Slow Burn Presents: Decoder Ring – "The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)"

Date: July 26, 2022
Host: Willa Paskin (Decoder Ring), with Susan Matthews (Slow Burn)
Featured Guest: Alexandra Lange, author of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

Episode Overview

This episode of Slow Burn presents an edition of Decoder Ring, delving into the cultural history, evolving identity, and contradictory fate of the American shopping mall. With architecture critic Alexandra Lange as the expert guide, the episode follows the mall from its utopian origins, through its status as a social nexus, to its supposed decline—and questions reports of its “death.” Through personal anecdotes, expert analysis, and reflections on how malls shaped, divided, and continue to adapt to American society, the show examines what’s lost—and what just might survive—if malls disappear.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Decoder Ring’s Approach and Season Preview

• Host Willa Paskin describes Decoder Ring as:
  "A narrative podcast that is kind of fun. I mean, we're serious too, but we're also fun. We look at culture and pop culture... from the 20th century and just try to answer questions about it." (Willa Paskin, 01:30)
• Preview of episodes on Mae West, a forgotten 1970s poet, and, today, on the fate of the shopping mall.

The Mall in American Life: Stories from Mall-Goers

• Multiple guests share formative mall memories: adolescent rebellions, style experiments, and the food court as a news source or a stage for social antics.
  • "I remember going to Mrs. Field's Cookies. Actually. That's where I learned that Tupac Shakur had died while I was, like, waiting in line for chocolate chip cookies." (Sabrina Depest, 05:16)

The Birth of the Mall: Victor Gruen’s Vision

• Victor Gruen, Viennese architect and socialist cabaret member, escapes the Nazis, lands in America, and transforms retail and suburban planning.
  • "Architect as a creative expression will die if it cannot create conditions within which it can be meaningful." (Victor Gruen, archival, 08:47)
• Gruen’s insight: Suburban sprawl and car culture demanded a new central commercial space—a “third place” between home and work.
• The first malls (Northland, Southdale) were conceived as community hubs, echoing the European plaza and “cafe culture” even inside harsh weather climates.

Invention, Expansion, and the Mall’s Social Fabric

• Northland (1954): Outdoor, art-adorned, amenity-rich, designed for single parking and promenading.
• Southdale (1956): The first indoor, temperature- and environment-controlled mall—a “Garden Court of Perpetual Spring.”
  • "It was just kind of thrilling as a kid, and especially in the middle of winter in Minnesota. It was just a really needed respite of just seeing people." (Heather, 19:53)

Expanding Appeal: From Women and Families to Teens

• Boom Years (1960-1980): Indoor malls proliferate, later adding the innovation of the food court—key to making the mall a teen social hub.
  • On food courts:
    "The food court was first introduced in New Jersey in the early 1970s as a way to keep people at the mall for longer." (Willa Paskin, 21:32)
• Films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless cement the mall as a site of adolescent autonomy and suburban culture.
  • "The big thing was sort of to walk around and pretend like we could buy things, you know, when obviously we can't. We're so, like, wasting the salesperson's life." (Katie Shepherd, 25:04)

Critique, Decline, and the “Mall is Dead” Narrative

• Cultural Backlash: By the 1970s, malls’ blandness and commercialism become objects of architectural and cultural sneers.
  • "The mall was where women and their kids went shopping in increasingly bland buildings." (Willa Paskin, 26:05)
  • "I compare them to shopping bags... a big plain brown or tan box with a giant department store logo on one end." (Alexandra Lange, 26:34)
• Unintended Consequences: Instead of counteracting sprawl, malls fueled it, contributing to downtown decline and segregation (white flight).
• The Gruen Transfer:
  A psychological shift from task-based shopping to wandering, facilitated by the mall’s environment and design.
  • "The Gruen Transfer is the moment when you're at your mall with the shopping list and suddenly you don't care about the shopping list anymore and you're just browsing..." (Alexandra Lange, 28:01)
• Pop Culture Critique:
  • Dawn of the Dead (1979) uses the mall to illustrate "the mindless excesses of a society gone mad." (Willa Paskin, 29:29)

Competitive Saturation and Real Decline

• Overmalling: By the 1980s, malls proliferate beyond sustainable demand, leading to cannibalization and the emergence of racially and economically stratified ("white mall / Black mall") spaces.
• Mall of America: The apotheosis of the mall as theme park and tourist destination. Some critics dub the resulting phenomenon the "Journey Transfer," where entertainment, not just shopping, becomes the focus.

