Flaneuring the buyosphere: A comparative historical analysis of shopping environments and phantasmagorias

Abstract

This paper proposes a comparative historical analysis of shopping environments, focusing on the aesthetic experience they offer to the consumer and underscoring their nature as phantasmagorias. At a time when digital disruption, exacerbated by the recent pandemic, has dramatically changed social habits and the cityscape, this research aims to investigate the impact of technological and social transformations on the buyosphere and the practice of shopping. The approach's original perspective looks at the close correlation between the flâneur and the consumer, examining how retail spaces in the modern metropolis have developed. The shopping experience is shown as a social ritual with complex facets, where the urban walker and the cityscape have gradually transformed, giving symbolic meaning to architectural forms and human identities. The findings of this study call for considering the opportunities and threats of the present scenario. The shift to the virtual realm has created new forms of phantasmagoria, such as the immersive experience in the brand's universe combined with omnichannel strategies. At the same time, the “retail apocalypse” and the reduction of spaces for wandering may risk limiting social encounters, the freedom of movement, and the individual's ability to interpret urban reality, elements that once defined the practice of flânerie.

Introduction: The continuum of modernity

A specter wanders through modernity, along the path that connects 19th-century passages, megamalls, and the internet’s virtual architectures. Each time we are immersed in the shopping environments of the modern city, in that ordinary but fundamental space that has been termed a “buyosphere” (Hine, 2003; Moss, 2007; Forbes and Mahan, 2017), ¹ we can feel mysterious excitement in the air, an animation of objects and merchandise. It is what Walter Benjamin called “phantasmagoria,” describing the aesthetic experience of the metropolis on the walker or flâneur in his Arcades Project (1999: 40).

My research aims to follow the development of this intangible element—literally, the “ghost”—that brings the symbols of our civilization to life, investigating how it has survived two centuries of social and technological transformation. The journey through the cathedrals of modern commerce goes on a fascinating, winding path, from the first Parisian passages through the recent collapse of offline sales: the “retail apocalypse” (Mende, 2019). Although the situation of recent decades has dramatically changed traditional retail environments and the city’s structure, as well as the habits of the masses, the critical debate has focused in particular on the social value of shopping (Huré et al., 2017; Wu, 2018). Recent studies have analyzed the transition from the “real world” to the “virtual world,” or their integration, evaluating the persistence of the fundamental elements of commercial spaces, such as the attractive power of phantasmagorias (Rappaport, 2021). In this context, the flâneur—or flâneuse, in the feminine form—is an emblematic figure: the privileged interpreter of the modern metropolis and of the symbolic, almost religious value of the merchandise. The urban walker is, therefore, a key figure for this study and a tool for investigating the diversity and evolution of consumer spaces. The flâneur represents a post-metaphysical society where phantasmagorias, whether real or digital, not only serve as an agora but are also the acropolis of our times.

Scope of the paper

This paper entails a diachronic journey through some emblematic spaces of modernity, or phantasmagorias, underscoring their essential characteristics through a comparative historical analysis. Taking the flâneur as a prototype of consumer, the study aims to analyze the specific features and the critical issues of today’s phantasmagorias and identify the elements of continuity with and separation from the past. With this purpose, I will demonstrate the importance and power of phantasmagoria as a pivotal point in defining urban modernity, describing the complex relationship between flânerie and city spaces. To do so, I will investigate the impact of technological and social transformations on the buyosphere and shopping practice. At a time when digital disruption, exacerbated by the recent pandemic, has dramatically changed retail environments as well as the cityscape, it has become essential to understand the new possibilities, as well as the critical problems defining the present-day buyosphere. In particular, I will examine to what extent the contemporary city, with its retail environment and its spaces—virtual or real—can succeed in meeting individuals' needs.

Methodology

Several contributors—including Amenta (2003), Mahoney (2004), and Lange (2012)—have stressed the importance of comparative historical analysis in the explorations of European modernity and industrial capitalism. In line with this tradition, I will adopt a methodology that embraces historical and comparative research, analyzing the main features of phantasmagorias from a diachronic perspective. This approach will be able to underline the close correlation between the flâneur and the consumer, gradually revealing how both the urban walker and the cityscape have transformed together and how this has given symbolic meaning to architectural forms and human identities.

