![]() Orsk is a fictionalized American knock-off of mass minimalist Ikea, right down to the maze-like floor plan, calibrated cozy of model rooms and the built-in café. Either he’s making a sly, slickly patronizing assumption about the lives of low-wage retail workers here, or exposing some economic fault line as it relates to the lives of low-wage workers. Money, duty and the pursuit of fame is why any of the characters appears to do anything and who better to embody these tensions, Hendrix posits, than a group of big box store employees. Capitalist tensions, particularly the numbing, oppressive cycle of work, is the force that sets Horrorstör, in motion. This is the setting into which Grady Hendrix sets his big-box horror story. Jobs, convenience and choice are touted as some solace, masking the more complex and insidious of these woes we both love and revile the big box. ![]() ![]() ![]() Their gleaming cubes, bottomless buffets of options, are the site of endless sociological discontents and phenomena: gentrification, the growing lateralization of the middling classes, worker exploitation and income disparity. Leading retailers continue to storm fast-growing boroughs and cities, from downtown Toronto to Shenzhen, China. From Loews to Costco, the big box store has long been the setting for fierce, nimble and sometimes privileged critiques of first world consumerism. ![]()
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