In my previous post I told you that Mall of Shame is almost entirely sexual bondage porn – and I was right, it is! That’s what makes it such GOOD socialist propaganda. Good propaganda isn’t noticeable, it hovers in the background, unnoticed while it weaves its magic.
For example, I was five or six books into E.M. Foner’s Union Station series before I realized I was reading pure-dee libertarian propaganda disguised as humorous light space opera. I only figured it out when I was brought up short one day by realizing what an utterly miserable life one of the minor characters must be leading, a life of unceasing toil at a dull job he had little interest in, with almost no reward for his toil other than the very barest necessities of life. It wasn’t slavery, but it was close enough for all practical purposes. And it was presented as just a normal thing. This wasn’t SUPPOSED to be a horrible fate, it was this guy’s big opportunity. Of course, things go very well for the guy later in the story but with a very subtle change his story could have been a living hell.
So I did Foner a favor and satirized “Date Night on Union Station” with a story that pointed out the hellishness of a libertarian system in Late Nights On Onion Station which, frankly, is a very ham-handed story that clubs you over the head REALLY HARD with how rotten things are on Union/Onion Station. But hey, that’s parody for ya. It’s not intended to be propaganda.
SPOILERS BE HERE! YAR!!!!
So, I’m going to go into detail on how I injected socialist propaganda into “Mall of Shame” with descriptions of specific scenes and so forth. It will give away plot points, but given that the story is hardcore erotica (or “porn” as it’s also called) it might not matter much to you. Your call whether or not you continue. You have been warned!
One of the themes I wanted to work with was the alienation that capitalism imposes on human beings. There’s a scene early on in the story where Karen notices that the shopgirl’s tone with her has become polite but distant, she is no longer friendly. This sends a chill up Karen’s spine: she recognizes that tone, she has used it herself in her works as a human resources manager. It’s the tone you use to calm an employee whom you are going to have to fuck over in some way. When you hear someone using it, you should be very, very alert.
The shopgirl because of her job in her capitalist business, has to alienate herself from Karen, because she’s “making a scene.” Karen needs help at this moment, but she will have none, because she’s in a mall, the very belly of the capitalist beast, and the only thing that matters in a mall is if you have money to buy the goods and services on sale. The natural impulse to help Karen is alienated, replaced by a responsibility to take care of the business imposed by management, which is why the sales clerk summons the mall cops.
I don’t spell any of this out in the story of course. That would be clumsy, club-you-over-the-head propagandizing. Some writers are clumsy and can’t help such writing, more often, they feel that their Message is Too Important to be rendered subtly, so out comes the Reader Club. This is always a bad idea. People don’t like being clubbed over the head like baby seals, even with ideas!
In the story we just note the chill Karen feels when she hears the shopgirl’s tone. Karen ignores it, she is too caught up in her reversal of fortune to realize she should back out of the situation quickly and quietly.
Karen also ignores the feeling however, because for most of her life she has been a member in good standing of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) which typically includes doctors, lawyers, corporate managers, academics, etc. She’s a Human Resources Manager for a mid-sized corporation, her husband is a tenured professor at a small college.
And the girl who’s telling her she can’t have the bottle of “Joy of Ecstasy” perfume that she wants is a shopgirl, someone lower than her on the capitalist totem pole: let’s face it, a prole (proleterian). The shopgirl also has brown skin, so there might be some racism in there, too. But Karen would probably ignore a white shopgirl, too. Karen is alienated from the shopgirl and can’t “hear” her because she belongs to a different class than her, so she doesn’t catch the cue that she’s giving Karen that the boom is going to be lowered if she continues to act out.
In any event Karen can’t help acting out, her world is collapsing on her. Specifically, she gets bad news from her husband when her card is declined: he has been laid off -- his tenure turns out to have had limitations (part of the belt-tightening in academia imposed by capitalism).
Karen herself is currently unemployed but she thought herself secure, that they could easily survive on her husband’s salary indefinitely, and he was tenured! Also, Karen is sure she will be rehired by her old firm soon, they hinted at that when they laid her off. This is just the sort of lie that she as a human resources manager has told employees when they got laid off, but she doesn’t recognize it as a lie when it is told to her.
That’s because she’s a meritocrat, a creature of capitalism’s class structure. She feels that she and her husband have gotten ahead through hard work and skill and that because of that they live by different rules than other, lesser beings (proles). Meritocrats are deeply alienated not just from the proletariat, but from one another and themselves.
Karen in fact arrives at her situation precisely because of the effects her job has had on her personality. She’s a terror, a ruthless and successful corporate climber. Nobody dares to cross her. She wasn’t laid off because of incompetence, she was just what the top managers wanted in a human resources manager, a ruthless force. Her job was simply automated out of existence, as Artificial Intelligence made further inroads into mid-level management. If they had needed a human mid-level human resources manager at all, they would have kept her.
Like most meritocrats, Karen never believed she could lose her job to automation. She was so wrong.
And the ruthlessness and general “Karen-ness” that made her so successful carried over into her marriage. Her husband had not told her about his job loss because he was terrified to do so. The bad investment that sealed their financial doom was a desperate attempt on his part to restore their fortunes without Karen ever finding out about it. Desperation created by fear.
And that’s how Karen found out about her economic woes so suddenly, and so unfortunately, when her credit card is declined.
When the financial rug is pulled out from under Karen, she panics. The shoplifting isn’t a product of necessity or anything like it. She doesn’t need a $600 bottle of perfume in any real sense. But what Karen desperately needs is to be the sort of woman who can have a $600 bottle of perfume if she wants it. And what she finds out from her husband is that she is not that. THAT’S why she is so insanely intent on getting that perfume. It represents her still being a PMC member of the bourgeosie. And she is DESPERATE for that.
This being a mall, Karen can get herself out of trouble just by coming up with the money for the perfume. But her husband can’t do that for her, he has emptied all their accounts to maintain his deception and make his very bad investment. The Punishment Pit being so final in nature, the mall cops know she’s dead broke because if she had ANY financial resources, she would have used them.
(Karen is the least likable character I’ve ever created, but she and her husbands are victims of capitalism, too. They’re just utterly incapable of understanding it at present.)
Karen’s poverty is why the mall cops feel safe in manhandling Karen and dragging her off to the Security station to be tried by the mall arbitrator. Which given all the security cams, is a VERY pro forma process, and Karen is found guilty in minutes.
Then she’s processed: stripped, bound, fitted with a shock device and a dildo wand, and set out for public viewing. Now that’s she a poor person, she’s just so much meat for the machine.
Of course all of this social analysis does not show up in the story, it would stop it cold like a pig in a python. It’s the underpinnings to the story, which is pure porn on the surface. Which makes it more effective as propaganda as readers aren’t aware of the hidden structure of capitalist alienation that feeds the story, disguised as an excuse for nonconsensual kinky sex displays in a mall.
And of course when the action of the story really gets going we move way beyond what’s currently acceptable in terms of public nudity and sex, especially in malls. I explain it away as a program needed because actual jails are full of criminals who are killing people and blowing people up for revolutionary reasons. (The proles are getting restless!) But it’s actually because this is hardcore erotica, dammit. Gotta provide those kinky thrills to the readers!
Plus it’s fun to violate the upper middle class norms that govern malls so very, very thoroughly in my story. And it’s important to enjoy one’s work. And it’s important for one’s READERS to enjoy one’s work. And I hope you do.
