Where Are We Going, Allen Ginsberg?
Commodification within American Supermarkets and COVID-19’s Disruptive Power
Hannah Grimes
aug 2020
For over a century, the supermarket has been a staple of American society. It is inextricably linked to American commodity culture. As children, we beg our parents for candy and toys in the aisles. As adults, we take note of prices, politely interact with neighbors and friends, and schedule our lives around weekly to monthly trips to the supermarket. Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “A Supermarket in California,” read as a sociological monograph, provides a uniquely guised perspective on the supermarket experience, as it succinctly depicts its problems, culture, and the implications of losing it. These implications are especially relevant today, as the COVID-19 pandemic is restructuring and perhaps dismantling the American need for the physical supermarket. With this upset comes an inevitable change to the intrinsic family dynamic on which supermarket culture relies—the social nature of our shopping might be repelling for years to come. It is necessary to examine the change starting to occur and the rooted culture that change is disrupting.
In Ginsberg’s poem, we first find the speaker thinking of nineteenth century American poet Walt Whitman as he enters a “neon fruit supermarket” after walking “down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.” The speaker leaves the natural outdoors to enter the “neon,” seemingly unnatural store. This immediate separation of the supermarket from nature gives us reason to second guess the surface-level culture of the store. The things within it are natural, but they have been packaged in plastic, arranged to appeal, and overly marketed as natural. This is the first and simplest way in which the supermarket has commodified and overmarketed natural objects, like food and water. The speaker goes into the supermarket “shopping for images,” which directly indicates this commodification. At the supermarket, consumers are not only shopping for food; they are shopping for brand names and marketing strategies. This commodification of nature itself is especially shown in modern supermarket names—their most accessible marketing strategies.
In a study conducted within Huazhong University of Science and Technology, graduate students Zhong Wang and Weiwei Fan suggest that American supermarket owners name their stores in ways that appeal to customer emotions (Wang and Fan 348). To illustrate this, Wang and Fan analyzed the names of 23,662 American supermarkets and what these names represented (348). They found that some of the top values reflected in supermarket names are nature, cultural identity, and competition (Wang and Fan 352). Nature was the third most frequent occurrence in supermarket names:
with an increasing consciousness of environmental protection among American people, a new trend has been quietly emerging—their quest for things simple and plain and a return to nature. If you make a trip to supermarkets in the United States, you will discover that what finds favor is no longer those well-made pastries and exquisitely cooked fish and meat…The favorite foods are fresh produce just arrived from farms. (353)
Since there is a noticeable lack of nature (wild animals, forests, etc.) in suburban and urban environments, it is the role of the supermarket to provide it. Trying to package and market nature as a commodity is wholly unnatural, but Americans are buying into it.
In addition to commodifying the natural world, the supermarket also exploits human nature, as it is fundamentally designed to influence the consumer’s shopping habits. According to John Stanton, a professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University, the first American supermarket, opened in 1916, intentionally placed candy and other impulse items at checkouts to entice the customer (Ross). Further, the small collapsible seat in the grocery cart was created to encourage bringing children to the supermarket so they might influence buying decisions (Ross). Food that children enjoyed was placed at their eye level, making it easier for them to convince their parents of extraneous purchases (Ross), altogether showing that human nature and the family dynamic are exploited to fuel supermarkets.
This family dynamic is especially notable within modern supermarkets. The speaker interprets this in the next line of Ginsberg’s poem: “What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!” In hypercapitalist America, a trip to the supermarket might be the only family time that is uninterrupted by work calls or schoolwork. Michelle Zauner, a writer for the New Yorker, acknowledges that her identity is tightly linked to childhood trips to her local Korean American supermarket with her late mother in her article “Crying in H Mart.” She asks, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy [at the supermarket]?” (Zauner). We see here that going to the supermarket can easily become an ingrained familial ritual, rather than a casual outing.
Further, the family dynamic seems beneficial to the supermarket. If the children beg the parents for certain foods, the family will spend both more time and more money at the store. Social interaction between families elevates the experience, as the parents are happy to be out of the house and happy to interact with the neighborhood, which positively influences how confident they are in their purchases. This is not mere speculation. Supermarkets are purposefully arranged to encourage familial and social interaction, enticing the shopper to stay longer. Harvard English professor David J. Alworth’s article “Supermarket Sociology” relates this sociability in the supermarket by examining its layout and the many sociological interpretations of the supermarket within literature. Alworth notes that Kroger now has lounges with “foam-rubber sofas” and “partitions to dampen noise,” to encourage the shopper to continue “gathering gossip along with the groceries” (Alworth 309). Many other popular supermarkets now have “easy-touch cash registers” and “circuslike kiddy corners and amusements” (Alworth 309). Now, parents can drop their children off at these kiddy corners while they talk to other families, so there is no press from the child to leave because they are bored. Even the conduct of the workers is altered to encourage the consumer’s stay in the supermarket. Texas checkout clerks were sent to a mandatory training course at the University of Houston called “Grocery Checking with Charm” where they learned “personality and poise, how to dress and make up properly, how to discuss problems with customers, [and] how to stand on a hard floor all day without becoming grouchy” (Alworth 309). As such, shoppers are not only buying food and brands, they are buying an experience: neighborhood gossip, reprieve from children, niceties from workers, and the portrayal of a functional family.
