November 28, 2008
Your Turn: Black Friday
Lot of issues incapsulated here, including consumerism; the economy; the Wal-Mart trampling. I’m interested in what these say to you.
Bargain Hunting on Bleak Friday WAPO
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death (NYT)
‘Buy Nothing Day’ a sign of the times? (CNET)
(image: Gerald Martineau-The Washington Post. caption: Shoppers burst through the doors at the Wal-Mart in Fair Lakes Center when the store opened at 5 a.m. Friday morning)
33 Comments Leave a comment
Kit (Keep It Trill) said:
To my dismay, one of my own kids laughed when I told her about this. I was so stunned over her desensitization that I wrote a post about it: One Nation Under Greed
Shameless Agitator said:
In the photo, I see a woman wearing a Burberry Scarf, Ugg shoes and carrying a Coach bag. Interesting Walmart shopper, eh? Is she slumming it?
Michaeldg said:
How long can the marketers lead us around by the nose? One day bargains- Hurry, supply limited!! It took Katrina for the nation to open it’s eyes to the fact that Emperor Bush had no clothes, when will people see the humiliation in waiting all night for the chance to save a few bucks on some hyper-marketed toy?
Black Jack Shellac said:
My god this depresses the hell out of me. What kind of psychological problems do these people have that they need shopping for bargains to be so insanely happy? Thanks to the mythological sky fairy for my mild depression and anxiety which is enough to keep me away from these places.
Wayne said:
Yeah. My first thought was the Wal-Mart death. People have been trampled to death at soccer stadia, at band performances…and trying to escape from burning buildings. Judging from all the happy smiles, these people aren’t (consciously?) trying to escape, so I guess we might infer that shopping on Black Friday has become the equivalent of a massive entertainment event.
vcInCA said:
i see giddiness, but also playfulness. i wonder if staying up all night, cold, on cement plays a role here-are people sleep deprived & excited to be in a well lit area with warmth, beyond the expectations they’ve built up around all the booty they will gather, and this makes them more giddy than they might otherwise be when saving some money by just using a cupon? maybe they realize how silly what they did/are doing is, but also have a community of equally silly folks around them who also chose to stay up all night, and this also causes some communal playfulness, as in, just accepting how silly this is, how they will chuckle about it when retelling the story later? its one alternative to being embarrassed to be so consumer/buy focused.
on the other hand, i’m not quite sure they should be embarrassed–we are reading/seeing this through the lens of the trampling on long island, seeing/imagining people so focused on their bargain that they are willing or unaware accomplices to someone’s death, but these people prob don’t know about it, are more focused on their here & now, which is a) cold b) tired, c) trying to save some money, but still get this thing that they or their kids or their families want. there’s nothing inherently wrong with looking for a bargain, i think people are just disturbed by the callousness of that one instance.
Donut said:
I bet if you pulled some photos of people riding roller coasters, their faces would have similar expressions. What goes up, must come down. I wouldn’t want to be near any of these people once the buzz wears off. It’s a totally different kind of euphoria or joy than say, love or a religious experience. It’s a pure adrenaline rush.
WereBear said:
Well, the stores themselves call them “door busters.”
In every other venue, from stadiums to parades, the entity responsible is expecting crowds, and is expected to enact some form of crowd control.
I don’t see why retail stores should be exceptions.
And yes, these folks are happy and laughing. And no one is getting hurt. It’s a form of big game hunting, another activity I don’t care for. But Bargain Hunting has the same roots, and probably similar primal satisfactions.
“See that wide screen TV? I stalked that baby for three weeks, checking the sales flyers and staying up all night to get through the doors first. Make a flying turn around the cell phone display, and there it was! I saved three hundred and thirty nine dollars? Can you imagine? With the money I saved I got…”
It’s not that different from stories told around the campfire, is it?
Newsguy said:
I don’t think I would want to be stranded on a desert island or in an elevator for any extended period of time with any of these shallow twits. They’re going to be charging way too much stuff on their credit cards, and then what? They’re probably still paying off Christmas 2003. Too many Americans have bought into their roles as mindless consumers, a mindset promoted by advertisers on their flat screen TVs.
Raenelle said:
I think it’s creepy. I’ve spent my life trying to cultivate contentment, simplicity, patience. And, after a few decades of that, I have to say that each year has been better than the last. My only gripe is that life is so fucking short. I believe that a life based on “more, more, more” is a life that will inevitably be unsatisfying and empty.
The smiles? How can I say these people are unhappy when they look so gleeful? Well, they remind me of a small child who has had way too much sugar. They are only a handful of minutes away from a tantrum.
