How terribly embarrassing. Until now, my critique of Ikea carpets has been mired in a hopelessly antiquated phenomenological discourse of good and evil. Now I see that Red Ringum and his unholy minions are best critiqued from the perspective of post-colonial studies.
excerpted from The New York Times, Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, the Arts section:
For some time, it turns out, a handful of nationalist Danes have been barking about booty [including territory] that the Swedes nabbed 350 years ago in a war with Denmark...In other words, one part of Sweden claimed restitution from, well, the rest of Sweden. An Internet poll by a Swedish newspaper revealed that a majority of residents in the region apparently still harbor dreams of Danish citizenship and resent their their calm, polite, democracy-loving Swedish overlords. On Valentine's day, a Danish newspaper went so far as to run a front-page headline accusing Ikea, the furniture giant founded by a Swede, which Danes have long loved to hate, of "bullying Denmark" by giving comfy sofas and shiny tables Swedish and Norwegian place names while assigning Danish names to doormats and rugs. "I don't think this can be a coincidence," a Danish professor is quoted as saying in The Local, an English-language Swedish website (thelocal.se). He called it "cultural imperialism."
3 comments:
hehehe... This is indeed humorous. We just went to IKEA for the first time this past October and my husband went nuts. I've never seen him love furniture so much. I assured him that while some furniture was fine, that buying a 40.00 light fixture for a room we just spent nearly 20,000 fixing up, just didn't seem right.
He insisted. We bought it. He hung it.
It's not THAT bad I guess. I will avoid a red ringum purchase though...
Just wanted to say I have been greatly enjoying these dispatches from the front lines of your relentless attack on all things Ringum.
Ash and I were at the Calgary Ikea just last week, failing as usual to find anything that fits properly into our 100-year-old nothing-built-to-standard home, and we thought of your crusade. Alas, we grew too tired and agitated to sabotage the Ringum display. Maybe next time.
Also, while we're sharing, did I ever tell you the story about how I was part of a sort of sociological-journalistic experiment that concluded with me and a dozen colleagues being turfed from the cafeteria for drinking too much? It began from the notion that the cafeteria, being licensed, was in some technical sense a "bar," and it (d)evolved from there . . .
I do not know why it has never occurred to me to harness the power of the alcohol served in Ikea cafeterias. This could be the key to me getting through the next visit.
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