CHARGE! Ahead

by Mike Gange

Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping
by Pamela Klaffke
Arsenal Pulp Press, $22.95, 231 pages

You might remember when shopping meant going to the centre of town, to stores like "Woolworth’s Five and Dime." You might also remember that the "K" in K-Mart came from the Kresge family, which started the chain. You might even remember when most liquor stores across the country provided clerks who served customers from behind the counter, unlike today’s self serve outlets. You might remember, too, when stores had real doors, not sliding, retractable windows. And if any of those jog your memory, you might recognize how shopping has become a past time, a form of entertainment, a place where we gather to talk to our neighbours and rendez vous with friends.

Calgary writer Pamela Klaffke has a keen eye for seeing these trends and has written about them in Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping. Her book is part historical essay, part easy-going journalism articles, and part pop-culture tidbits. Klaffke, the literary editor of the Calgary Herald and a columnist who writes about popular culture trends, writes in a style that makes her many vignettes humourous, entertaining and enlightening.

For example, Klaffke writes about how some shop girls at the turn of the century got the reputation of being young, naive women of easy virtue because they were attractive, well groomed, and wore make-up in the day time. A Chicago report at the time urged them to return to the suburbs. She also writes about how former Dupont Chemical employee Earl Tupper invented Tupperware in 1946, but that it took a single mom from Detroit to recognize the potential for home parties that made the product a household name and helped ring up $25 million in sales by 1951. And Klaffke points out how the universal product code – sometimes referred to as the UPC or bar code – has been around since the late 1940's but that it was first envisioned as a circular device rather than a combination of lines and numbers.

Klaffke explores why we love shopping and how it has changed, exploding several long held myths along the way. Here is one she takes apart: last Christmas, most men did have their shopping finished long before Christmas Eve. And she is not afraid to dish it out too, taking on conspicuous consumers like former Philippines’ first lady Imelda Marcos, who reputedly had more than a 1000 pairs of shoes, and pop artist Andy Warhol, who saved every receipt for tax write offs, even those for magazines. Klaffke also writes about Bob Barker and the CBS show The Price is Right, catalogues, home shopping channels and manufacturer’s outlets. Her list of topics also includes info-mercials, celebrity endorsements, kleptomaniacs, flea markets, pawn brokers, cyber shopping, elevator music, male shoppers and the future of shopping.

Although Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping is generally light and easy going, it is not without a serious side too. A chapter called "The Dark Side of Shopping" blows the whistle on a Stanford University study to control compulsive shopping through medication. Klaffke points out how the funding for the study was provided by the same pharmaceutical company that made the medication.

Throughout her well crafted stories about our consumer culture are many wonderful sidebars – associated brief stories – filled with interesting anecdotes or relevant facts and figures. Klaffke is a fine story teller but one can tell how hard she has worked to be accurate by glancing at her seven pages of bibliographical references. Her point is really that shopping is constantly in a state of evolution. Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping is a snap shot that may someday prove to be what triggers the memory of the next generation of consumers.

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.