Karen said:
Hard to look at naked American culture. I have to wonder, though, if these photos are more objectionable because I know someone died at one of these events. If I didn’t know that, I’d just roll my eyes and think how collectively silly we are. Overindulgence at Christmas has always bothered me, so I took the lazy way out and told my kids that Santa is being very careful this year because the world is short of money. Three presents, that’s it. They haven’t objected and have made a game out of the process of making up their minds as to what to put in and take out of their letters to Santa Claus.
g said:
Crowd control and line management is something that should be taken seriously and should be dealt with by professionals. While it’s easy to blame the crowd for the horrible death on Long Island, it’s really unfair to assign blame to supposed “greed” by individuals.
When any kind of attraction has the potential to gather a crowd, combined with an expectation to “be first” to get some prize, the organizers should have done a better job of line management and crowd control.
You’re funnelling a huge number of people through a narrow opening. The built-up force of people in the back who can’t see what’s happening is overwhelming. The people at the front of the crowd who, unfortunately, trampled the poor man were more than likely unable to stop moving, being physically propelled by the unseeing force behind them.
The store management should never have allowed one employee to open the door by himself. They should have had people outside managing the crowd and the line-up.
I don’t agree with or understand the mind-set of having to be first into a store to buy lots of cheap crap – but, really, this tragedy could have been avoided by smarter store management.
chas said:
The guy and his wife are M
ExpatAsia said:
I see people having fun. Lighten up.
Brian O'Nolan said:
Here’s my Barthesian “deconstruction” of the “memes” “encrypted” in these “iconic” images:
It’s a bunch of happy people shopping for bargains.
Don Coyote said:
I wonder how depressed they be when they see the same item on the internet for half the price, or at Goodwill, six months later, for $1.99?
bystander said:
I don’t “get” Christmas, but I really never have. If you’re religious, and your theology tells you the date is significant, then it would make sense that there would be some spiritual celebration in which you’d participate. Once I reached the point that I recognized I was at minimum agnostic, if not an outright atheist, then I really began to wonder what I thought I was doing with the Christmas gift ritual. About 20 years ago, I ‘canceled’ Christmas, never looked back, and haven’t missed it. Sending Happy Holidays greeting cards to people with whom I’d totally lose touch otherwise is as close as I get to Christmas. So, this line up at the door, sleep on the cement, and mad dash to whatever bargain you set your heart on, is just beyond me. I wouldn’t do it on, say, May 29th, so I’m really unlikely to do it on November 29th. And, there isn’t an object I can think of so important to me that I’d chase after it this way, regardless of the season. To think a temporary employee lost his life in this kind of scene simply makes my head explode. I wonder how the people who trampled him underfoot feel right now?
magurakurin said:
I surf. Surfing is a greed based activity. It is like finding money in the street, except instead of money the surfer finds a thrill on the crest of an ocean wave. It is a never ending search, filled with hours of waiting and countless missed opportunities that all lead to a single fleeting moment of joy as the surfer drops down the face of a perfect wave. It is an addiction that causes each of these moments to inspire the surfer to abandon all else and continue the search for the next wave.
So, I was really impressed with the bottom image of the man turning the corner with his arms outstretched. He reminds me in many waves of a surfer, in particular the look of joy and anticipation on his face.
I suppose it is good that he can feel such joy, but it seems sad that it is the result of something so artificial as a shopping sale. Still, I guess synthentic joy is better than none.
I’ll stick to surfing myself. And it isn’t innocent either. There is sometimes violence at the surf breaks. People are a dangerous animal. Be careful out there, folks
love this site, thanks to the owners and commentators for many years now of interesting reading and ideas.
vcInCA said:
the more comments i see, the more i look at the 2nd picture, the more i like & can chuckle at/with the ‘flying’ guy. its ludicrous, and he seems to be accepting that, taking it in stride, living it. some people are happy w/ a nice glass of wine, some are happy gardening, some are happy winning millions off the stock exchange. to each their own, and, if this is the worst of this guy’s faults, hey, let him be.
vcInCA said:
tho, having just posted that, i remember that this isn’t just capturing the guy, in his silliness, it is also posted to the world (or a community) within a context, and it takes on a larger meaning. i think that their (the less/uncritical readers simply looking for ‘news’ or ‘content’) interpretations of this will depend a lot on a) the context of the accompanying story b) their knowledge (or lack) about the trampling and c) their personal relationship to shopping. in this, i think that their interpretations may reflect the interpretations we’re seeing here, which are a wide spectrum. it would be interesting to see if there are comments posted (if that original site does permit them), and how they may mirror (or not) our comments here. i’m not sure how common the comment thing is-i know that the SF chronicle allows it, and it is interesting to see how some articles get under 10 comments over days, while others get over 1000 (or at least, affirmations/negations of comments by clicking the ‘thumb up’ vs. ‘thumb down’ icons). has anyone done a comparison like this?