This study will proceed through three different phases. First, the literature review is organized in two research directions according to the keywords that have marked the studies about phantasmagorias and shopping environments. A philological analysis of the words and concepts of phantasmagoria and flâneur will be conducted. Second, I will describe the elements that have historically defined the phantasmagorias and shopping experience. I will offer insight through a cross-case comparison from the Second Industrial Revolution until the present-day. Finally, I will examine contemporary phantasmagorias, proposing a causal explanation for their evolution and highlighting similarities with and distance from with the past.

Literature review

Phantasmagoria as a critical category

The word “phantasmagoria,” from the French fantasmagorie (TFLi, 2004), comes from the ancient Greek phantasma (ghost) and agoreúō (to speak/show oneself to an audience). Its first documented use dates to 1801, when it was used as a synonym for “supernatural apparition,” to describe a magic lantern show by the Parisian artist Paul de Philipstal. This was a form of theater in which frightening images of skeletons, demons, and ghosts were projected against a screen or a wall with a technique invented in France in the late eighteenth century, which moved very rapidly from one frame to another, creating a real-time “montage” effect.

Benjamin was the first to use the term “phantasmagoria” as a critical category in 1939 to describe the effect of the modern city on the walker in his Arcades Project. Drawing on Marxist theory, Benjamin uses the phrase: “phantasmagoria of civilization” (1999: 40) about the emblematic places of modern capitalism, focusing on the commodity’s symbolic value. The new commercial spaces of nineteenth-century Paris, a manifesto of modernity, are the aesthetic transfigurations of an economic and technical structure, images that society wants to give of itself through merchandise and its spectacularization.

In the years after the publication of Benjamin’s writings, phantasmagoria became a key term for critical literature, especially in the Marxist tradition (Markus, 2001). It emphasizes the fetishization, or more literally, the “animation” that the merchandise undergoes when its symbolic value prevails over its exchange value. For instance, in Situationist movement, for which the city’s spectacularization, as a legitimization of the effective social and production relations, becomes a central theoretical point, in Debord’s famous formulation: “The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.” (2012: 34) Works that have analyzed the role of phantasmagorias in contemporary society have also drawn on this tradition, such as the studies of Adorno (2005), Lyotard (2018), Gilloch (2013), Agamben (2005), and Kishik (2020). More recently, Andreotti and Lahiji’s monograph, The Architecture of Phantasmagoria (2016), spotlights the relationship between new media technologies and the experience of the contemporary flâneur in virtual architecture.

The flâneur as a key character in the buyosphere

The origin of the French word flâneur is uncertain. According to Le Grand Robert de la langue française (Robert and Rey, 2001), the term “flâneur” derives from the Norman verb “flanner” (“to laze,” “to waste time”), documented as early as 1638, but certainly older than that and, according to the Trésor de la langue française, probably derived from the ancient Scandinavian “flana” (“to run here and there”). The Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX siècle, by Pierre Larousse (1867)—a positivist-inspired work—argues that the term flâneur derives instead from the Irish “flanni,” meaning “libertine.” The first documented uses date from the early nineteenth century: the word spread progressively in France from the 1830s onwards (Castigliano, 2017: 51–60).

Despite the ambiguous etymology of the word flâneur, from the descriptions in literary writings and in vignettes from that time, we have a quite clear outline of the character: it is the portrait of a new man, the product of modern European society and a new urban style of life. The flâneur is not the walker-philosopher—for whom we can find literary models as far back as antiquity and, more recently, in the “promenades solitaires” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau—who seeks in natural environments for spurs to meditation and more profound spiritual insight. He is, instead, bourgeois, a dandy with remarkable critical intelligence and driven by an insatiable curiosity for the varied and ever-changing spectacle of the modern city. In the free space of the post-revolutionary capital, the flâneur stood out from the crowd, due both to the higher social status that enabled him to “waste his time” and to his capacity for interpreting the landscape of the city, which had become, in his eyes, an enigma to be deciphered. The prevailing interest in the world of phenomena and the flâneur’s freedom of movement contrasted on the one hand with the principles of the metaphysical and religious tradition on which pre-industrial civilization was based and, on the other, with the dogma of productivity that held sway over the nascent bourgeois society. Hence the paradoxical nature of the flâneur, the shattered mirror of modernity. He acts out his own dissonant idleness right in the beating heart of the city, and he steeps himself in the tumult of the crowd while seeking to maintain a critical detachment.

