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What is a Whirl-Mart?
The action is comprised of a group of anti-shoppers ranging in size from 1 to 50 members. The ritual consists of activists/actors arriving at a Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us or another chain superstore at 12-noon on the first Saturday or Sunday of the month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. Eventually, all of the participants locate one another and form a single-file chain of anti-shoppers which weaves, wanders, and whirls throughout the store for about an hour. It is a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling. It is a symbolic display of the will to resist the capitalist ideology.
'Whirl-Mart' is an experiment that can be approached from several different angles. As a work of art, it examines and blurs the boundaries that have been established between performance art, protest, living sculpture, and direct action. As an action of resistance, it utilizes the power of silence in occupying private consumer-dominated space with a symbolic spectacle. As a ceremony, it is a counter-ritual to shopping that transforms the super-store and its wall-to-wall array of products into a surreal and colorful cathedral. And what the heck-- it's just darned fun!
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Senorina Fernandez is waiting for Ogden city officials to condemn her
property so she can challenge the action in court. The city wants
Fernandez's home and other properties to make way for a Super Wal-Mart.
Courts are starting to take the property owners' side.
The parents of a 13-year-old girl are suing US supermarket
giant Wal-Mart over a CD by rock group Evanescence that contains swear
words. The lawsuit, filed in Washington County, alleges Wal-Mart
deceived customers by not putting warning labels on the cover.
I, for one, do not believe this is a so-called "frivolous" lawsuit...
Wal-Mart has consistently pushed the idea that they have so-called
"conservative values", and that they're ever vigilant in keeping
offending materials out of their store, when they clearly have not been consistent in their practices...
Wal-Mart seems bent on weilding control over & censoring the games
of small video game companies who have little choice in the matter, if
they want their game to sell. Yet they had no problem selling 7 million
copies of Grand Theft Auto 3, in all it's violent & sexy glory, at nearly $50 dollars a pop.
It's about time someone called them on their willy-nilly, profit-based,
so-called "censorship", and claims of upholding 'conservative values'.
And I think it is misguided to think this is a free speech issue... Boing Boing: Walmart sued over Thoughtless "fuck'
(But then, to be fair, the Boing Boing crowd could probably frame a story about toe lint removal as a free speech issue.)
If people think Wal-Mart is on their side of the free speech issue, they're whistling into the wind while tilting at a pretty menacing windmill.
Residents of a development are upset that Wal-Mart could
build a 212,000-square-foot supercenter practically in their back yards.
...
But those who purchased a home in Shepherd's Grove never thought a
Wal-Mart would stake out their land. Wal-Mart's property would abut
some homes in the subdivision.
"If they moved Wal-Mart in here, I doubt anybody would come in and buy
these places unless they were practically giving them away," said
80-year-old Bob Hansen, who moved in the same time as Martin.
Their message to Wal-Mart: We don’t want a supercenter on our turf.
Wal-Mart officials disagree.
They say White River Township needs a Wal-Mart, and even people against the supercenter likely will shop there.
At this year's StoreXpo convention in New York City,
in-store marketing specialists showcase their point-of-purchase
strategies, displays designed to spur retail impulse buys. NPR's Robert
Smith reports.
All Things Considered, December 2, 2004 · For years, church
groups have been fighting to play down the retail aspects of Christmas
and play up the holiday's religious significance. Commentator John
Boykin shares their frustration, but not their solution. He proposes making Christmas into a gift-giving secular holiday, and move what little of Christ is left over to Easter.
Emphasis added.
You know, I think the Pope would really go for that. And Adbusters would probably jump on board, too. The anti-Santa brigades would also be loving it.
In retrospect, I'm not sure how much of that sentence is snark,
and how much is ironic truth. This decade is just as bad as the 90s.
Wal-Mart says sales for November are up by just a small fraction this
year, a lackluster start to the holiday season that may be attributable
to a difference in the retail chain's pricing strategy.
Wal-Mart didn't "play the loss leader game" this year, and lost.
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