Economic & Technological Shifts

• The 2000s Onward: Department stores—crucial anchor tenants—struggle, as discounters (Walmart, Target) and e-commerce take market share.
  • "When they fail, fewer customers visit, which leads to other store closures, which leads to fewer customers, and on and on…” (Willa Paskin, 33:07)
• Many malls are emptied, photographed and filmed in states of lingering decay—images imbued with unexpected poignancy.
  • "You won't find lots of people using the word elegiac about a mall unless it's dying. It's like, only when it's dying, can the mall get any respect?" (Willa Paskin, 36:27)

Is the Mall Really Dead?

• Survivors & Reinventions:
  • Alexandra Lange pushes back:
    "Even with the predicted number of malls dying over the next five years, there will still be seven or 800 malls in the US. That is still a lot of malls." (Alexandra Lange, 37:08)
  • Transformations:
    Malls today increasingly reflect the demographic and cultural diversity of their suburbs—Korean, Vietnamese, Central American “ethno-burbs” with thriving shopping, dining, and gathering spaces, or are redeveloped as mixed-use “mini-cities.”
• A Humanist Argument:
  • "Sure it would be great if the public realm was providing this... But that is not the reality. And in that breach, we have them all. So let's respect it." (Alexandra Lange, 39:42)

Epilogue: The Legacy of Victor Gruen

• Gruen, dismayed by what malls became, is the subject of a new musical; in its climactic number, he comes to accept the accidental, but real, beauty of these spaces as stages for ordinary moments and young love.
  • "Maybe, like, I did create something that, you know, no matter what the ideal is, there is human life going on here, and that's something beautiful in itself." (Ethan Blake, 41:51)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote & Attribution | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:30 | “Decoder Ring is a narrative podcast that is kind of fun. I mean, we're serious too, but we're also fun.” — Willa Paskin | | 05:16 | "That's where I learned that Tupac Shakur had died while I was, like, waiting in line for chocolate chip cookies." — Sabrina Depest | | 08:47 | "Architecture as a creative expression will die if it cannot create conditions within which it can be meaningful." — Victor Gruen (archive) | | 10:29 | “He decided that you needed a big sign. Basically the architecture of the building didn't matter so much... you needed neon lights and color...” — Alexandra Lange | | 13:07 | “The old department stores... were where people went to look at the latest fashions... They actually pioneered the use of escalators and elevators and air conditioning.” — Alexandra Lange | | 21:32 | “The food court was first introduced in New Jersey in the early 1970s as a way to keep people at the mall for longer.” — Willa Paskin | | 25:04 | "The big thing was sort of to walk around and pretend like we could buy things, you know, when obviously we can't." — Katie Shepherd | | 28:01 | "The Gruen Transfer is the moment when you're at your mall with the shopping list and suddenly you don't care about the shopping list anymore..." — Alexandra Lange | | 36:27 | "You won't find lots of people using the word elegiac about a mall unless it's dying. It's like, only when it's dying, can the mall get any respect?” — Willa Paskin | | 39:42 | “Sure it would be great if the public realm was providing this, and sure it would be great if main streets... were still filled with shops that people wanted to go to. But that is not the reality. And in that breach, we have them all. So let's respect it.” — Alexandra Lange | | 41:51 | "Maybe... I did create something that... there is human life going on here, and that's something beautiful in itself." — Ethan Blake (Victor Gruen musical, epilogue) |

Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• [04:34] — Introduction of personal mall stories, setting the emotional context
• [06:10 - 08:58] — The story of Victor Gruen, his dreams, and the architecture of community
• [13:00 - 17:25] — Evolution from department stores to planned suburban “third places”
• [21:08 - 23:48] — Emergence of the food court and the mall as a youth space
• [26:05 - 30:45] — The sociopolitical consequences; critique of the mall, the Gruen Transfer, and Dawn of the Dead
• [32:46 - 34:52] — The impact of economic and retail changes on mall viability and memory
• [36:27 - 39:42] — The “elegiac” cultural narrative of the dying mall and arguments against writing malls off for dead
• [41:26 - 42:59] — Meeting Ethan Blake and hearing about the Victor Gruen musical; the symbolic acceptance of the mall’s real, human legacy

Tone & Style

• The episode is thoughtful, richly nostalgic, occasionally humorous, and emphasizes storytelling from multiple viewpoints; it moves fluidly between expert analysis, cultural critique, and lived experience.
• Even at its most critical, the tone remains empathetic toward the mall as both a failed utopia and a persistently needed third place in American life.

Conclusion

"The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)" presents the shopping mall as both an architectural and social experiment—one that failed to fully live up to its utopian roots but nonetheless succeeded in creating a stage for American life. The episode challenges the death-of-the-mall narrative, highlighting adaptation, reinvention, and the enduring need for communal gathering spaces. As Willa Paskin and Alexandra Lange urge, perhaps now is the moment to recognize not just what was lost, but what—despite everything—survives.