The flâneur appears in the first half of the nineteenth century in a corpus of texts of various kinds—later defined by Walter Benjamin as “panoramic literature”—which includes serialized novels, pamphlets, and travel guides. The very first description of this character is contained in an anonymous pamphlet of 1806, published in Paris: Le Flâneur au salon ou M. Bon-Homme: examen joyeux des tableaux, mêlé de vaudevilles. In this little book of only 32 pages, Monsieur Bon-Homme recounts his walk, which is actually a rather conformist one, through the main attractions of the French capital. The brief narration concludes with the traditional visit to the Louvre and with the description of some paintings exhibited there. Two years later, we find the verb flâner in the Dictionnaire du bas langage by Hautel (1808), with this definition: “to wander purposelessly from one place to another; to do nothing; to live an errant and vagabond life.” The word flâneur also spread quickly through the tourist guidebooks and travel writing about Paris (Aldéguier, 1826).

In the wake of this tradition, Balzac (2015) introduces the flâneur as a literary character in the Physiologie du mariage in 1829 and subsequently uses him again in other novels of the Comédie Humaine. Flânerie is described by Balzac as a science, an urban epistemology and a method of work. The close correlation between flânerie and novel writing is suggested in his 1837 novella Facino Cane, perhaps the point of the greatest originality in the whole “panoramic” tradition. Balzac describes a most singular character: a man who in order to recover from the exhausting study that absorbs him during the day, sets out on nocturnal walks in a state of deep inner excitement. This acute observer spies on and follows passers-by along the streets of Paris, filling his own inner void with their stories. Facino Cane thus anticipates the figure of the detective or urban investigator, typical of crime novels.

From the 1830s onwards, the flâneur became a popular figure in Paris. In 1831, an “anonymous flâneur” signed the article Le flâneur à Paris collected in the volume, Paris, ou le livre de cent-et-un (Ladvocat, 1832). With this article, the flâneur is instated officially as one of the representative characters of the French capital and of the modernity that it symbolizes. The Physiologie du flâneur from 1841, written by Louis Huart and complemented with vignettes by Daumier and Maurisset, dates to the golden age of the passages. The Daumier and Maurissat vignettes that illustrate the text depict the flâneur as a fully blown bourgeois, dressed in impeccable clothes and in a relaxed and tranquil pose. He watches beautiful women, stops before shop windows, displaying his eccentric elegance. The flâneur knows the fashions and the manners of refined Parisian society: and walks carrying his walking stick in his pocket, in line with a fashion of the epoch. Unlike his fellow citizens who are perpetually harried by the chores of daily life, the flâneur, not having to work, roams where his fancy takes him, right or left, without rhyme or reason. The definitive literary consecration of the flâneur came only two decades later with Charles Baudelaire: a central element of his poetry, as expressed in the Tableaux parisiens (Baudelaire, 2011), is the metaphor of the city as text, with reference to the role of the walking man as a reader and interpreter of the urban scene. The passages were revisited in literary history by Surrealist authors (Aragon, 1968; Breton, 1972), and became the essential starting point and inspiration for Benjamin’s studies on the flâneur.

It is on the trail of phantasmagorias that the flâneur set out, two centuries ago now. “The flâneur is the observer of the marketplace – pointed out Benjamin (1999: 260) – His knowledge is akin to the occult science of industrial fluctuations. He is a spy for the capitalists, on assignment in the realm of consumers.” The flâneur can be considered as an emblematic figure of modernity and the anthropological transformation that it has wrought. He is synonymous with freedom, adventure, and even protest, attempting to understand the modern world, that “animation” that defines our civilization. Undoubtedly, the figure of the flâneur is itself a versatile and elusive concept, which may be what makes it so fascinating: because it does not allow itself to be trapped in a formula or in a single definition. The word has been used often in common language as well as in academics to describe personalities and understand phenomena that might be quite different from each other (Nuvolati, 2006; Tester, 1994). The cultural debates and literary inspirations that this figure has given rise to, primarily among the Surrealists and the Situationists, led to a definition of flânerie (Sadler, 1999) that is elitist and “transgressive,” in a sense. On the other hand, adhering to Benjamin’s original idea, the flâneur seems, first and foremost, a privileged observer of the modern metropolis and its phantasmagorias. The flâneur is undoubtedly a critical observer, but also an accomplice of industrial society and even, in some respects, the prototype of the consumer.

