House of Horror

Monetizing art is nothing new. Look at museum gift shops, for instance. But this is a whole new thing. It not only monetizes art, it also draws at people’s need to share conjured oddities on social media. In fact, I might argue that this place is really a museum for social media and pretty much everyone there was working on their selfie A game.

First of all, this place requires a $30 ticket, is wall-to-wall pink and sprinkles, begins with a slide down into a room where someone dressed in pink hands you an ice cream sandwich then allows visitors to go from room to room interacting with weird things like a wall of magnet letters or fake hands you can high-five. The last room has a fake pool filled with fake plastic sprinkles and visitors can frolic at will while taking selfies or having someone else take their photo. And some people were working their selfies for days, it seems.

Contrived and odd, it is a hot bed of narcissism. What was seemingly supposed to be happy and fun was actually quite strange in that it invoked this base response of simply trying to capture images of “fun” to share with others rather than actually having fun. There was some natural frivolity, mainly from children, but the adults were feigning their grins and their cool looks while trying to get just the right angle. I know it can be quite some work to make something appear to be weightless fun but what I got from this was a severe commentary on our society and our collective goals.

In the midst of this saccharine fluff were people outside in true pain sitting homeless on the streets. The reasons for their being there are many and largely understood only by themselves. While the streets just outside of the museum are kept clear of such people, one doesn’t have to look too far to find them. This is a true societal problem that takes effort to solve. This problem is worthy of our time and attention.

Not this contrived Museum of Ice Cream. It is with any place of excess or fake joy and superficial escape, there is usually a large amount of pain either behind it all or nearby. To see it juxtaposed so clearly was jarring. Clearly.

There are things we do for our children, and often it’s harmless fun and the stuff of imagination. I’m game for that. After all, I’ve been to Children’s Fairyland countless times and have seen children use it to accentuate their natural state of play. I’ve even joined in to take part in my child’s play. But this Museum of Ice Cream is not the stuff of imagination — it is fake balderdash.

If this was truly an art installation, and I saw elements of that, the people within and how we reacted is really the art. That fixation with this senseless commodity was really the commentary on our society, as in, “Just what have we become?” Perhaps my reaction of horror is part of it as well.

To spend too much money for the right Instagram environment and all it entails is simply wrong. Big W wrong. While some may say there is nothing to be done, that this is now the way of the world, I say no. Not for me. I will make every attempt to stand against it and stand for being true to the real world and all its problems in whatever way I can.

The ice cream sandwich was pretty good, however. I’ll give them that.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.