With these tactics in place to influence sociability, the family dynamic becomes curated and commodified. The supermarket does not encourage genuine family bonding. Rather, it implements an outward appearance to enhance the supermarket experience. The poem seems to predict this social guise. María Gajardo, a University of Toronto Literature Education postgrad, emphasizes this in her analysis, “The Poem ‘A Supermarket in California’ Evidences How Self-Identity is Commodified and Massified in Consumer Societies”:
[Families shopping in the supermarket] have entered the game of consumerism…and in the process have forgotten each other in order to pay attention to the different items they will consume. Babies have been left with the tomatoes, wives are alone with the avocados, and the husbands are walking in the aisles. They are not together, sharing moments and enjoying each other’s company. Rather, they are hypnotized by the fruit, vegetables, and neon lights. (39)
The use of “penumbras,” or partial shroud, elicits this interpretation. Consumerism is shrouding the family dynamic, but at the same time, the illusion of the functional family dynamic is covering up the supermarket’s blatant commodification of humanity. We are trapped in the supermarket experience, unable to recognize our exploit, and the introduction of mega-supermarkets, with their sofas and kiddy corners, solidifies this.
The next lines of Ginsberg’s poem provide another aspect of the supermarket’s commodification of human nature. The speaker says, “I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. / I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?” Alworth believes that this places even sexuality within the supermarket’s commodity culture:
The supermarket in the poem thus mediates a trans-historical homosocial and homosexual bond, and food objects enable a certain triangulation of desire that is erotic, yet emphatically nonconsumerist. In this sense, the poem makes objects (watermelons, meats, artichokes) into symbols that eroticize the anxiety of influence. (306)
Ginsberg seems to believe that we see sexuality within the supermarket, which influences our experience. With this, the supermarket brings to mind every aspect of human nature, from hunger to sociability to sexuality. It commodifies and markets every aspect of our lives, and we are so entranced by its “natural” shroud and its immovable place in our culture that we justify this as normal. Even the speaker is entranced, as Whitman seems to give him some hope that America’s industrialization can be poetic: “I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following [Whitman].” For just a moment, Whitman’s charm makes the metal cans, a symbol of America’s industrialization, “brilliant.”
However, the speaker soon realizes that this hope for brilliance is unsustainable. He says, “Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour… / I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.” Imagining the pre-industrialized America that Whitman wrote about in his poems seems futile, and poetically viewing the current hyperindustrialized America as brilliant is pointless. The speaker dreams of something he cannot go back to or move forward in hope of. This hopelessness is even more solidified today. “A Supermarket in California” was written before the rise of Walmart, Target, Kroger, Sam’s Club, and other megasupermarkets that drastically elevate the worries of the poem. Whitman’s America is completely forgotten to us now, as we cannot even recall an America without Walmart.
Further, the speaker asks, “Will we walk all night through solitary streets? … Lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.” Here, he realizes that when they leave the supermarket, their social interaction will be over. Families will not be enjoying their own company or bonding in their houses; they will be asleep or at other stores, as American culture revolves around consumption. So, he realizes that to not participate in this culture, to leave the supermarket, is to not participate in American society itself, which Whitman, an American hero, would never dare to do. This line would not make sense in a twenty-first century poem, as many supermarkets, including Walmart, are open 24/7. Further, there are online markets and constant supermarket advertisements on our phones when we do go home. There is no longer a set time for the American family to leave the supermarket. We can enjoy the experience at any time. This is disconcerting, as it has removed all boundaries between physical, immediate commodity culture and natural dynamics (sociability, hunger, etc.). We cannot even dream of Whitman’s America because we never leave the supermarket’s extending grasp.
In its last stanza, the poem gives voice to the overarching concern of the speaker: the “lost America.” Whitman has been a symbol of this old America, before mass industrialization and supermarkets, throughout the poem. Now, the speaker says it outright, again referencing suburban culture as the figurehead of supermarket indulgence: “Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?” The speaker genuinely cannot imagine Whitman’s mid-nineteenth century America in which the automobile was not invented, suburban and urban America were not massively popular, and small shops and street vendors were the main source of groceries for Americans. As he strolls past the suburbs, he is strolling into the dark, so in-touch with his commodified America that he has no idea what his silent cottage actually looks like. “Where are we going, Walt Whitman?” is not a casual question—it is a hopeless and fearful curiosity. This uncertainty is especially prevalent as Americans are navigating uncharted terrain in the face of COVID-19. We are learning to function in an America drastically far from Whitman’s, and it is impossible to envision a return to any similar state. We will soon be hopelessly dreaming of Ginsberg’s pre-pandemic America.
