We Shall Always Have the People of Wal-Mart

My name is CR, and I’m addicted to PeopleofWalMart.com. I’ll wait for the polite hellos to end. Like an addict with Protestant decorum, I never read the site alone but wait for a semi-social setting so that I’m not the only one gasping in disbelief or snickering at the disasters posted there. Mostly I gasp. I spread my eyes wide and gape at the image for several seconds, unsure that I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

But I should be ashamed of myself. Most of the poor sods whose images are displayed for all those who can afford a computer and Internet access will never know that they’ve become the laughingstocks of millions of people worldwide. I suspect most of them will never even comprehend why they are the laughingstocks. I feel pangs of guilt when I realize that these poor souls are probably living from paycheck to paycheck, with frightening gaps in between, the kinds of gaps some Internet viewers never experience. Is food a problem? (Perhaps not for those souls we mock simply because their abundant fatty tissues spill forth from their tube-tops and overalls.) Will they lose their homes or be kicked out of their apartments? In such circumstances, do they really care that their fashion is not up to our standards?

Perhaps. Yet the problem with laughter is that it comes unbidden. I click on the site; I see the images; I laugh. Only after do I realize that I probably shouldn’t have.

Easy solution—don’t read PeopleofWalMart.com.

But that’s not so easy. A thing that can be quit easily isn’t an addiction.

I take some comfort in knowing that texts like PeopleofWalMart.com are not new to this earth. Erskine Caldwell toyed with the same ambiguous subject in Tobacco Road. There his starving rednecks wrestled over a bag of turnips. They demolished a brand new car in a handful of days, and poor Sister Bessie, misinterpreting a brothel for a hotel, found herself charmed by the continual affection that strange men offered her again and again. I’ve worked with Caldwell’s text for years now: I still laugh. I suspect Caldwell intended me to laugh because the tone and delivery of these scenes are too ridiculous. However, I wonder if I should be appalled at Jeeter Lester and his tribe, or at myself for doing nothing to relieve their squalor. I suspect Caldwell intended both. Tobacco Road is a semi-documentary, recording how incessant poverty and hunger results in devaluation, where all the social niceties wither away—such things as dignity, honor and self-respect.

Caldwell’s Tobacco Road dates to 1932. That does not make it the first time well-off humanity has mocked the poor and their incomprehension of social niceties. Observe the February image in the Très Riches Heures, crafted by the Limbourg brothers at the request of Jean, Duc de Berry of France, around 1410 (see above).

Here one can see peasants lifting their skirts and tunics to expose their genitals to the observer. Is the image a salacious one, meant to titillate the medieval viewer? Jonathan Alexander, in his essay, “Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medieval Peasant Labor,” believes otherwise. He argues that the image is designed “as an ideological representation showing the peasants as uncultured, boorish and vulgar” (par. 15).

As someone quoted to me recently from Ecclesiastes 1:9, “There is no new thing under the sun.” I suppose it is only fitting to reply with Matthew 26:11, “For ye shall have the poor always with you.”

PeopleofWalMart.com not only reveals that the better-off find the antics of the lesser-off entertaining, but the site also illustrates what middle-class culture finds worth mocking:

The morbidly obese. Granted, obesity is not the sole domain of the poor, but the Web houses numerous studies that suggest unwise food choices, poor eating habits, and the high fat content of cheap, industrially-produced food could partially explain how the poor and the obese have become associated with one another.

The flagrantly socially inept. Here I wonder how much shock plays into the entertainment factor: “I can’t believe he (or she) wore that!”

The fashion disaster.

The parent-of-the-year award.

The typical stereotypes, such as the mullet or big hair.

The incompetent cross-dresser. I have no idea what to say about this or what it means. I am more amazed that these individuals made it through Wal-Mart unharmed.

The ultimate mystery. Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’m looking at.

I will say that I call shenanigans whenever PeopleofWalMart.com posts pictures of shoppers who are clearly in costume, either for Christmas, Halloween or cosplay. That’s just cheating.

So if PeopleofWalMart.com perishes from this earth, fear not, for it shall be quickly replaced by some other means of mocking the poor. And there shall be those who think too much, who insist on taking things apart and feeling guilty because of it. Perhaps I should write a screenplay in which I choose to infiltrate the poor, to learn their ways, to discover their differing values and traditions, and help to lead them against their mockers. Oh, wait--that's not new either.