Cubao Postcard #3 - We built this 'city'

SM for the acronymic “shoe mart” codifying its humble origins now monument to mass monoconsumption codified in its homogeneity inside and out in its ever reliable ever predictable architecture with its ever reliable ever predictable contents: each SM its own Cyberzone, its own Ace Hardware, its own appliance center and Toyland and foreign cash exchange booth beside the booth where you pay for your bills, and later sambos you can buy for twenty-five pesos. It is a free-roam museum of works of art in the age of mechanical reproduction and globalisation: on one floor are Mondrian bed covers, on another are Van Gogh vinyl sunflowers, in between are Lichtenstein t-shirts and Warhol TV displays curated by contractual salespeople living on percentage commissions and minimum wage, forbidden by management to even sit down let alone unionise, deadpanning an affirmatory chant every half-hour led by a saleslady’s deadbeat voice on the PA system.

Its tagline has long been “We’ve got it all for you” and in the proliferation of various and sundry malls and groceries and stores and arcades this is truest now more than ever in this palace of plenty seemingly already anticipating everything a human being could conceivably need in her daily personal existence if not her entire lifetime: diapers and teethers and Barbies and baby-tees and sneakers and eyeliners and miniskirts and pantyhoses and chopping boards and Tylenol and jogging pants and hair dye and anti-ageing cream and back to diapers yet again, all purchases accumulating bonus points for purchasing even more things you might need, and for your every conceivable need are two wants you haven’t even thought of up until first contact. It is this sublime benign greed that keeps capitalism going. What is our defense to an enemy from within?

Civilisation will always want more than it needs, will always want more, period, and whenever there is a want will be systems to provide that want ad nauseam. Its only job is to keep up with the times for it to survive, par for the course for SM: known primarily for its variously anonymous monotonous RTW clothing, it was once given a run for its money by the dime-a-dozen ukay-ukay stores with their salvation army donation fashion imported either from Hong Kong or Hawaii, one-of-a-kind Westwoods and Saint Laurents and Gaultiers and McQueens and Jacobs’ dirt cheap and open for haggling hangered between surplus factory defect blouses and pants and sneakers with typo’d slogans and mismatched pockets, affordable fashion that you need to buy now lest someone else sees it and buys it before you do. SM’s response was to stock their stores with even more of its variously anonymous monotonous RTW clothing, only RTW that was manufactured to look exactly like salvation army donation surplus factory defect fashion. Rest assured that that particular t-shirt you like will always be there, and will always have its own unique defect that will set you apart from everyone else who has that very same t-shirt. Mass-produced wabi-sabi. Uniformity in individuality.

SM’s ubiquity and predictability has already assured its prolonged existence beyond our own, even beyond itself: it already has its own can of peas, its own bottle of oil, its own mopheads and muriatic acid and sugar and spice and rice, even its own groceries to sell them – the in-house SM Hypermarts and the satellite SaveMore groceries – its own bank, its own condominiums, later its own hospital, its own airport, its own TV network with its own child actors and drug-addled has-beens and sexploitative noontime shows and Sunday afternoon gossip marathons, all under the banner of the parallel S & M.

Long has it been a measure of civilisation’s progress as dozens of SMs spontaneously build themselves in the night behind tarpaulins and scaffoldings to tower over the rich and poor alike – 13 in Metro Manila alone and 12 outside it as of 2008, with SM Bacoor, SM Baguio, SM Pampanga, SM Ad Nauseam – all in their flat featureless façades, nondescript architecture known more for their interchangeable interiors. This particular SM has a skywalk connecting itself to AliMall. Between them is a French Baker, a Dairy Queen, a Mondo Juice, and a Figaro. SM Makati has an entrance/exit that opens into the Ayala MRT station. SM North connects itself to a system of walkways that lead to Trinoma, itself leading to the MRT. A vision, a revelation, a prediction so utterly predictable: tomorrow’s bridges are escalators linking all malls together into one giant non-stop shopping spree, as long as Edsa, a true green mile, a literal SM City built on architecture that renders the façade obsolete, merely perfunctory: flat blank walls with rectangular holes for doors into windowless slate-grey boxes meant only to contain shoppers treading the mall floor, drifting into hallway after hallway of uninterrupted air-conditioned bliss, SM North on one end, SM Mall of Asia on the other, and in between will be scores of stores with wall-to-wall merchandise we’ll always find wanting, we’ll always find, wanting.

Photo: by the author

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