Features of phantasmagorias: A diachronic analysis

The public space as an interior

Benjamin traces the origin of the phantasmagoria, and elevation of merchandise to become a symbol, in the Parisian passages opened in the first part of the nineteenth century, conceived as full-fledged living rooms or cabinets of wonder, in contrast to the urban degradation that still had long to be addressed by Haussmann’s modernization plans. Passage des Panoramas (1800), Passage du Grand-Cerf (1825), Passage Choiseul (1829), and Passage Jouffroy (1845) are a few of the best known out of about 150 commercial galleries open along the boulevards of the Rive Droite, some of which are still extant today. Originally, these were regular passages or narrow streets between two buildings. They were covered by a lightweight structure of iron and glass, materials that were available for the first time on a large scale. The passages were private places that house luxury shops, theaters, and cafes, and were lit at night, no longer by old oil lamps, but powerful gaslights (Castigliano, 2021).

The crucial importance of the passages is in offering the walker a new opportunity to use the spaces of the city. The public place became an “interior” furnished and lived in by the masses: a protected oasis amidst the din and dirt of the metropolis. Inside the commercial galleries, one dresses elegantly and goes to observe passers-by as well as to show off to others. The passages, unquestionably, became a way of conceiving the purchase of goods: shopping became a pleasant moment, a pastime, an opportunity to meet. Retail shopping was combined with the entertainment offered by theaters, cafes, and restaurants in commercial galleries. For the new wealthy bourgeoisie of Paris, flânerie became a way of life. The flâneur became a well-known character in the city, found in literary works and in the common language alike.

The aesthetic experience of the modern metropolis

In describing the evolution of the spaces where the flâneur moved, which I have called the “buyosphere,” I have deliberately lingered in the setting of Paris. It is in the French capital—“and not in Rome,” a city that could rival it in terms of spectacular landscape (Benjamin, 1999: 417)—that the literary and cultural tradition of flânerie developed. Following specific historical events and cultural movements, the Parisians conceived the city as an interior space, a living room for the masses to live in.

In the decades after the uprisings of 1848, France experienced industrial development and prosperity that let it bridge the gap that had separated it from the United Kingdom. In this period, Paris was undergoing profound urban transformation, certainly not without dark aspects, which created the conditions for flânerie to become no longer a practice only for the elite, but a collective ritual. From 1852 to 1870, Emperor Napoleon III commissioned Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine, to redesign Paris, turning it into an emblematic capital, symbolizing imperial power. These “great works,” as they were called, entailed destroying a significant part of the old medieval city, characterized by dark, narrow, and often unsanitary streets. ²

The “Haussmann” style of the new Paris is marked by the building’s austere facades, the rejection of anything superfluous, and the principle of uniformity. The new avenues, which neatly cut through the medieval quarters, were enormous to allow the rapid flow of people and goods. This urban structure also made it easier to control the city and prevent possible popular uprisings, which were frequent in Paris. Although the old city seemed an accumulation of monuments and buildings randomly layered over the centuries, the modern city expressed an exact intent, a materialized idea. Paris became the “manifesto” of a new order and economic structure: in a sense, it was the text of modernity.

The working mechanism of phantasmagorias is closely tied to the birth of the modern city and the psychological experience it offers us. Simmel’s studies (2012) started a long critical tradition about the “mental life” of the citizen of the metropolis. The urban environment gives walkers an unprecedented experience: the city is like a large stage on which the individual can walk, comfortably protected by the sidewalks, immerse themselves in the crowd, and admire the new architecture and successes of the industrial world. The spectacular train stations made their appearance in the city landscape.

The artistic movements that developed in Paris in the latter part of the nineteenth century seem to follow this new urban aesthetic. In Baudelaire’s collection of essays Le Peintre de la vie moderne (2010), first published in 1863, he attributes to artistic modernity the unique quality of seeking and fixing a new form of beauty that links the ephemeral to the eternal. He points to the need for a renewed aesthetic practice, identifying the caricaturist Costantin Guy as the emblem of an artist who can immerse himself in the crowd and wander in the metropolis in search of a revelation to be transferred into his works of art. New trends in the figurative arts, exemplified by the style of the Impressionist painters, expressed sensory excitement and the fragmented perception of reality that walkers are given. The Impressionists introduced a new sensitivity towards urban spaces and subjects. Their painting technique was no longer meant to depict an ideal beauty, but the living, fleeting beauty of modernity.

