Shopping for Pleasure & The Art of Necessity

May 30

John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure.”

John Jordan, “The Art of Necessity: The Subversive Imagination of Anti-Riot Protest and Reclaim the Streets.”

 In Shopping for Pleasure, Fiske talks about how the mall and shopping is a form of cultural resistance for women, opposed to the masculinity of the non-domestic spaces in the U.S. The author talks about various slogans of female consumption, like “a women’s place is in the mall” and various other saying that treat shopping and the mall as a religious space for women. Fiske talks about how the mall is a place that caters to women and offers freedom from domestic constraints. I do agree that the power women have as consumers is liberating in that women control markets by being the primary consumers of households; however, the author doesn’t spend that much time talking about the source of income that the liberation and power to consume is coming from.

In The Art of Necessity, John Jordan talks about the anti-road protests of residents who would be displaced by a massive road project in London. The protests formed unconventional road protests that utilized art as the main source of power and political agenda. I think this article is one of the first in the class to display full acts of resistance, rather than everyday acts of resistance. Art has always been deeply tied to its own place in history and social movements, and I think it’s great that this was actually discussed because contemporary art is really given less attention and thought to have less meaning in popular culture then traditional politics.