Working thesis/main argument:

Although Ikea cultivates a reputation for comfortable home design for the masses, the 2019 catalog envisions homes as waiting rooms and transitional spaces—places to get ready for work and reboot afterwards—and not places to dwell in any meaningful sense. Home life doesn’t exist for its own sake, but exists to enhance workplace productivity. Given the catalog’s rhetoric about being satisfied with “less,” we can perhaps infer that workers’ increased productivity from their use of Ikea’s streamlined, efficient sleep-and-get-ready-pod-style homes benefits not the workers themselves, who appear remarkably robotic in the catalog, but the already-rich who don’t shop at Ikea anyway.

Why does it matter?

Tons of people shop at Ikea. Its aesthetic and rhetoric are hugely influential over the aesthetics of vast swaths of people. Aesthetics can strongly influence the way we live our lives and view ourselves and other people. The objects we live with can structure our lives too, and we need to ask whether that structure really benefits us, or whether we’re being sold a fantasy that actually kind of dehumanizes us, that further converts us from fully-realized individuals into units of productivity, office drones, machines.

What’s controversial about my argument?

Lots of people love Ikea, and I’m pretty sure Ikea would say I’m totally wrong. Ikea would say its 100% pro-worker, pro-middle class, and that its products are designed to solve problems and give some luxury and comfort to workers, and that this in fact humanizes them. They would argue that the somewhat-flimsy materials make their products accessible to more people. Ikea would say their products are full of fun and whimsy and that they let the consumer decide how to use them to express individuality. A lot of people would say that grey and black modern design is really fresh and cool, and that needlepoints and doilies and shit are the old-fashioned relics of stale, dated eras, and Ikea helps people cast off the tyranny of previous generations. After all, more old-fashioned aesthetics and phenomena of domesticity—pots of stew on the stove, pies in the oven, knitted sweaters, quilts on beds, etc., was largely built on traditional gender roles and old-fashioned sexism. It all took a lot of work at home, most of it done by women. To that extent, I do like the way Ikea completely avoids invoking those dated gender roles–there are no men sitting by the fire smoking pipes while women cook food for them, or anything resembling that. But most of the people in the catalog are women and children, and that’s sort of weird. And they all look like robots, kind of, even though we don’t see them actively working. This stuff should go in its own counterargument section.

I. Intro:

• Context useful for the reader to know: Tons of people shop at Ikea. Its aesthetic and rhetoric are hugely influential over the aesthetics of vast swaths of people. Aesthetics can strongly influence the way we live our lives and view ourselves and other people. The objects we live with can structure our lives too, and we need to ask whether that structure really benefits us, or whether we’re being sold a fantasy that actually kind of dehumanizes us, that further converts us from fully-realized individuals into units of productivity, office drones, machines.
• Working Thesis statement: Although Ikea cultivates a reputation for comfortable home design for the masses, the 2019 catalog envisions homes as waiting rooms and transitional spaces—places to get ready for work and reboot afterwards—and not places to dwell in any meaningful sense. Home life doesn’t exist for its own sake, but exists to enhance workplace productivity. Given the catalog’s rhetoric about being satisfied with “less,” we can perhaps infer that workers’ increased productivity from their use of Ikea’s streamlined, efficient sleep-and-get-ready-pod-style homes benefits not the workers themselves, who appear remarkably robotic in the catalog, but their already-rich bosses who don’t shop at Ikea anyway.

II. Subargument: Robot People. The catalog uses images of people with oddly robotic expressions and stances that often appear either at odds with or creepily integrated into their Ikea-home surroundings.

• Examples of robotic images:
  • Weird robot girl with mustard-yellow paint and shelf
  • Robot lady with serving bowl p. 40
  • Robot lady with yellow nails and laptop p. 94
• Examples of women hugging pillows and blankets (this might go in a different section)
  • p. 25 “We don’t sell hugs, but we do sell these.” Varkrage $4.99, 100% polyester, available in blue and grey.
  • More hugging pillows/blankets: 69, 221, 227, 231, 256
• Examples of people sleeping, but more on-bed than in-bed:
  • Sleeping on top of blankets fully clothed 235
  • Guy in yellow bed
• Weird beatific ladies doing domestic things in empty, iron grey rooms
  • Lady with plant 74
  • Old lady crafting 114

III. Subargument: Rhetoric of work.

• “Is sleep the new status symbol?” 233
• “Free space=efficient workflow. A clear worktop is ready for whatever.” p. 212
• Lady getting ready for work with her work clothes in the wardrobe behind her p. 23
• Parents really should be catching up on work 172

IV. Subargument: Corporate space. More than simply being cold, the catalogue’s aesthetics invoke corporate lobbies, waiting rooms, and school locker rooms, as though we should view our homes as simply places to reboot before returning to our real homes—the workplace.

• Entryway like school (180)
• Aesthetics of corporate waiting room (35, 39)

V. Subargument: Transitional/Ancillary Space. The Ikea home isn’t a place to do things; it’s a place to sleep. Doing a lot of things at home expends valuable time and energy you could be using at work. The catalog’s text praises its rooms as welcoming, but the designs all but warn you not to linger too long. The mortuary-grey color palate and rigid, square angles of the furniture connote cold rationality and render home as an empty, negative space in contrast to the lively, inhabited world of work.

• Island dining space photo spread (210-211)
• “A big dining table…play kitchen” (174)
• Francis Cayouette (29)

VI. Subargument: Unnatural space. The Ikea home mostly excludes natural elements like houseplants and pets, and when plants and animals do appear, they have unnatural qualities.

• Fake plants (171)
• “Everyone is entitled to a slice of country living” spread (85)
• Weird robot dog pictures (13)
• Mangled flowers (145)
• Plants growing in the dark (123, 131)
• Unnatural colors (56-57)
• Weird orange ice cream scoops (135)

VII. Subargument: Transparency/surveillance/anti-privacy. The catalog advocates open floorplans, transparent containers, and other phenomena of collective transparency.

• “Store it, don’t hide it” (13)
• “Open up to change” (4)
• Transparent boxes (266)

VIII. Subargument: Rhetoric of submission.  “Be content with less” might as well be Ikea’s motto; while this might be anti-materialist, it also encourages the reader towards complacency with the status quo.

• “For that handpicked, precious look” (107)
• Books all the same color (52)
• “Resourceful and loving it” (4)
• “Room for big ideas” (4) (267—floor-to-ceiling Ikea stuff looks expensive)
• “Wake up rested even if your bedroom is the living room.” (65)

IX. Counterargument: Ikea is anti-materialistic and environmentally responsible.

• Describe the argument
• Answer #1:
• Answer #2

X. Counterargument: Ikea is an inclusive, feminist, multi-ethnic heterotopia.

• Describe the argument
• Answer #1
• Answer #2

XI. Counterargument: Ikea is realistic about what life is really like for most people—all about work and school.

• Describe the argument
• Answer #1:
• Answer #2

XII. Conclusion: Bring in the idea of disposability. This doesn’t really fit in any body paragraphs because there aren’t really any specific examples of this in the catalog, yet it’s part of Ikea’s reputation and definitely connects with my thesis and my reasons for writing the essay.