If you utter the words ‘Merry Hill’ to anybody born and
raised in the Black Country you will inevitably get the reply: “Ugh. Merry
HELL!” This has become a running joke where I’m from refers to how busy the
shopping centre can get. And as a worker at Merry Hill, some days, I’d have
to agree.
In order to illustrate the points made by Arthur Berger in
his article ‘The Objects of Affection’, I wish to explore how Merry Hill offers
consumerism as an ‘experience’. It currently holds 309 stores, offers 10,000
car parking spaces and even has flats and apartments built on the centre. (Yes.
Some people would actually want to live in a shopping centre…)
In 19th Century Paris, where the first department
store was invented, there were quite a few concerns including the fact that independent
stores were unable to compete with corporate brands. This can be said for ‘Merry
Hill’ as there are very little small family own stores (if any!) And businesses
that start-up here are usually boarded up within a couple of months if they are
not a major high street store.
In terms of how Merry Hill offer their services as an
experience is evident by the amount of shops it holds. It also has many restaurants,
eateries and the bars dotted around the centre. There is also an ‘Odeon’ on the
complex so an entire day can be spent at Merry Hill by shopping, seeing a film,
having dinner, maybe a drink at Whetherspoons and then more shopping! The
retails shops don’t close until 9pm, so customers have the benefit of having 12
hours a day to shop.
I’ve got to admit, spending most of my time at Merry Hill,
it does promote false desires as put forward by many cultural theorists. The
amount of times I’ve ventured up there to buy one thing and walked past TopShop and got distracted… Needless to
say I end up arriving home with a lore more shopping bags than I had bargained
for…
