My Cultural Diet

When it opened back in 1981, Jasper Mall was so busy, you could scarcely set foot inside to visit its many stores, which included both a Kmart and a JCPenney. Four decades later, Kmart and JCPenney are long gone and Jasper Mall barely seems to be holding on. Even so, it still has its regulars and holdouts, all of whom serve as subjects for filmmakers Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb. Jasper Mall doesn’t have a storyline per se, but rather, just meanders the emptying halls and food court to capture little vignettes of the mall’s life. Most of those center on Jasper Mall’s faithful manager, a former zookeeper named Mike McClelland who works hard to keep the mall clean and drum up new business. There’s an undeniable sense of nostalgia at work here — I was often reminded of Omaha’s own Westroads and Crossroads malls, the latter of which resembled Jasper Mall’s fading glory before it was demolished in 2020 — as well as a certain vaporwave-y vibe. To Thomason and Whitcomb’s credit, though, Jasper Mall isn’t some hipster-ish dig into retro aesthetics, nor does it feature any talking head critiques of capitalism and consumerism. And though there are moments the filmmakers could’ve milked for melodrama, they thankfully resist that urge. Instead, Jasper Mall is just suffused with a gentle humanism that makes it all the more inviting and affecting.

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