Kaufland: The Land of the Buyer

On Monday evening I went to a suburb of Stuttgart to drop my wreck of a bike into the repair shop. When I was finished there, I went to do some shopping, and the nearest supermarket was called Kaufland. The name translates literally as 'Buying-land'. This conveys a lot more than just the idea of being able to buy a few groceries.

As one of the rare pedestrians to access Kaufland by way of the U-bahn (public transport), I approached the building from the back. The supermarket is a mythological presence; a Leviathan of social order which sits confidently over the suburb. It files consumers and goods into its floors, transcending their relationship as holy. To buy in Kaufland is a religious experience.

You enter in the ground floor, and pass a cafe, a bakery, a key-cutting shop. A little like the 'ghost Western town' in Eurodisney, Kaufland recreates the smalltown feel of a village, making you feel like you are experiencing shopping like a village dweller. The eager salespeople almost know your first name. They smile complicitly, knowing what you are about to experience.

Now that the initial 'homely feel' is established, the consumer can go on to explore the wonders of a multicultural world in the shop. Rows of aperitif 'Asia mix' rice snacks covered in Chinese characters are tightly stacked on white shelves. Because 'Asia mix' is quite definitely not an Asian product, the packaging requires a single large Chinese character. To further assimilate the Asianness of the product, the printed is red and imitates paintbrush strokes on a black background. Black and red are the colours of all things Asian in Kaufland. But why black and red? The contrast of these colours symbolises the simplicity, the convenient clarity of the Asian product, defined in the Western buyer's mind. While European or American snack packaging is adorned with a variety of colours, the Asian Mix is a trophy of simplicity and clever convenience. It supplements the yin-yang Ikea table (Sweden has appropriated Confucius) in creating a comforting atmosphere of Asian serenity in the living room.

Baskets of fruit and vegetable present their price, their essence, of which the colour and the shape are merely signs. Not only are they represented by their true (or in middle class vocabulary, monetary) value, but they also have a national identity. The apples are no longer just Granny Smiths or Jonagold. They are Italian or German. They declaim their belonging to a nation with nonchalant pride. We can purchase a little piece of Bavaria or Calabria with the apple, knowing which team we are supporting, like t-shirts at a football match.

Of course, the coffee is 'Italian' as well. The pilgrimage leads us to a stand where, unlike apples, coffee can usurp its nationality. Coffee plantations are rather scarce in Italy, but the Italian gradeur generously attributed to the African or Indian product, gives it its true appeal. After all, who would want to buy coffee that was merely African? While the Kenyans can grow, pick even brew, the Italians can drink in style. We are stylish as Italians in our coffee, clever and practical as Asians in our snacks, and earthy and provincial as Bavarian farmers in our apples. We have entered the Olympus of the consumer theogony.

Kaufland allows us to lose ourselves in the array of colours and lighting, the festival of sight and sound which sublimates grocery-shopping as the prayer of the 21st century. The bright packaging and glossy posters of Kaufland thrill and lull the consumer into accepting the fatality of his role. The combination of colour and meaning (a poster of a gleamingly blonde girl ecstatically munching an apple hung over the fruit baskets) is to the supermarket what the stained class window was once to the church. Tell the audience of the essential myths they are buying into, using the full technocrome colour spectrum to leave no space for thought.

The announcements are celebrations. Rejoice! the frozen pizzas, are only 2,99 euros a pack! The Good News is chanted with the jolly composure of the priest on Easter Sunday. All is alive and well. We can purchase in peace, in the knowledge that we are saved: our wallets (souls) will be spared.

The land of the buyer transcends shopping to the Olympus of Western living, but at a cost. We are pedestrians of an Eden which has its forbidden fruit. By all means we may look at the perfectly-stacked tomatoes and plums, but never taste... The cry of the fruit salesman in an outdoor market, brandishing a dripping slice of peach to prove its ripeness would be blasphemy here. The very sign of the fruit, its uniform shape (every supermarket tomato looks identical) is enough to gauge its goodness. It is good because it looks good, and because the supermarket says so. In fact, this law is so fundamental to the sublime buyer-comestible relationship that it doesn't even require a 'Do not taste the fruit' sign. Just as written law is not necessary in a church (it is conveyed by the incense, the dull music, the wealth of the ornaments...), we wouldn't even think of breaking the commandments of the supermarket. 'Thou shalt not taste', say the tidy boxes of oranges and all-season bananas, by the glaring halo of hallogen light they reflect.

In Kaufland, you can buy food, but you can also purchase your redemption. Whatever else people may think of you, you are a good, Democracy-fearing citizen for all to see. Whatever your sins, come to Kaufland, and you will come out a fuller, more complete consumer, prepared for another week in the spiritual desert of Western life.