Chopping Mall: Exploring The Decline of Accessible Spaces

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

Happy summer solstice! It's finally the hottest time of the year. It sounds strange, but something I like about both summer and winter is how they require natural and agented regulation. The cycling of both discomfort and suddenness of rewarded relief. For the cold months, it's your lips being chapped, the freezing wind blowing through your ribs, and the depression of not seeing the sun for days, all brief sufferings being compensated with a warm seat by a fire. An invitation to become good friends a book, and twinkly lights, dancing under your car's headlights. For summer, it's the same, a rolling seesaw of pain and pleasure. It's the rough chaffing, sweltering beneath your jeans and sweating thighs. It's the lulling sound of a breaking, box fan. It's the feeling of watching the people you love, make summer plans without you, to inner-tube on the river. The loss feels heavy and life feels like a dropped ice cream, but the satisfaction that comes with the good, the bounty you find beneath the pile of numerous, bad summer days, can *almost* make it all worth it; I'm talking about the balming effect a pool day with your friends can have on a pessimistic streak. The way a hazy, purple sky can gently lay you down on a bed of grass, and ask you to gaze into it one second longer. Finally, it's the relief of air conditioning in a giant, liminal space: the mall, to be exact. A paradise for people-watching and pretzels. A home for heat escapists and expense-free movie theater hopping.

Malls, in general, are/were an ecosystem. In its height, and also ironically at the start of any malls success was an immediate catapult to the beginning of its fall, malls were a great common space that (though, it really tried its hardest) didn't require you to spend money to be in. This allowed for people of different wealth backgrounds to exist simultaneously next to each other, however, someone's class status would still be instated once a shopper went into a certain store that had an expensive reputation. This relationship, aka witnessing how welcoming a mall would mostly be to all demographics of people, could be seen in the interior of the "in-between" spaces across each store. For example, the mall that I went to growing up, had not only circular benches, but had interactive touch fountains, plastic playgrounds shaped like different lunch foods, and hundreds of free tables for teenagers to sit and text at. Not only were these additions crucial to the fun, playful texture of the mall, but they were clear positives for social accessibility. Anyone could hang out in these in-between spaces, including people who required a structured, well-tempered environment that didn't demand a hefty fee to just simply exist; I can think of hundreds of different people who hung out at the mall. Groups that overlapped, crossing and supporting the other. The very young and elderly, benefit from the multiple eyes of others. A social butterfly looking for more friends and a reclusive, lonely soul, feeling the buzz of being around others. And ultimately, disabled people.

Why is the mall a place that is haven-like for some disabled people? Well, escalators and elevators are synonymous with mall culture, making accessibility both the norm and one of the pleasurable memories associated with the mall, causing *less* non-disabled people to be jerks about someone's mobility needs. There's also the fact that the mall is always a comfortable temperature, has many hidden corners for people to sit and re-regulate themselves in, is visually stimulating with pleasant, pastel colors, and the food court usually does not overwhelm, but lightly welcomes its dwellers with an array of smells. The lighting is non-fluorescent and the transpirational needs outside of the mall usually can accommodate buses and vans that give multiple groups rides at the same time. The mall is filled with stores that provide a common interest for its shoppers to not only engage with but locate others who share a similar passion. Arcade games and bar lounges are literal places where friends can meet up; it's not perfect, but the mall can be quite accessible for disabled people to connect. Such a small, piece of the world, unattainable for so many. And still, now, leaving.

This is why Chopping Mall(1986(dir. Jim Wynorski)), a movie about robotic security guards going ballistic on a group of teenagers, romping around the mall after hours, touches on numerous anxieties happening within the all-oppressive Regan Era, but still ultimately says the same thing: Even a space that breeds capitalistic ideals will be discarded if it is seen to be too culturally significant for the wrong people. We've seen this with the rise of online shopping and we know that in a country that worships at the alter of eugenics, it becomes obvious that the focus is no longer having a consumer, someone who will once in a while buy a t-shirt or a smoothie at a food stand, but a consumer that participates on both sides of the capitalistic, excessive-consume to excessive-produce cycle; this looks like high paid office jobs, coming to a luxury outlet to buy designer clothes, helping them better fit into the corporate climate, and then immediately going back home. There are no benches, interactive fountains, or tables because the right consumer has to go back to their laptops and work! There is no time to leisurely people-watch or take a lap or two in the air conditioning. Besides, the proximity to others "unlike" them is too suffocating, right? Their stares, too close. Their smiles, too friendly.

I loved the movie Chopping Mall because it, from the start of malls rising in their popularity, spoke about how unsustainable they are AND somehow perfectly predicted our generation's next struggle with robot police dogs and the inventible, looming presence they will have on public, socially sacred spaces. The antagonistic robots serve as a reminder that we were never quite safe while living/enjoying the splendor of life in institutional surveillance and capitalistic playpens. And yet, we as people have to constantly fight against the delusion that we have choice and control, making a movie like Chopping Mall a glimpse of both a right-wing ramble about the wonders of a conservative past and a dystopian, overly policed, and frightfully decaying, ecological futures.

.......heavy stuff. Heavy, heavy stuff.