Supermarket Showcase: A Journey into the American Food Shopping Experience

PLAY AUDIO HERE!

1. Introduction (00:00 - 01:03) Hey! Be sure to listen to the MP3 which can be accessed above. You may need to click to activate the ActiveX control. In the margins are some updates and notes to the original production soundtrack (narration recorded in 1998). The script is not here but may appear on the Resources page.
2. The Consumer: A New Kind of Hunter Gatherer in a World of Commodities (01:04 - 03:57)
3. Piggly Wiggly and Beyond: The Evolution of the Self Service Supermarket (03:58 - 7:25)
4. Shopping is a Pleasure! (Musical Break) (07:26 - 7:49)
5. The Shopping Cart (07:50 - 09:39) This section also appears as a YouTube video on the TV page. This is a holdover from the original video. Sylvan Goldman's invention was really the "nesting" shopping cart, allowing the carts to fit together, thus valuable floor space was saved. The children's cart has been around since the 1950s. Check out the Resources page and TV page for more on the shopping cart.
6. Self Service: Consumer as Laborer (9:40 - 10:54) Since this was recorded in 1998, the self service checkout has become widespread- at Home Depot, and at "rough" supermarkets, the ones that emphasize a feeling of "savings"
7. Frozen Food and Produce (10:55 - 13:08) It's really "irradiation". Check out the Resources page for some more detail into all of this. Frozen food seems to have taken a hit in the past ten years with an emphasis on "freshness". But again, how did all this stuff get to the supermarket?
8. "Nature" vs. Technology and the Symbolic World of Packages (13:09 - 15:20) This still seems to hold up pretty well after ten years, although the cereals don't promise the eight essential vitamins so much anymore. Check out the Resources page for a link to info about the future of the banana, pictured here.
9. Check it out (15:21 - 16:52)
10. Mini-marts and specialty stores (16:53 - 17:45) 2008 update: Well, it's somewhat the same today as when this was recorded, but the Hindi videos you can probably get online now (or on cable or satellite provider) and the basmati rice can be had at just about any supermarket. But there are still plenty of symbolic rewards for shopping at ethnic or specialty stores.
11. Regional chains and community based markets (17:46 - 18:47) What isn't specifically mentioned here are cooperatives and farmers markets, which are very popular, at least as an "idea" among certain segments of the American population. Also, major "health food" supermarkets like Whole Foods and Wild Oats have staked out a big claim to the supermarket market in the past ten years. These can best be seen as "smooth" supermarkets which promise an upscale commodified shopping experience that appears on the surface to be "eco-friendly" or "health conscious".
12. Big Business / Hypermarkets (18:48 - 21:14) Is Wal-Mart SuperCenter really a hypermarket? Not exactly. Wal-Mart's original foray into this French invention was "Hypermart USA" in the early 1990s. It was bigger than the current SuperCenters, which pale in a size to a typical Carrefour. The hypermarket is expanding rapidly into developing countries, although two Philadelphia area Carrefour stores quickly failed in the 1990s in the U.S. Check out the TV page for global examples of Carrefour.
13. The Future (21:15 - 23:09) Needless to say, there have been many new developments since this was recorded. Check out the Resources page for more details.
14. Original Closing Credits (Musical Break) (23:10 - 25:31) Photo collected from the Internet: Pennsylvania ShopRite, April 2008.