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BENJAMIN EDWARDS | WRITINGS A Day in the World of Wal-Mart, 2001 | ||||||||||||||||
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BENJAMIN EDWARDS | WRITINGS A Day in the World of Wal-Mart, 2001 | ||||||||||||||||
| October 15, 2001 |
| Visit as many Wal-Marts as possible in one day by following the rule: “Go to the nearest Wal-Mart from your present location.” |
| Inside each store, count as many objects as possible while noting their countries of origin. |
| 9:16 AM |
| With a pen held discreetly in my right hand, I browse the men’s clothing department. A shirt from Pakistan, socks made in the USA, Scooby-Doo underwear from Honduras…I write P, U, H on the palm of my left hand. As I walk in one direction, I hear Lite Pop, but 10 yards away is a customer testimonial, and another 10 yards I hear an “associate” talking about how much she loves to work at Wal-Mart. I look up to see small speakers hanging from the ceiling. Just above, the security cameras in their black hemispheres are omnipresent: it does not seem possible to find a blind spot. The customers wander around in a daze, perhaps overwhelmed by sheer quantity. One confused man asks me if I have seen a certain item. He walks off, still befuddled. I drift into housewares and remember that I need a mini ironing board. I snap into the mechanical mode of the shopper for a moment before regaining my detached awareness. |
| Towels from Korea, shower curtains from China, small pillows from Mexico…K, C, M…. Suddenly I hear cheering and clapping and discover that I have caught the end of the morning Wal-Mart pep rally. I am transfixed, until they disband and swarm in my direction, at which point I duck into a narrow aisle of picture frames. I head over to China. C, C, C…I cannot find a single toy that is not made in China. The rapid succession of C’s quickly fills up the rest of my palm, then my fingers and my wrist. The PA calls “Security, scan zone 16”. Where is zone 16? Is that me? I move over to pet supplies for a few minutes before heading out. |
| 9:04 PM |
| By the eighth and last Wal-Mart of the day, twelve hours later, my hyper-aware drift has been numbed to a walk-through as standardized as the store itself. I am no longer struck by the quantity of items but their consistency. The departments are consistent—this is to be expected—but their spatial layout within each store seems identical. The objects are identical. I have seen the same shirt from Pakistan all day, eight times in the same place (or different places?) The one surprise: I find a brown, six-foot extension cord, usually made in China, but in this store it’s made in the Philippines. |
| I walk out of the store just before closing. For a moment I forget where I am—which parking lot is this? Which town? On my walk back to the car I think about all of these now uncomfortably familiar objects. Were the same objects I saw in eight separate stores made in the same place at the same time? Where are all of these things going after their brief life sitting there straightened and ordered on the shelves? From the car I look back at the store and I can see the glowing interior extending back into space. If each object inside has its own timeline with production as past and consumption as future, this box seems like the junction, and suspension, of those thousands of strands, and like a tightly wound knot it holds these objects in an immaculate, though temporary, alignment. |
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(Click on map for full-size image) |
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Uniondale, NY |
9:16 AM | |||||
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Centereach, NY |
11:02 AM | |||||
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Middle Island, NY |
12:09 PM | |||||
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Branford, CT |
3:49 PM | |||||
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Derby, CT |
5:01 PM | |||||
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Shelton, CT |
6:15 PM | |||||
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Naugatuck, CT |
7:49 PM | |||||
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Wallingford, CT |
9:04 PM |
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