on the topic of things like liminal spaces and the backrooms movie by kane parsons, in terms of a dialectical materialist perspective it almost feels as if liminal spaces were going to be something that would be brought up anyway specifically because of the desire to look back upon nostalgia in the midst of a crumbling empire and the overall architecture of suburban areas literally separating people physically. because of the sense of alienation capitalism creates and the separated nature of suburbs such that you may spend your whole life never knowing your neighbors, we tend to try to spend our time looking inwards (again, something that is also intertwined with the fact that modern capitalism drives the blame of alienation inwards as something to do with laziness or lack of productivity, and so we end up hyperindividualist and lonely, and having lots of time to ourselves, looking back on our memories) and as we try and remember memories over and over again, it changes, which is something the backrooms reflects (copying geometry, creating distorted versions of people known as “still-lives”) and the fact that the liminal nature of things like the backrooms is specifically due to spaces being entirely devoid of people, which also loops back to the idea of loneliness and alienation as well as the idea of nostalgia and introspection simultaneously, it all shows just how connected these modern ideas of liminal spaces and backrooms internet mythology are to the material effects of capitalism especially in the united states

what do y’all think?

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    4 months ago

    It reminds me of that description of vaporwave being “Muzak for abandoned shopping malls.” Liminal spaces tap into that same feeling of a locale you know but in a state of decay. The difference is that they’re more evocative of the strip mall or big box store than the shopping mall; the archetypal liminal space you posted, the backrooms, is a a picture of an emptied furniture store.

    The empty, abandoned strip mall carries a different connotation than abandoned shopping malls. The latter represents a promised golden future of consumerism that ended up growing too fast, the opulence of the early vision too costly, the model too vulnerable to changes in consumption. The failure of what we were told would come to pass.

    The economics of strip malls and big box stores is different though, in that failure and decay are built into it. The new sprawl always has big upfront revenue and low public spending burdens, but as the years go on the infrastructure lifespans come up and the public spending burdens get bigger. So new sprawl gets built to juice new upfront revenue that can keep the old sprawl in at least usable condition, but never to the state it was in the beginning. Likewise, the big box stores are constantly lobbying for lower property taxes with the argument that because those stores are built so shoddily, there’s zero value in the building once their lease is up. And of course, they have no plans to renovate; just relocate to the new sprawl down the road.

    So the strip mall has this association of nostalgia, of economic growth but also of inevitable decay. So I think the backrooms represent an anxiety of meeting the same fate as the old sprawl, being decayed, left behind, stuck in the industry or job or neighborhood that used to be “it” and now is just “was.” You “no clip into the backrooms,” now you’re trapped where consumption and growth used to happen, but now is just the skeleton of it, with the specters that leaves behind.