The Clash song, " Lost in the Supermarket" comes to mind. As does Don DeLillo's White Noise, his description of the overwhelming
- Stuff is huge. I was looking for a pint of milk for cooking. The only thing available were 1/2-gallon containers. Not one quart or pint container in the whole aisle.
- Incredible variety. You can see how delicately brands are delineated from one another. In the dairy aisle: whole, 1%, 2%, fat-free, fat-free organic milk.. that's not to mention almond, soy...
- Plastic. On everything. Packaged to the max, vacuum-wrapped and tightly bound. A FrontLine I saw years ago had a French advertising consultant talking about how, in France, plastic packaging leads to associations with "the morgue, body bags, death, decay." (Maybe more appropriate for bleu cheese than others.) I laughed at that until the vibe I got today.
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