LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY

1
LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY
2
(No Transcript)
3
(No Transcript)
4
(No Transcript)
5
(No Transcript)
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
THE LAST RESORT HELL

• Ad Slogans Go to Hell, Youll be Dying to
  Get Here, Damned Good Fun
• Spectacles Ever-flaming Fire Brimstone, Ferry
  Cross the Styx
• Rides Drop of Doom, From Here to
  Eternity, the Bottomless Pit
• Costumed Employees Croupiers from
  Hell, Cocktail Waitresses from Hell, Pit
  Bosses from Hell His Royal Satanic Majesty

9
BUT WAIT, THERES MORE

• Shops
• Needful Things
• Hellmark Cards
• Save My Sole Shoes
• Rosemarys Baby Shop
• Devil May Care Clothing
• Paradise Lost Luggage
• Inferno Hot Tubs
• Purgatory Petes Pets
• Beetlejuice Julius

10
PLUS FOOD, DRINK, ENTERTAINMENT

• Souls on Fire Discotheque
• Hellraisers Bar
• Club Limbo
• Deathwatch Dinner Theatre (Featuring
  the Corpses on Parade Musical
  Revue)
• Faustus Follies
• Hard Rock and a Hot Place
• Beelzebubbas Soul Food

11
SATIRE IS DIFFICULT IN A TOWN LIKE THIS

• This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.
  Reality itself is too twisted (Hunter Thompson,
  Fear Loathing in Las Vegas)
• Kaleidoscopic (Jean Baudrillard)
• Like Thee-Dimensional Television
• Like a Postmodern Shopping Mall
• An Uncoordinated Theme Park
• Fantasy Pseudo-locales Drawing on Myth, Magic,
  the Exotic, Carnival, Hollywood

12
Liminal spaces

• Places on the Margin
• Liminality
• "moments of discontinuity in social
  space...moments of 'in between-ness', of a loss
  of social co-ordinates... Liminality represents a
  liberation from the regimes of normative
  practices and performance codes of mundane
  life... (Shields, 1991 83-4)

13
A BRIEF HISTORY

• Organized Crime Beginnings Sin (Lust, Greed,
  Gluttony, Sloth), Transgression, Dystopia,
  Excess, Inversion, Carnivalesque -- a place at
  the margin

14

• Enter Howard Hughes The Buyout of the Mobs
  Corporatization Megaresorts
• Mainstreaming/Theming Hospitality Industry,
  Hollywood, Franchises, Family

15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
LAS VEGAS AS FAMILY FARE? EFFECTS OF CHANGES

• More More Diverse Tourists
• But Not the Family Market of Disneyworld or Even
  of Los Angeles
• People Dont Come To Las Vegas to Gamble (anymore)

18
THE INFANTALIZATION OF ADULTS IN LAS VEGAS

• Belk people wandering from slot machine to
  slot machine with their cups full of coinslike
  children in a candy store with their coins
  clasped hotly in their hands. Those who are
  dressed in sweatsuitstaking on the look of
  children in their pajamas. This looks more like
  a playpen for the middle class and middle aged
  than the city of broken dreams.

19
WHY INFANTALIZE ADULTS?

• Infantalization Fosters Willing Suspension of
  Cognitive, Rational, Adult Control
• We are open for experiences
• We succumb to a dreamworld of possibilities (lost
  to an adult)
• Thus, Once Infantalized by Magic, Fun, Fantasy,
  Adults Make Better Tourists
• Games Adult Infants Play Dress-up, Pig Out,
  Stay up All Night
• Liminoid Freedom Transgressive Desire

20
The Las Vegas Effect

• Indulgence Hedonism
• Some Gamblers Compulsive/Addicted
• An Invitation to Excess/Gratification
• Tacky, Shallow, Passive Materialism

21
But also

• Childish play nourishes imagination, hope,
  unapologetic fun
• Consumers have a deep need for Magic/Fantasy

22
CONCLUSION Consuming the Cityscape

• City as Theme Park
• Commercial and corporate production of Carnival.
• Intense and guaranteed experiences at the
  margins
• The artificial as authentic urban tourism
  experience