The New Shopping Malls Make Possible The

The New Shopping Malls Make Possible The Synthesis Of All Consumer Activities, Not Least Of Which Are Shopping, Flirting With Objects, Idle Wandering, And All The Permutations Of These.

The Surprises Of Thought Are Like Those Of Love: They Wear Out. But Here Too You Can Carry On For A Long Time Doing Your Conjugal Duty.

The Skylines Lit Up At Dead Of Night, The Air-conditioning Systems Cooling Empty Hotels In The Desert And Artificial Light In The Middle Of The Day All Have Something Both Demented And Admirable About Them. The Mindless Luxury Of A Rich Civilization, And Yet Of A Civilization Perhaps As Scared To See The Lights Go Out As Was The Hunter In His Primitive Night.

A Sociosphere Of Contact, Control, Persuasion And Dissuasion, Of Exhibitions Of Inhibitions In Massive Or Homeopathic Doses...: This Is Obscenity. All Structures Turned Inside Out And Exhibited, All Operations Rendered Visible. In America This Goes All The Way From The Bewildering Network Of Aerial Telephone And Electric Wiresto The Concrete Multiplication Of All The Bodily Functions In The Home, The Litany Of Ingredients On The Tiniest Can Of Food, The Exhibition Of Income Or Iq.

This False Distance Is Present Everywhere: In Spy Films, In Godard, In Modern Advertising, Which Uses It Continually As A Cultural Allusion. It Is Not Really Clear In The End Whether This 'cool' Smile Is The Smile Of Humour Or That Of Commercial Complicity. This Is Also The Case With Pop, And Its Smile Ultimately Encapsulates All Its Ambiguity: It Is Not The Smile Of Critical Distance, But The Smile Of Collusion