1 / 22

LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY

LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY. THE LAST RESORT: HELL. Ad Slogans: “Go to Hell,” “You’ll 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

amato
Télécharger la présentation

LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY

  2. THE LAST RESORT: HELL • Ad Slogans: “Go to Hell,” “You’ll 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

  3. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE • Shops: • Needful Things • Hellmark Cards • Save My Sole Shoes • Rosemary’s Baby Shop • Devil May Care Clothing • Paradise Lost Luggage • Inferno Hot Tubs • Purgatory Pete’s Pets • Beetlejuice Julius

  4. PLUS FOOD, DRINK, & ENTERTAINMENT • Souls on Fire Discotheque • Hellraiser’s Bar • Club Limbo • Deathwatch Dinner Theatre (Featuring the “Corpses on Parade” Musical Revue) • Faustus Follies • Hard Rock and a Hot Place • Beelzebubba’s Soul Food

  5. 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

  6. 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)

  7. A BRIEF HISTORY • Organized Crime Beginnings: Sin (Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth), Transgression, Dystopia, Excess, Inversion, Carnivalesque -- a place at the margin

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

  9. 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 Don’t Come To Las Vegas to Gamble (anymore)

  10. THE INFANTALIZATION OF ADULTS IN LAS VEGAS • Belk: “…people wandering from slot machine to slot machine with their cups full of coins…like children in a candy store with their coins clasped hotly in their hands. Those who are dressed in sweatsuits…taking 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.”

  11. 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

  12. The Las Vegas Effect • Indulgence & Hedonism • Some Gamblers Compulsive/Addicted • An Invitation to Excess/Gratification • Tacky, Shallow, Passive Materialism

  13. But also • Childish play nourishes imagination, hope, & unapologetic fun • Consumers have a deep need for Magic/Fantasy

  14. 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

More Related