Las Vegas-- Revised Version

Ok! Here's the revised version. The last portion of this post is still a bit tangly, but at least provides a starting point as I consider further revisions.

I was a little worried. I'm glad I had time to post.

There’s a strange double movement to Vegas—the city both naturalizes and denaturalizes myths about what it means for us to be participants in a capitalist society.

But what is this myth that supposedly enervates Las Vegas? Before answering this question, I feel it’s necessary to qualify the scope of my short analysis. First, Las Vegas is a large city and—like any text—it both operates and can be read on a number of levels. Therefore, my experience and my reading of Las Vegas as a budget traveler is naturally different than the experience of someone who’s comparatively better off—or of someone who is completely destitute. At the same time, my primary concern here is with how major casinos structure the experience of visitors, and the manner in which these structured experiences speak back to shifts in economic participation within our broader culture.

With these qualifications in place, the myth enervating Las Vegas can be better understood through the opposition between Freemont Street—also known as Old Downtown—and the more famous strip. The former is representative both of the city's past and its revisualization of its future; the latter utilizes tropes from the former to lend itself authenticity, yet it subtly changes these tropes. In the differences, and also the similarities, between Freemont Street and the Strip one can envision a broader shift in how we orient ourselves toward capital.

I’ll begin my reflection here by discussing Fremont Street—a location that’s near and dear to my heart. Fremont Street shares several common elements with the more famous strip. The digital screen that serves as its canopy and its semantic frame celebrates excess in a manner similar to the palisades of the Venetian and Caesar’s Palace. And in common with the strip, there is a garish air to Fremont Street: neon signs unapologetically entice passersby with cheap buffets and booze; posters announce casino’s “loose slots” and their cheap blackjack tables. Female employees of the casinos—either garishly dressed, or wearing very little— are scattered decorations.

Yet at the same time that Fremont Street celebrates excess, it also encourages visitors’ active participation. Running beneath Fremont’s large screen, zip-lines convey revelers from one end of Old Downtown to the other. Their bodies become part of the larger scene; enveloped yet participatory in the space created by the larger canopy. In a similar way, at the same time that “loose slots” and cheap blackjack tables entice visitors to join gambling’s cycle of winning and quickly losing, they at least promise that budget travelers will be able to “hold on” for a while longer. With its participatory air and bargains, Fremont Street encourages even budget travelers to share in the experience of Vegas—albeit at a tidy profit for the casinos.

Despite the obvious charm of Fremont Street, one can nonetheless arrive on the more fabled strip by traversing a few miles down Las Vegas Boulevard with its surprising array of wedding chapels, pawn shops, and bail-bond outfits. Yet the inhuman scale and tenor of the strip is alienating to me; any one of the major casinos is the size of, or bigger than, a NYC block.

While the intimidating scale of the Strip can be viewed as a natural extension of elements already present in old downtown—a celebration of spectacle, for example—the grandeur of these developments nonetheless serve to erase their visitors. Even as a strange mix of characters walks up and down the strip carting wildly overpriced liquor (a six pack of Bud goes for 20 bucks), the celebratory air is very narrowly crowded—and uncomfortable—within confined corridors built of capital. And though the nightclubs of the strip pretend at exclusivity through their exorbitant fees, both their music and their visitors seem bleakly interchangeable. At the same time that the Strip celebrates a display of wealth and spectacle for spectacle’s sake, through sheer grandeur it paradoxically imposes uniformity on its participants. Ones’ senses quickly become numb.

The difference between Old and New Vegas is a question of degree rather than of type: the differences between these two scenes nonetheless demonstrate how the myths enervating American consumerism have subtly changed. Both the Strip and Fremont Street essentially rely on the same myth, which is deeply tied to capitalism in general, in order to operate: though visitors are encouraged to risk fortunes and know that the games they’re playing are rigged, in exchange for their risk there’s at least the potential for a dramatic payout. This myth—this inherent desire to beat the odds—rationalizes an otherwise insane activity: throwing one’s money in a waste-bin. Yet Fremont encourages the participation of visitors who may be less well off, while the Strip works actively to erase such visitors. The distinction between Old and New Vegas isn’t whether one will lose through playing, but whether one will be allowed the privilege of playing at all.

The Strip, by being so exclusive, runs against the egalitarian myth--which may never have been true--of Old Downtown and to some extent America. The values underlying this myth can be summarized succinctly: everyone should be allowed to participate in the spectacle of capitalism, and then to lose their shirt. The question isn’t whether the capitalist game is rigged. It's whether one has access to the game in the first place.

Vegas, both old and new, lays its cards on the table; and I admire the city for its chutzpah. Though one can accuse Vegas of lacking subtlety, by making starkly visible the myths which enervate our broader culture, the city at least temporarily suspends the pervasive power of these myths. By illuminating what is elsewhere hidden, Vegas is simultaneously able to embrace bubble-gum capitalism and to offer an escape from it.

The strange double movement of Vegas situates it at the strange locus of myth and myth’s dissolution. In embracing ones role in the city’s consumer culture, by subjecting oneself to its predation, one comes closer to understanding the fundamental tenets of our economic exchange.