vienna

and becomes the endless transformation of fashion. But this dramatisation
also has a more tangible dimension. The staging of an ancient
Egyptian scenario – a scenario evoking associations to mummies
and pharaohs – turns the show window into the stage of a low cost
production. Instead of prestigious garments and gold jewellery, we see
transparent plastic and gold-sprayed pottery. But beside artistic
concerns, we also found a critique of the retail theatre. Wolfgang Fritz
Haug was among the critical voices against the commodity theatre.
He described shop fittings as “aesthetic weapons” in the fight for the
consumer. And he commented the trend among the stores to create
stages for their commodities as follows:
“The exhibition of commodities, their inspection, the act of purchase,
and all the associated moments, are integrated into the concept
of one theatrical total work of art which plays upon the public’s
willingness to buy. Thus the salesroom is designed as a stage, purpose-built
to convey entertainment to its audience that will stimulate
a heightened desire to spend […] This aesthetic innovation of the
salesroom into a ‘stage for entertainment’ on which a variety of commodities
are arranged to reflect the audiences’ dreams to overcome
their reservations, and provoke a purchase was a pioneering exercise
at the time marked by general change in the selling trend.” 504
Haug included the way goods are presented, and how this
presentation has changed the shopping experience, in his critique of
commodity aesthetics. The goods are dispersed in the dramatisation;
the consumer no longer faces a product but a scenario. 505 For the
seasonal sale, the nullification of the commodity is the overall
concept. No other product is used, and the pure scenario remains.
The seasonal sale is the radical formulation of the tendency by which
the things disappear in the scenario so that only wishes and fears
remain as the basis of the dramatisation. Use value and exchange
value of the commodity transcend into the fear of the new fashion
trend’s arrival. Surprisingly, more and more contemporary writers are
now corroborating the “new” trend of the shop as theatre:
“The new entertainment twists, caught in phrases like ‘retail theatre’
and ‘experiential’ selling, gives the old bricks-and–mortar setting
an edge.” 506
504 Haug (1986:69).
505 It should be noted that the use of scenarios is not so new. It goes back to the very birth of the big department stores.
506 Molotch (2003:157).
200