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Popular Culture Review
world’s largest indoor amusement park, the world’s largest
indoor golf course, the world’s largest indoor wave pool, the
only landlocked full-size replica of the Santa Maria, a larger
fleet of operable submarines than in the Canadian Navy, and
nearly 1000 stores and services (Davis 1).
The WEM has become the ultimate in the fusing of shopping, entertainment, and
leisure by evolving into one of the most popular tourist attractions in Canada.
The fusion of shopping with leisure and entertainment and vice versa has another,
more recent, history that can be summed up in one word: Disneyfication. This
idea suggests that shopping, entertainment, and leisure can be rolled into one
concept.
The notion of “themes” derives from Disney’s emphasis on
merchandising in the most friendly and non-threatening of surroundings. Today,
it can run the gamut from restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe to environments
such as Playdium. Participation is encouraged not just by purchasing and
consuming, but also by being a part of the total environment (Betsky 135-139).
What occurs in this blurring of boundaries—deliberate, in many cases—
is the creation of what Guy Julier has termed “retail-tainment sites” (Julier 149).
The ultimate extension of this is the entertainment stores or “e-stores,” such as
Nike Town or the Warner Brothers Stores. These environments are where people
go to spend leisure time, but also to buy products. Like Nike Town in Chicago,
Ralph Lauren’s store in the Rhinelander Mansion in New York City has become a
“must-see” site when visiting Manhattan. As Jeffrey Tractenberg has written,
although they were not buying, customers at the Ralph Lauren store “looked
happier than many leaving a nearby $7-a-ticket movie theaters. Here admission
was free. If nothing else, the entertainment value was outstanding” (Tractenberg
7, 8). When these structures start to become tourist destinations and “must-see”
places, such as some large and fancy supermarkets (for example, Wegmans in
Rochester, New York), the dialectic is complete. No longer are you simply
shopping for food, a basic human requirement, but now you can sample the most
exotic foods from all over the world in an environment that rivals the museum.
One is now entertained at the supermarket. The same can be said for visiting the
toy store.
A significant reason for the appeal of these environments is the magical
appeal that they offer to people raised on the ethos of consumerism. The magic of
Disney is translated, quite readily, to the magic of the Disney store. These
developments have been aided by the production of public relations products that
reinforce the idea of shopping as a wonderful, acceptable, and almost essential
experience. A significant trend in the past few years that accentuates this has
been the rise of glossy corporate product magazines that masquerade as
information media but that are in reality slick catalogues for various products.