One of many paintings that is an emblematic representation of the character of the flâneur as the key figure of the new city is Le pont de l'Europe (1876) by Gustave Caillebotte. This painting is from the artist’s early period; it is quite realistic, featuring a powerful perspective effect. The scene takes place on a spring morning near the Gare Saint-Lazare. The painting looks like a snapshot taken “on the fly,” using an unusual oblique view. It is cut in two by the imposing iron structure of the bridge, representing the power of industry and the violent transformation of Paris. The painting seems to capture a flâneur, dressed in a top hat, as he crosses paths with a beautiful woman and turns to look at her. The sense of acceleration is accentuated by the dog’s movement opposite to that of the main figure. The worker, in contrast, is on the sidelines of the modern scene and looks forlornly at the railway. The painter created a strong color contrast that highlights the difference between the characters. On the left, the Haussmann-style sidewalk and buildings contrast with the walker dressed in an elegant black suit. On the right, the worker’s light gray suit stands out against the dark structure of the bridge.

In short, the era’s literary and artistic culture played a fundamental role in defining flânerie as a social practice. Although the modern city, with its lifestyle and architecture, has influenced literature, it is precisely through literary texts (and works of art in general) that a specific image of the metropolis has taken shape, giving a symbolic meaning to its forms and inventing new ways of using its spaces.

Fetishization of commodity

Another stage of development in the history of phantasmagorias was reached with the opening of the grands magasins (Miller, 2014), whose prototype was the Bon Marché (opened in 1867), ³ still in the Parisian context. Built on the Left Bank of the Seine, in a non-commercial neighborhood where wealthy families lived, the building looks like a compact block. It seems almost an isolated fortress, at first glance discordant with the world around it. Its unique feature is that the products for sale are displayed in a single vast open space, where you can move around freely. This element immersed visitors in a more engaging experience, also giving the illusion of free movement in an interior space. The merchandise is scenically displayed to capture customers' attention and the prices are set on the tags, not to be negotiated.

The fetishization of merchandise, a central element of phantasmagoria, reached its full maturity in the Bon Marché. It was an extraordinary innovation and a prototype and paradigm of a new lifestyle. It is an icon of a hedonistic society, where the pursuit of individual pleasure prevails over traditional values. The building is organized to keep customers busy and encourage them to spend as much inside it as possible. The shopping experience becomes more important than needing to buy things. In Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise (1883), he also describes the “change in gender” that defines this place. Shopping was now conceived as something meant mainly for women. The Bon Marché has a powder room for flâneuses and a reading room on the ground floor for their companions. It also offered a home delivery service. The resounding success of the Bon Marché, and the department stores that opened in Paris and other European metropolises in the following decades, was also due to the industry’s prosperity: the products on display, although luxurious, were sold at much lower prices than they once had been.

Acceleration of exchange

In highlighting the acceleration of exchange of merchandise, the role of the large international exhibitions, or world’s fairs, should not be overlooked. They were conceived at the height of the second industrial revolution to boost technology’s progress, under the auspices of utilitarian morality and to give new impetus to commercial trade. They gradually became, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the realms of marvel and spectacle, anthologies of everything that the industrial world could offer. They helped create a global space of trade, accelerating the movement of commodities. The first international exposition was the London World’s Fair, in 1851 at Crystal Palace in Hyde Park (Geppert, 2010). Several European and North American cities went on to host these events, generally every five years.

Especially in the early period of them, until World War I, the expositions focused on the staging and demonstration of technological innovations and inventions. Their main draws were the national pavilions, managed by the participating countries, in addition to the organization’s theme pavilions. Each exhibition was defined by unique structures that became its symbol. The exposition held in Paris in 1889 culminated in the construction of the Eiffel Tower, and marked the international fairs' transformation into amusement parks, celebrating new architecture devoted to spectacular excess. The Tower highlighted the progress of a century of research and technological discoveries, showing the world the power of Europe and its economic system. International expos were the first point of convergence between commercial spaces and amusement parks.

Shopping as divertissement

A central element that we could add to the features of the shopping environment is the progressive convergence of shopping and divertissement. The economic boom in Western countries after World War II profoundly changed the use of free time and the habits of the urban masses. The analysis of the buyosphere and the specters that animate looked to further horizons. It was far away in the United States that a new form of phantasmagoria emerged bit by bit.

The “downtown indoor” of Southdale Center (1956) built in Edina, Minnesota, could be the paradigm of this new trend, which would be repeated in the following decades in almost every part of the world, and with infinite variations. In the United States, based on automobile traffic, the flâneur left the historic centers and moved to the suburbs. The shopping center building is surrounded by a large parking lot. The architect Victor Gruen, of Austrian origin, designed a multi-faceted, multi-purpose space that contains over one hundred shops, a clinic, and a school. It offered a “better” climate, one protected from the outside world. The shopping center’s floors were connected by escalators, and the dining areas were reminiscent of European historic centers, with tables arranged on a square and topped by umbrellas.

