George Romero and the B-52's Go to the Mall

In the song Funplex, the B-52's offer their satirical musical commentary on the artificial consumer mecca known as the mall.

Remember the shopping mall in its heyday? It was the poor man's Disney World for the superficial, materialistic hordes of consumers who were still dreaming the American dream of being able to buy all of the ingredients of "true happiness" under one sprawling roof.

Nowhere was this trance-like out of control consumerism for all things bright and shiny portrayed so truthfully, than in George Romero's 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead. This film, on the surface is a zombie horror flick. However, it is much more horrific if you look beneath the genre packaging at the not too subtle subtext to see the mirror of honesty held up to our empty consumer-based society.

Dawn of the Dead reveals the painful truth in all its gory (pun intended) about us as a culture. We are represented on the screen as roving mobs of zombies stumbling mindlessly through an American mall in the all too familiar habitat of piped in music and inadequate lighting, as they literally consume anything they can get their hands on in an effort to satisfy their insatiable appetite for more.

The malls are still around today, but they are beginning to die off and lose their once enticing luster as a result of an economy as empty as the dream on which it is based. However, there will probably always be a significant segment of society that will still flock to the confines of their favorite mall, where thinking is optional and plastic is the currency of adulthood. They will be the ones wandering in a zombie-like trance toward glitzy, overpriced merchandise which they believe will bring them happiness, oblivious to the piped in music and the hypnotic humming of the inadequate lights above.

*I worked retail for several years, including many retail Christmas seasons. I can honestly say as a veteran/victim of this experience, George Romero was onto something.