The New Religious Image of Urban America, Second Edition: The Shopping Mall as Ceremonial Center

5. Concluding Observations: From Lenox Square to Bel Air

Concluding Observations: From Lenox Square to Be1Air An Attempt to Retain the Personal Saturday night in Be1 Air was not just a temporal or geographical reference. It was a metaphor for a personal community exchanginggoodsand services,and, at thesametime, havingfun. Lenox Square represents the average EMAC trying hard to be the sort of primary community that Be1 Air was. Both Saturday night in Be1Air and Lenox Square illustrate the supra-commercial nature of shopping- the "more than" of the marketplace. For two decades now James Rouse and other imaginative mall developers have tried to recapture the town square and the small American village in their large regional shopping malls. And, as I have attempted to show, the EMAC is successful to a considerable degree. The EMAC tried to recreate the marketplace as more than a place for business; it was also to be a meeting place, a space set apart for a community involved in varying degrees of ceremony and ritual. With the addition of natural setting elements (light, water, and trees), the mall meets the needs of many urban and suburban folks. These huge shopping cen- 144 . The N m Religious Image of Urban America ters, each new onedwarfingitspredecessors, try toneutralize the polarization Paul Wheatleysuggested would likelyoccur when a communityshifts from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (from personal to impersonal community). He said there is a tendency to movefrom an emphasis on status to an emphasis on contract, from primary relationships to secondary ones, from societm to ciuitm,fromlivingtocontrived, fromorganic to plastic. The shopping mall, in attempting to resist this trend, no doubt fallssomewherebetween thepoles. Itnevercompletely reproduces the primary nature of human relationships, the face-to-face, first-name basis of Saturday night in Be1 Air. Lenox Square could hardly be expected to pull that off. On the other hand, the mall neverfinallysurrenders tothe depersonalization , anonymity, and coldly contractual character of most urban life. Still, the mall is relatively successful in retaining the"high touch"of shopping as experienced in Bel Air. Customers can interact with clerks behind counters, rather than trying to catch up with them as they wander down aislesin self-service discount stores, supermarkets, and department stores. The EMAC endeavored to reclaim the personal by its emphasis on centers, its attention to detail, its cleanliness, its desire to have shops look"natural,"itsexpectation that shopping would befestive and gay. This is not to mention the possibiiityof regularlyscheduled artshowsand musicalconcerts, community outreachprograms, and theceremonialactivities - which occur at the center. In short, the mall tries to he sensitive to the needs-cultural, social, and religious-of the whole person. The malls' religious symbolism and the ritual life found in them imply that for many people they are "real" placesplaces where there is a certain sense of reality about the sacred and the humanly meaningful experiences found there. In1983,James Rousecommented on the favorable response The New Religious Image of Urban America . 145 to the large shopping center and to the more recent festival marketplace. He attributed their success in part to society's reaction to the "fractured living" of suburban subdivisions. It is also a reaction he said, "to the high-tech computerized, televised, cellophane-wrapped chain store society which has emerged in recent years-a reaction which has generated a yearning for the warm, the intimate, and the personal relationships with merchants-owners behind the counter-a yearning for the color, fragrance, texture, and variety of the true marketplace."' This reference contains a veiled criticism of the large regional malls which encircle our cities. Despite its best efforts to recall the village square, the EMAC all too often is perceived as sterile, antiseptic, and"cellophane-wrapped." The atmosphereis not sufficiently warm, intimate, and personal. The"yearning" for these qualities is more fully satisfiedor so it is hoped-by the festival marketplace, which is now an identifiable shopping area and not just the ambience of a large mall. The festival marketplace is presently understood tobea smaller, moreemotionallyand physicallymanageable space than the acres of shops anchored byfour or five department stores. People have an ontological vocation-that is, their very beingcalls out for the personal, for experiences on a more human scale. What are theshortcomings of the large EMAC-theshortcomingswhich , in somecases, forced thecreationof a smaller, more organic shopping center? Why do we keep wanting to find Be1 Air in Lenox Square? Why do we keep looking for that corner drugstore to hangout in? From a religiousstudies pointof view...