After the opening of big box stores and supermarkets in the 1960s, shopping malls had their golden age in the 1980s, especially in North America. In suburban areas and developing countries, they serve as a meeting point and center of social life. To use Oldenburg’s expression (1999), they became “third places”: spaces other than home (the first place), and the workplace (second place), where new and unprecedented interactions can be created. Shopping malls are like a virgin territory which, by giving the privilege of anonymity, frees the individual from the burden of social obligations. This unusual form of solitude is tied to the illusion of always being with others, connected to other individuals, and gratified by a system of signs that engage and soothe our senses.

As political utopias and traditional religious and moral values waned, shopping became a mass ritual expression of the euphoria of material wealth. Flânerie, meant here as a leisure activity, became a general attitude. What is sought, first and foremost, is a “diversion”—that form of voluntary alienation that the philosopher Blaise Pascal called divertissement—to rid your mind of worries, to be fulfilled by a feeling of dazed oblivion. Simulacra of an entirely immanent fullness, the phantasmagories immerse us in the hallucination of a perpetual and indefinitely replaceable present: that of our desires. They offer us a spectacle with no promises, one that distracts us and occupies our minds, converting them into the worship of an illusion.

Hyperreality

The theme parks that spread from the 1970s onwards were another step in the evolution of the phantasmagorias. Studying them can show us what the practice of flânerie became in mass society, as the spaces of consumption tend to follow the same logic as amusement parks. This experience was described in 1977 by Umberto Eco in his Travels in Hyper reality, an account of his visit to the great American amusement parks. Disneyland is an allegory of consumer society, but also a place of total passivity, and does not stop at just recreating reality, trying to make an “improvement” on it. The satisfaction of the contemporary person appears to be realized through the simulation of another world, one that is richer and more spectacular, rather than interacting with the real one.

This dimension, in which visitors are surrounded by amusement parks, situated in the distinction between reality and dream, is defined by Eco as “hyperreality.” The spectacle offered to visitors—a spectacle which constitutes the sign, in semiotics—is not limited to representing reality, but ultimately replaces it. In these new phantasmagories, the sign aspires to be the thing itself. The modern person’s fulfillment seems to be found in the simulation of another, more opulent and spectacular reality than the real world, through technology creating an “improved” world: “A real crocodile can be found in the zoo, and as a rule it is dozing or hiding, but Disneyland tells us that faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream demands.” (1990: 72).

Visiting Disneyland Paris is like being confronted with what Venturi prophesied in Learning from Las Vegas (1977)—a book regarded as a manifesto of postmodern architecture—which suggests this city in Nevada as a model for future town planning decisions. The great destinations of international tourism seem, in essence, to be aligned with and follow the same principles, becoming phantasmagorias themselves. But while Disneyland and Las Vegas imitated historic cities like Venice and Paris, now it is these cities, at least in their tourist centers, that imitate Disneyland: a paradigm of a city freed from its classic functions and dedicated to pure fun.

Discussion. Phantasmagorias in the post-pandemic scenario

At the start of the new millennium, dramatic changes in distribution processes and the “value chain,” as well as the developments of the online market, have caused a growing crisis of retail sales as it had been traditionally conceived. Although the decimation of small shops seemed inevitable almost immediately, the decline also affected large shopping centers, to such an extent that the expression “retail apocalypse” (Meester, 2020) was coined to describe the collapse of offline sales. The situation seems to have been further exacerbated by the recent pandemic, which limited travel and movement and made a possibly irreversible change to the habits of the masses. The flâneur who wanted to “marry the crowd” and who felt “horror for his own home” (my trans.; Le Spleen de Paris: 91) became isolated, a prisoner of the four walls of the home. The free walker sat on the couch exploring his city on Google Map.