JM said:
Ugh. All I see is the contrast between these gleeful idiots enjoying their supposedly innocent national pastime and all the people who have to suffer to make it possible, starting with the store employees working for minimum wage, past the underpaid and underprotected truckers and shipyard workers, past the deckhands, past the workers at the probably dangerous factory where this dross is assembled, to the refineries where they make the crap that crap is made of. Poison, it’s all poison. Someone is suffering so that guy can play airplane at Wal-Mart. For real, sometimes I think we should all just throw ourselves into the sea.
LordoftheDance said:
“If you don’t see something you want, like, just ask!” (repeat)
Stella said:
People like to get together and do crazy things. Sometimes it’s in competition, not necessarily with cruel intent. Looks like these folks enjoyed their risky behavior.
I think we need to be careful with our judgements despite what the pictures are trying to tell us.
chris said:
He looks handicapped to me. Compare him in both images.
Brian O'Nolan said:
Extraordinary snobbism is evident in many of these comments – comb through them for disparaging and downright insulting remarks. As if these people were somehow beneath us, behaving in a very vulgar and even pathetic way. I’d ask all the refined souls who “analyze” (the quotes are mine, but you can have them) these pictures if they have never grabbed at a bargain in the sales themselves. Or never looked a little foolish in a snapshot taken when they weren’t expecting it.
The snooty, fake-academic (you notice I didn’t say faux, like you may have done) tone to many of the comments tells me far more about the authors than it does about the images.
mjfgates said:
These people are grinning, not necessarily because of an adrenalin high, but because they really want to be there. I think that this *is* actually the same reason that you don’t see a lot of photos of people atop Mount Everest or on rollercoasters looking blase’, but it’s got nothing to do with adrenalin. It’s simply that some places, just by getting there you’ve guaranteed that you’re the kind of person who is excited by the prospect of being there. People who hate amusement parks don’t spend fifty bucks on a ticket and wait for two hours to ride the De-Intestinator, people who are bored by hiking don’t climb up K2. People who don’t like to shop, don’t spend the night in a parking lot waiting for Wal-Mart to open its doors.
zatopa said:
Xmas is for the kids.
rob. said:
Good to see that being a consuming Zombie never goes out of fashion.
rob. said:
Good to see that being a consuming Zombie never goes out of fashion.
rob. said:
Good to see that being a consuming Zombie never goes out of fashion.
Valkyrie607 said:
Shopping is not a fun, innocent activity. Shopping is evil.
Did you know that 99% of all the things that Americans buy end up in the landfill after only 6 months?
That’s right: only 1% of the crap those people are spending cash on, waiting up nights for, careening around malls for, is going to last more than 6 months.
Meanwhile, think about the materials and the energy that were required to bring all that stuff to Wal-Mart in the first place.
Oil to run the machines that mined or extracted the raw materials. More oil to transport it to the factory where the raw materials are assembled. Whose environment are those raw materials being extracted from? And whose environment is being polluted during the manufacturing process? Then, once 6 months go by, more oil is burned to transport what is now a waste product to a landfill. A landfill. A mountain of trash. Because we are so enamored of profit we would rather design crappy products that break, and then make more of them, than design quality products that last a lifetime. Quality is expensive, they say, but check again 50 years down the line. I think you will find that the crappy, so-called “cheap” products are the ones that will be costing us the most.
The existence of landfills is an indictment of shopping as a “fun, innocent” activity. It is neither, not for those who are aware of the tremendous cost we all must pay to continue this insanity we call a global economy.
If you’re wondering exactly what my problem is, why I can’t just relax and enjoy it, well, it’s because I’ve just spent nearly four years and many thousands of dollars preparing for a career in fixing all the damn problems this madness is causing. I’m a bit grumpy because every year it comes around again, we’re all reminded that our value as citizens lies in how much we consume. Consumerism will consume the planet if we don’t quit it soon, and I mean that very literally.
Check out this link: http://www.thestoryofstuff.com
arty said:
Valkyrie607
If, as you say, “I’ve just spent nearly four years and many thousands of dollars preparing for a career in fixing all the damn problems this madness is causing,” then why on earth aren’t you out there on the battlefield waving your sword at the barbarians? Save us all.
We could use the peace and quiet.
Valkyrie607 said:
Just grumpy. Sorry.