Contemplating The Fridge Magnet

Home Décor: Tourist Style

NOTE: The next few people to become paid subscribers to Late Romantic will be getting a parcel of journalling goodies in with their zine! The easiest way is on Substack, but there’s also a donation link below that will put you in with a chance to win.

What, in a William Morris sense, is the purpose of a fridge magnet? As I gaze passively from the window of the bus on Shaftesbury Avenue or Holborn I see rows and rows of them, and in the strange refraction I don’t see the red or the blue lettering, making the white ND in the six-letter tourist proclamation appears, in fact, to shout NO from Big Ben and the ferris wheel beside it. In a half-second my mind makes sense of it and LO – ND – ON becomes un-obfuscated, but the broadcasted command sticks in my head. ‘NO!’ says the magnet, when it is fingered and considered for purpose. It blithely recoils from the idea of having a purpose: is it an aide memoire? Only if you will forget a thousand-pound holiday. Is it art? Only if you would buy it divorced from your current situation as a tourist. William Morris preached that we should only keep things that are both beautiful and functional. Marie Kondo says that things which no longer spark joy should leave our lives. Still, the magnet sings its siren song – cheap, easily broken, impersonal.

In a different economic age, a fridge magnet meant something different: a self-conscious record of travel, a statement of lifestyle and intent, middlebrow cosmopolitanism and consumption. Now, though, travel is accessible. I could fly a world away every year and my work colleagues would not be surprised; I could take a short-haul every weekend and they would be unmoved, perhaps even bored by my conversation. In the current technological epoch I could order a memento of every country – a food, a historically artisanal local product, a fridge magnet – and have it delivered to me within the week, for less than the local vendor would charge me, whether I have any connection to it or not. It would be economically responsible to get my LO – ND – ON from ali express when I went home. It would be fiscally prudent to buy my V&A postcards off Redbubble. What, then does the magnet mean? Wherefore was it cast in plaster and painted by a child labourer who will never see the city it proclaims?

Still, the magnet may proclaim something. Even in the modern era, when such a thing is ‘cringe’, some people choose to ignore that and mount a picture of a Greek beach or the Eiffel Tower to make a statement. This shows something about what a person values, aspires towards, believes is ‘the good life’. London stands for something in the hearts of many – when man is tired of London, after all, he is tired of life. London is and always has been sex and nonconformity [redacted image of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren’s boutique SEX], London has always been Fleet Street and the BBC [redacted image of George Orwell at the BBC], London has always been diversity and community [redacted image of Notting Hill Carnival], London has always been the rich peoples’ playground [redacted image of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens], London has always been accessible culture and art [redacted image of The Castle cinema, Hackney].

When I buy an image of London, I am buying my conception of the city. I might be buying restaurants, markets, parks, or museums, and with it my assertion of who I believe I am. Do I buy an image of the City with the magnet? The magnet proclaims nothing – the skyline, generic and distorted. The magnet screams ‘NO’ at your conception of London, replaces the image you curated from your loves and interests with a falsehood, an image that cannot be. The magnet chooses the famous bits and disregards my own experience, or even why I chose to come here.

If the magnet is not for visitors and it is not for residents, then who might it be for? Perhaps this souvenir is a gift, perhaps it remains an aspirational marker – look, your peer has travelled, you can too! – or a symbol of love – “I thought of you at a time I was meant to be having fun!” Is the magnet an obligation, an albatross to both giver and receiver? “I couldn’t go on holiday and not get you something, but this was cheap enough.” “Thank you, now this cheap tat lives in my house, and if I throw it away it will cast aspersions on our relationship.” Still, the magnet sings its refrain: ‘NO’. It is impersonal, ill-considered; it has barely even been here, taken from its made-in-China box, the chipped ones discarded, and stuck on the sign of the suspiciously vague shop selling ‘London stuff’. A university-style hoodie, a postcard with the image Princess Di (Forever In Our Hearts™), a novelty teapot. Now, a butter squishy too. We are so afraid of AI slop and yet we do not consider the slop, the physical runoff of capitalism, the cheap nonsense things with no discernible audience or purpose that still finds a way to support a whole micro-economy on the basis of being ‘cheap enough’ and ‘oh that’s nice’.

My love is not an albatross. My city is a meaning to me. My travel is an experience I remember, curated to my own interests. I do not need a fridge magnet. And so, my eyes snap to the next store window – the chocolate shop, or the bookstore, as the bus moves. I see panacea somewhere on the journey, and I do not ask myself if it is a fridge magnet, if it is futile, or performative, or uncultured. If I have thought about its meaning or ascribed my own. If I have taken in all the William Morris I have read at all.

To get this article, and others, as physical media, subscribe now.

On This Topic:

• Call it pretentious (because it is) but this is, to me, a very modernist conception of the city and is thus inspired by other modernists walking around, looking at the city.
• I have decided that this car and lifestyle channel is the appropriate role model for young boys. They also challenge my thesis in this post and suggest fridge magnets are good, actually – feel free to agree with them and call me classist or pretentious.
• Mass-produced art is still art but you have to think about it differently.

To-Do:

• Print newest version of chapter to annotate
• Eat the GF wraps I bought (chicken and lettuce? ham and cheese??)
• Drink more water in this heat.

Today’s Culture:

• Peach summer!
• Getting the ebooks of all the physical books I own so I can clear out my house
• My friend had a digital camera that operates like an analogue one (maybe this one?) and it was great. If I start carrying around a bunch of extra shit I’ll probably start with an MP3 player, but it was very cool.