At this point, while underscoring the importance of phantasmagorias for modernity, it is key to consider the radical transformation of city spaces and the resulting impact on social life. This aspect has been at the center of recent sociological debate. In Augé's famous concept of the “non-place” (1992), the spaces of the contemporary metropolis are defined in opposition to the anthropological place: they are without identity, and rather than create relationships between individuals, they produce a monotonous uniformity. The concept of non-place has been echoed by Bauman, who argues (2013) that most public spaces in the contemporary city tend to become empty and lifeless; unlike the arcades of Paris in the 1800s, people do not have time to stop and look around them, and strangers are ignored. More generally, urban planning models emerging in recent decades, especially in developing countries, have led to a contraction of spaces for free walking and the spread of a model of a “generic” city (Koolhaas, 1995). Those elements seem to lead to a progressive disappearance of spaces where flânerie and city discovery can be practiced.

On the other hand, innovative forms of spaces have appeared in the new millennium, such as multifunctional “superplaces” and virtual architectures that offer different forms of shopping and flânerie. In this vein, I will look at the features of today’s phantasmagorias and trace a connection between their historical background and the present-day.

Multifunctionality

Since the 1990s, parallel to the crisis of traditional shopping centers, a new model of multipurpose spaces has appeared to gain traction, combining different functions and services, giving visitors not only retail sales but new services and experiences. These new hubs intended to draw the urban masses are superplaces, or “megamalls,” as they have been called, standing out in the landscape of the contemporary metropolis for their grandiose size, the plurality of the functions they serve, and the multitude of people who frequent them (Agnoletto and al., 2007). They have a strong identity and power to attract and are set apart in terms of design as landmarks that dominate the landscape where they are set while simultaneously creating a break from the historic city. The prefix “super” emphasizes their multipurpose function, demonstrating how they are icons of a new centrality, and, at the same time, it opposes them to the non-places (Ilardi, 2007). The distinctive feature of a super-place is its ability to dominate the landscape where it is set, catalyzing the masses and directing their flows. This quality comes as much from their economic importance as from their intrinsic symbolic power.

The examples of superplaces are countless, especially in developing countries and, after the eastward shift of the world economy’s center, for example, in the Asian megacities. As one example, Singapore Changi airport (2019) is a full-fledged city within a city, even recreating a forest inside. The disorientating effect gives this megamall a strange magnetism. Superplaces' power comes specifically from the contrast with the external city, from the clear separation from the world kept outside. Another example is the multipurpose center of Parkview Green (2012) in Beijing, which includes not only a hotel but entertainment services and luxury retail spaces, as well as a museum of contemporary art. The unique quality of this mall is that artworks and installations are scattered among the commercial spaces. Museum visits and shopping overlap and merge: the border between art and merchandise is rendered almost invisible. In conclusion, superplaces offer an experience that is primarily aesthetic, a “sensation” in the literal sense,” enhancing the fetishization of merchandise through the interaction between architecture and technology.

Experiential retail

The crisis of traditional retail and the changes in the contemporary city have highlighted the need to rethink the retail world adopting a new formula that is increasingly experiential. In this context, the phantasmagorias of the past are a model for creating that basic impulse that flânerie needs. “I go to buy” must be inverted to “I buy to go.” The physical store must provide an emotional connection, an interesting, unique experience, and even a lesson that draws consumers by engaging their minds and senses. Fighting to survive in the era of online shopping and virtual life, they seek to offer an innovative and unique experience to attract the flâneuse and flâneur of the 21st century. The flagship stores of major contemporary brands seem to be going in this direction and are making experiential retailing the means to convey the brand’s philosophy and history, to build its commercial identity. They play an essential role especially in luxury retail, creating a gap between market value and the symbolic meaning of merchandise.

In recent years, the transformation of the buyosphere and the blurring of the border between virtual and physical retailing has led to a radical change in the shopping experience (Treadgold and Reynolds, 2020). The development of online selling, virtual reality, and the metaverse has shaped new territories to be explored and suggests unprecedented possibilities. Although the experience of navigating the online phantasmagorias can be just as rich as in the real world, it lacks the free wandering and randomness that was the essence of flânerie. The visitor navigating amidst the architectures of online retailing is easily made to move on a path or through a labyrinth where everything has been planned with a specific purpose, generally profit-oriented. Another problem is tied to the use of the personal data of website users, which can become a tool for controlling and monitoring individuals, rendering it a serious obstacle to free wandering. Finally, as it is conceived now, the experience provided by online shopping seems quite meager in terms of human interaction if compared with gathering in a physical store.

