The Uncanny Village

I am helplessly fascinated by engineered environments. There is something about places that have been carefully constructed to produce a specific reaction that produces a kind of discomfort that makes my skin crawl. I can sit through a gory horror film without so much as a shudder, but show me a good fake space and I'll be twitching like a chihuahua with a nervous condition.

Despite my discomfort, I am drawn to these ersatz environments like a moth to a flame. Human efforts to make the unreal seem real are endlessly interesting, and at a certain level of semi-success they produce a profound disconnect deep in our lizard brains. It is upsetting to see something that we can almost believe in. Everyone is familiar with this effect in unreal things that are supposed to mimic humans, but what about the places that are supposed to mimic where humans spends their time?

Ikea is a good example of this. The cunningly decorated rooms that make up the display floor seem to succeed in selling cheap Swedish fürni to the masses, but the first time walking through one of their showrooms is a vaguely unsettling. Santana Row, a "shopping district" in San Jose is even creepier, as it attempts to simulate a bustling European downtown with what is essentially an overpriced outdoor mall with condos slapped on top. One could make an argument for Disney World and Disneyland as examples of this, although I think the veneer of unreality there is intentional, rather than an example of a missed effort at simulation.

My favorite recent addition to the uncanny village has to be these new "stealth Starbucks" that are being rolled out by the naked green mermaid.  PSFK has a series of pictures of one of the new stores, which is designed to mimic the look of a local indie coffee shop and succeeds the way wealthy older women succeed at looking young by slicing, tucking and painting themselves within an inch of their lives. The final result of carefully market-researched decorating is a place that is more sterile and orderly than any indie coffeeshop I've ever been to. It's more or less precisely like a regular Starbucks, except the faux-homieness of the aesthetic actually renders it a less pleasant space.

You have to admire the sheer bloody-mindedness of it. Indie coffeeshops continue to retain a percentage of the market share that Starbucks wants, so they'll do their best to ape the look of those places, as if the aesthetic were a) what drew the audience and b) sufficiently homogenous to be easily copied. These new Starbucks look like no indie coffee shop I've ever been in, and the conceit that a couple of chalkboards and a quirky looking garbage can is enough to replicate the worthwhile qualities of a coffee shop is likely to alienate and annoy the very audience Starbucks is so eager to attract.

Will Starbucks be successful with this? Probably, they're successful with most of their undertakings. I may not like it, but I have to acknowledge that I'm in the minority here. For many people, indie coffee shops represent uncertainty, rude staff and dubious hygiene, and Indie-Like-Coffee-Product gives the sensation of being somewhere cool without the muss and fuss of actually looking for a good coffee shop. Meanwhile I and my snobby brethren will be sitting sullenly in a corner, drinking our espressos and bemoaning the slow disintegration of the world into an endless series of uncanny strip-malls.

Comments

[Greg Spencer]

A beautiful example of this is Caesar's Palace in Vegas. It's surreal when you walk through there at 1am -- you could very easily be perpetually duped into thinking that it was only just now sunset by the fake clouds and blue sky on the ceiling. Of course, that's totally intentional and beautifully executed (and kinda creepy at the same time).