Jasper Mall itself was going to do a festival run (and had just premiered at Slamdance Film Festival) before the world changed in March.īefore then, Jasper Mall was just a good-natured documentary about the way retail culture has changed and those left behind in old spaces long and at large abandoned. So much is gone now, and in ways unimagined just months ago. Generally speaking, in-person retail is irrevocably damaged. With the pandemic, mall culture seems to have been dealt a death blow. Many of them hate living in Jasper and want to spread their wings elsewhere. Mall-store employees who appear in the documentary early and apparently leave for better opportunities later discuss the quiet dignities and indignities of retail work. The landscape is ever-shifting, and never in the direction of mall culture’s former glory. Penney, too, despite strong sales performance. But, he mentions, the mall where his wife works a few hours away will be closing its J.C. The mall’s economic situation continues to deteriorate, and McClelland mentions optimistically the owner might have work for him at another location if this falls through. Private stores relocate or owners retire. More businesses leave - including the Subway, which means McClelland has to find a new food vendor to service customers and tenants. He helps find unique solutions to the low attendance like a parking lot carnival, church sermons in the larger public spaces and the encouragement of mall walkers and retiree recreation.Ģ018 is a rough year for the Jasper Mall. McClelland does his best to attract new tenants but explains the challenges of convincing a potential big name (like Victoria’s Secret) to come into a mall where stores keep closing down and leaving town. “I left a zoo, and now I’m in a jungle,” he says. In a past life, McClelland was a private zoo operator (think Tiger King, but not totally insane). The main character is Mike McClelland, the mall’s jack-of-all-trades superintendent who keeps it running smoothly. It’s effective, empathetic storytelling that elevates the subject matter. Unlike many “Dead Mall” videos, Jasper Mall mixes the wistfulness of times past with human portraits of the people who keep the mall alive. Thomason and Whitcomb capture 2018 through the perspective of several local characters: a shop owner whose flower shop is on its last legs a teenage girl going through the throes of first love and a retiree in ailing health who enjoys games of dominoes at the mall with his buddies all feature heavily. The documentary was filmed over the course of 2018 as the mall tried to rebrand and recover from the loss. It lost its two primary anchor stores, Kmart and J.C. Jasper is located about 40 miles outside Birmingham, Alabama. The narrator tells the history of a mall, such as when the chain stores left, and notable events while pointing the camera at kitschy architectural elements or closed arcades.Īt first, Jasper Mall seems like a feature-length exercise in “Dead Mall” discovery, but it turns out directors Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb have a little more narrative finesse up their sleeves. Occasionally the videos involve trespassing on abandoned or condemned properties, but the majority are just daytime visits to open-but-desolate malls where a few shoppers still mill about, looking in the windows of locally owned establishments. Some malls are worse off than others or offer a different level of access. “Dead Mall” videos usually feature one or two hosts who travel around the country visiting new locations. By the time COVID-19 hit this year, most malls were already on death’s door. Newly developed boutique malls closer to wealthy suburban enclaves made financial woes worse. Online shopping and changes to recreation dealt massive blows to many malls in the early 21 st century. The United States is littered with the derelict husks of a consumer culture now long past. A few months back, I spent a good couple of days watching them while working, curious about my own local spots at Lafayette and Washington Square Mall in Indianapolis. “Dead Mall” videos constitute an entire genre of YouTube programming about intrepid youths who explore slowly dying shopping malls, lamenting their own nostalgia for the 1980s aesthetic and memories of childhood Saturdays well spent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |