Media Retail Spaces as Multimodal Spectacles: The Case of the Newsstand

This chapter provides a thick description — a critical interpretation or reading of an element of social life (Geertz, 1975) — of the newsstand. By painting a picture of the semiotic and social dynamics of this space of media consumption, the analysis that follows provides a detailed social contextualization for magazine covers and highlights how the newsstand itself is a locus of the mediation of consumerism, operating in dialectic with magazine covers. But it also makes an argument that spaces of consumption populated with commodities are texts in their own right requiring analytical attention. All retail spaces, from pound stores to high-end luxury brand boutiques, feature carefully designed commodity displays which create specific aesthetic landscapes. Because all commodities are carefully designed, packaged and marketed aesthetic objects in their own right, their display in public space renders the consumer landscape semiotic.