The special physical and cultural structures within the supermarket are becoming obsolete as Americans under stay-at-home orders must either spend an extremely short amount of time at the store or order their groceries online. Before COVID-19, online shopping was becoming popularized because fast paced suburban and urban cultures have deemed it inefficient to wait in store lines, but this was not noticeably affecting groceries. Jason Goldberg, a shopper marketer focused on the digital disruption of commerce, examines how COVID-19 is affecting supermarkets in his recent Forbes article, “The Impact Of COVID-19 On U.S. Brands and Retailers”:
One of the largest consumer categories, grocery, was still nascent in terms of its transition to digital [before the pandemic]. Just 4% of grocery sales in the United States came online in 2019. [However], the COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly accelerating the transition to digital commerce. As consumers are being asked to practice social distancing, e-commerce orders for groceries and other essentials have become a survival tool for the American family…The average daily downloads for popular digital grocery apps Instacart, Walmart Grocery, [Amazon Prime/Fresh], and Shipt have surged since February. Online order volume from grocery merchants rose 210.1% from March 12 through March 15, compared with the same period [in 2019].
Even Walmart, mentioned above as a forever-open beacon of supermarket commodification, is reducing operating hours to encourage social distancing. Out of 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores, only 2,200 are no longer open 24/7 as of March 15 (Repko). Now that supermarkets are not constantly open, America has in some ways reverted to the America presented in Ginsberg’s poem, but COVID-19 ensures that this reversion is not advantageous.
Just a few months ago, the physical supermarket seemed to be an immovable cultural phenomenon. Now, it is unclear if it will ever again prosper in the same way. It is easy to write this off and assume that things will go back to normal when stay-at-home orders are safely lifted, but this is an idealized assumption. The effects of COVID-19 will likely have greater longevity than this allows. Goldberg expresses concern for the aftermath of the pandemic:
Households that rely upon curbside pickup or home delivery during the pandemic are likely to continue to use those services once it’s over… Faced with [the] new reality [after stay-at-home orders are lifted], consumers are likely to be more germ cautious than ever before. No-touch deliveries may become the new normal… Consumers may be less receptive to in-store food sampling and more hesitant to use public touch screens or keypads. Community play areas may be less appealing.
This unsettles the supermarket’s entire dynamic. Shoppers might stop spending a long time in the supermarket—letting children play in kiddy corners and gossiping with neighbors might become a distant memory.
In the months of quarantine, we are being forcibly reconditioned to reject every commodifying aspect of the supermarket, as they all rely on the carefully curated social interaction that we have replaced with social distancing. COVID-19 might be rendering the physical supermarket—the social experience we buy along with our groceries—obsolete. It is unclear what this will cause, but we might be emerging in a new America in which small shops and grocery clerks employed to shop for us are more popular than the megasupermarkets that have defined our twenty-first century thus far. This also renders the future of American commodity culture unpredictable. We are so used to the physical supermarket experience and its shrouds and tactics that a long-lasting, completely online method might alter our family dynamics and our culture. For a long time, the supermarket experience will be changed to the destruction of its most clever marketing techniques. It is unreasonable to assume that the world will resume normally after the panic of COVID-19 dies down, so it is also unreasonable to believe that non-digital supermarkets will function as they have. Just like Ginsberg’s speaker at the end of the poem, we are standing on a smoking bank, wondering if the supermarket doors are closing soon and watching pre-2020 America disappear on the black waters of Lethe. Will we ever again spy whole families shopping at night?
Works Cited
Alworth, David J. “Supermarket Sociology.” New Literary History, vol. 41, no. 2, 2010, pp. 301-327.
Gajardo, María Margarita San Cristóbal. The Poem “A Supermarket in California” Evidences How Self-Identity is Commodified and Massified in Consumer Societies. University of Concepción, 2009.
Ginsberg, Allen. “A Supermarket in California.” Collected Poems 1947-1980, Harper Perennial, 1988.
Goldberg, Jason. “The Impact Of COVID-19 On U.S. Brands and Retailers.” Forbes. March 29, 2020.
Repko, Melissa. “Walmart Reduces Hours at US Stores to Keep Up with Surge of Shoppers.” CNBC. Mar 14, 2020.
Ross, Ashley. “The Surprising Way a Supermarket Changed the World.” Time. Sep 9, 2016. Web.
Wang, Zhong, and Weiwei Fan. “American Values Reflected in Names of US Supermarkets, the Top Five Values and American Dream.” Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, vol. 3, no. 4, 2013, pp. 348-355.
Zauner, Michelle. “Crying in H Mart.” The New Yorker. Aug 20, 2018.
cover art design by Leslie Liu
Hannah Grimes is from Hickory, North Carolina and studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.