this interest is confusing for me though. She seems to spend much of the article both defending, and defending herself from feminist analysis. While Morris's understanding of duality was easily conveyed either, I was reminded of Ang's, and Minn-ha's discussions of identity and double-consciousness. Miller calls the dual quality of shopping malls "a stirring and seductive tension" Though it's tempting for me to dismiss shopping malls as personifications of capitalism and alienation, Miller is quick to point out some of the ways in which malls foster community. She expands upon this this in bringing a gendered analysis of the private and public nature of women's work as well. "Things to do in Shopping Centres", is not the easiest of reads. It is a piece that I will hopefully go back to at some point with a better understanding of Miller's field. That being said, there were parallels I picked out between Miller's "Things to do in Shopping Centres" , and Ang and Minn-ha, as well as Kenway and Mullen.