Omnichannel perspective

The most evocative component of the new phantasmagoria is likely from the interaction between the real and virtual world. “Original” and “copy” are easily confused in virtual reality’s game of mirrors, moving towards the progressive realization of the “reverse Platonism” with which Deleuze (1990: 262) specifically described the essence of phantasmagoria. From the retail point of view, the integration between real and virtual has been actualized in recent decades in the transition from a multichannel strategy, that is, selling a product through different channels, whether online or offline, to an omnichannel strategy. This term describes a new perspective that makes the flâneur/consumer central, creating a coherent, seamless experience between real and virtual around them. Many multinational brands have taken this path, ranging across diverse retail types.

Fashion sector marketing strategies, for instance, tend to integrate physical and virtual stores, social media, recreational and entertainment experiences, and cultural content, providing full-fledged wanderings in the brand’s universe. Among many prime examples is the Gucci fashion house. We can now walk in its flagship store through virtual reality, try on clothes and immerse ourselves in the atmospheres and places that distinguish the brand by visiting the website on a mobile phone. Conversely, physical stores and the numerous exhibitions organized by Gucci immerse visitors in an all-encompassing experience with constant connections to the digital world. This marketing strategy culminated in 2021 with the introduction of neon sneakers that only exist virtually, but anyone can buy them to be shown wearing them on social media. Rather than simply aiming to sell a product, high fashion brands today tend to present themselves as a world to be explored, a place that collects and catalyzes aesthetic, ethical values, and historical memories.

The immersive experience in a brand’s universe might lead to the actualization of the idea of ​​flânerie in the world of digital phantasmagorias, provided that room is allowed for digression, and the public is not forced in a coercive direction. In these new shopping environments, the spectacularization of merchandise is closely tied to the “aestheticization” of everyday life (Lipovetsky, 2002) that social media, Instagram first and foremost, have made a widespread practice. The ambition to have “life as a work of art,” once the exclusive domain of dandies, seems to be spreading among ordinary people.

Conclusion: The phantasmagoric adventures of the cyber flâneur

Technology can give us more reality than nature can.

— Umberto Eco, Travels in hyper reality

This research has emphasized the complexity and the value of the shopping experience, not as a purely commercial phenomenon, but as a social ritual with multiple facets, deeply integrated in the definition of modernity. We cannot, therefore, ignore the consequences of the present disruption of the shopping environments and the urban scenery in which the consumer-flâneur moves. Several studies (Mosteller et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2011) have analyzed the sociological and psychological consequences of the shift to online shopping, in particular during the Covid-19-related lockdowns (Pieh et al., 2021; Rossi et al., 2020), which has caused unprecedented restrictions in traveling and individual freedom. According to these studies, virtual retail and delivery services can only partially fill the role of the historical significance of shopping. Certainly, much depends on how new technologies are used and if the virtual spaces consider the visitors’ need to freely saunter and look. Otherwise, the flâneuses and flâneurs of tomorrow might become passive spectators of entertainment, barricaded at home in front of a screen, and unable to interact with reality. This was the dystopic prophecy made in 1981 by Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation (1994), when he envisioned the complete replacement of reality through the simulacra created by media technology.

Despite the theoretical habit of opposing reality to the virtual world, for the flâneur and today’s consumer, the two dimensions might converge. The happiness of modern humans seems to be built on an illusion rather than on truth. It seems based on the creation or even simulation of another world, more fabulous and more satisfying than everyday reality. Umberto Eco highlighted this idea in his Travels in Hyperreality, describing how a fake crocodile, in Disneyland, looks more authentic and satisfying than an actual crocodile because it corresponds exactly to our expectations. The use of recently developed digital technologies could further expand the effectiveness of these simulations. In this sense, the concept of phantasmagoria is key to interpreting the new possibilities of contemporary reality. Phantasmagorias were originally magic lanterns: machines to deceive the eye and produce hallucinations and ghosts. The digital technologies that have changed our lives in recent decades let us generate a more sophisticated and, in a sense, more gratifying form of illusion.

Yesterday’s flâneurs walked aimlessly through Paris, nourishing their individuality through the symbolic appropriation of phenomenal reality and in particular of the city’s landscape, a symbol of a modern, unusual form of beauty. The cyber flâneur oscillates between virtual reality and the landscape of contemporary superplaces and ultimately seeks a similar form of distraction and satisfaction. In this perspective, the word simulacra, meaning “appearance” or “illusion,” takes on a sense that is not entirely negative, since the happiness and satisfaction of the modern person would seem to depend on them, rather than on the interaction with the reality. The use of digital technologies seems to realize that ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” which Adorno, quoting Wagner, attributed to phantasmagorias (2005: 79).