kinoKulture, April 2003
by James Hollands
Welcome to camping in the 21st century.
Each year tens of thousands of travellers - a fraction of the
estimated three million American "full-timers" on the
road at any one point - steer their RVs ˆ recreational vehicles,
ostensibly uber-motorhomes - into Wal-Mart parking lots to "camp"
or "boondock" (camp without paying ) for a night or
two. Just as they seek out national parks and historic sites,
RV travellers have marked Wal-Mart stores as travel destinations,
with the added security and safety a 24 hour supermarket with
CCTV and free car-parking can provide.
Hawes-Davis, in this un-intrusive and subtly subversive film,
suggests that these 'Wally Worlders' represent a new American
community, one attuned to the predictability and homogeneity that
the more than 2,500 Wal-Marts nationwide provide; hinting that
this mutually evolved symbiotic relationship between multinational
and human has created a new evolution of the species - from consumer
to brand parasite.
Fascinating, humane, terrifying, futuristic and very, very, very
wry, you'll never go supermarket in quite the same way again.
On the other hand, now you know where to hock down on the road
in the US...
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