SHOPPING CENTRES AND HOLLYWOOD

Hollywood has always had a love-hate relationship with shopping centres. However, there’s more hate in it than love. As film locations, shopping centres are invaluable. They are bright and spacious places where characters of all ages and classes can credibly cross paths. Most films, however, imply that they’re too sanitized, synthetic and materialistic to take seriously, and these are the reasons why Hollywood hates them. An example of a shopping centre film is George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” (1978). Much of the movie was filmed in the Monroeville Mall in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shopping centres weren’t brand new at the time, but they were still novel enough that Romero felt the need to explain what they were. After a zombie virus turned most of Philadelphia’s population into undead cannibals, four of the survivors escape from the city in a helicopter when they spot a hangar-like structure surrounded by a car park. “What is it?” asks one of the survivors in the helicopter. “Looks like a... shopping centre,” says another. “One of those big indoor malls.” It turns out to be a perfect sanctuary (not only for this film but for most Hollywood films), offering lockable doors, plenty of room, and bounteous supplies. “You should see all the great stuff we got, Frannie,” marvels one character, after the four of them have moved in. “All kinds of stuff! This place is terrific!” Some films that idealise shopping centres are teen movies because they imply that the shopping centre is the only place for teens to see and be seen. After all, a shopping centre is a huge, featureless building from the outside. Inside, it has background music, glaring electric lights, and an array of props (fountains, palm trees, folksy stalls) which are supposed to evoke an outdoor setting. In many respects, a shopping centre is almost identical to a Hollywood sound stage. The main purposes of both shopping centres and film studios are much the same: to spirit people away from the complications of the real world and into a shiny realm of aspirational artifice. If Hollywood films have a problem with shopping centres, maybe it’s because they’re too close for comfort.