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| - The door that leads to the employee area blends seamlessly into the wall. Or rather the wall, with its segmented silver panels, blends seamlessly into the door. When thinking about the Apple Store, it is important to consider the implications of this door.
As the Apple employees walk in and out of the door, one might snag a glimpse of the barren concrete hallway that lies directly beyond the wall. A discerning eye might notice a clear plastic garbage bag leaning against the wall of the hallway, bulging with mysterious debris. The aesthetic contradiction of this hallway is jarring. These profane glimpses present a number of complications to the Apple consumer.
Every facet of the appearance of the Apple Store is meticulously ordered to create a sense of duality; the Apple Store is the obverse of the 'outside world'. In this sense, the store itself is an Apple product, and to walk through the massive glass entrance is to apparently integrate oneself into the Apple commodity. It is like diving into a sea of Coca Cola to pluck a solitary can from the ocean floor.
The "hidden" doors are an obvious reminder of this carefully planned duality, as is the almost violent contrast of physical symmetry and human disorder within the store. Another primary feature of the Apple Store is the conspicuous absence of fixed employee stations. The store is lousy with employees, and all of them are connected via tablets and headsets. They are structured like a network, and it becomes clear upon arrival that in the Apple Store you don't find help- help finds you. In order to interface with the physical body of the store (the Apple products), one must first interface with the human internet that is described by the amorphous, ubiquitously interconnected employee body.
We can see how the careful exertion of artificiality is utilized to create a sense of separation from the rest of the world; to be inside an Apple Store is to somehow exit nature, to assimilate oneself into a technological artifice, one populated by a connected network of human beings. The sensation is completely disorienting.
This brings us back to the employee door. I believe that there is a central fallacy suggested by the employee door, a 'trap' into which a customer might be tempted to fall. It is tempting, I would argue, to look at the barren concrete hallway and think, "The Apple Store ends right there", or rather, "The commodity that is the experience that I have within the Apple Store ends right there". This is a dangerous mistake to make. Although Apple apparently "stops trying" to construct the delicate artifice of the "store experience" beyond the employee door, the store itself reaches far beyond the limits of any physical confines described by doors and walls. The function of the employee door is far more insidious, for it paradoxically conceals and exposes the mechanics of the experience-as-commodity framework so expertly constructed by the Apple corporation.
The authority of the store experience is reinforced and defined through the contrast provided by the barren concrete hallway. I think that Apple is very smart in showing us this hallway, seducing us to accept the idea of separation, the illusion that the Apple Store is an entity capable of being effectively contained by a physical construct. The employee door functions like a gorgeous coquette, the hallway a silk skirt slowly pulled upwards to reveal a flash of the porcelain thigh of the Real. The interior beauty of the Apple Store is defined precisely by the illusion of its constructed exterior. The illusion is that, even inside the Apple Store, one can get outside of the Apple Store. The reality is that one can never get outside of the Apple Store, regardless of their physical proximity.
It would be not in the least bit surprising to learn that the indelible clear plastic garbage bag filled with inscrutable debris, perpetually stationed against the corner of the barren concrete hallway, is placed there carefully every morning, a prop in the masque of metaphysical consumerism.
The employee door and the barren concrete hallway are the true "hardware" of the Apple Store, translating and transposing the "software" of the consumer experience into a perceptible artifact. The illusion is that there is still a world "out there", defined by the authority of physical spaces. The illusion is that carrying an iPhone in one's pocket is somehow fundamentally different than being inside an Apple Store itself.
When considering the logo of the Apple Corporation, the ancient emblem of gnostic esoterica, one must ultimately wonder what space it is that they occupy as the individual consumer:
The void described by the bite mark?
The apple?
Or is the apple itself the true void, its boundaries informed by the perfect and formless body of the consumer public?
The Apple Store is the perfect place to attempt to understand your humanity as a 21st century American-5 out of 5 stars
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