Generation Bubble

Vile Bodies: Schadenfreude, Status Anxiety and Walmart Shoppers

Who are the people of Walmart, really? Are they truly deluded sorts who invite our sneers by jealously clinging to the trappings of their hair-metal glory days against the better advice of the fashion industry? Yes, many of them are gun-toting hicks and dentally challenged methheads, but they’re also the victims of a system of economic relations that forsakes broadly shared prosperity for the blasé depredations of crony finance. They’re overweight, undereducated untouchables, a contingent so abject and so abandoned to their low, catchpenny existences that they’ve even forfeited the right not to have their pictures snapped by snot-nosed postcollegiate pricks. Indeed, this accursed share of humanity is one of the few things still made in America.