Vegas!

Las Vegas

We started the day off in Las Vegas meeting with a senior member of their tourism board, part of the Las Vegas Convention Center. For about an hour, we discussed how the government goes about selling its city to tourists, the numerous successes of their marketing and branding campaigns, and the effects of the economy on Las Vegas’s tourists and locals. We learned a lot, from their annual cost of advertising to the fact that they are 2nd only to Google in the successes of their branding, especially with “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” After the meeting, our host showed us around many parts of the convention center, where a beauty/cosmetics show was going on. An older guy with about a 2-inch gap of no-hair on his arm tried to sell me some Nair. Tons of people everywhere were getting makeovers, testing out eyeliners, and sifting through mounds and mounds of diet pills, hosiery, and blush.

From here, we ate some lunch and ventured over to old Las Vegas, where many of the original casinos and current local hangouts are around. In the near vicinity to this strip away from The Strip, is your general assortment of things you find in nearly every major city – your liquor stores, quick cash marts, and parking garages. Since this is where not a ton of tourists usually go, the prostitute phone numbers reside in five-box sets, with your own assortment to choose from – petite teens or luscious Latinas – much different from the more personal touch of the [often] immigrant populations wearing shirts that read “GIRLS TO YOU IN 20 MINUTES” who flip cards from hand to hand and try to give them to you, quickly bursting your modern American personal bubble, literally and symbolically. Even if someone was interested, I could apply Goffman’s backstage and front stage illustration or even Cooley’s looking glass self to show that, even if someone was interested, chances are they would not take a card in the middle of a crowded street – rather they would find an alley, a porn store, the Internet, or a strip club.

The rest of the evening was spent walking the strip, enjoying the sites and sounds of the area as much as we could, learning that we really did not even need to visit New York any more, after visiting the Strip’s famed hotel. Matter of fact, we no longer need to go to Paris, or even Venice. Thank you Vegas – nay, Walt Disney – for making this dream come true. I say this in sarcasm with a hint of understanding to realize that not everyone will make it to these places. It just makes me doubt a bit about what we’re trying to do as people, giving a bit more weight to Baudrillard’s idea of a permanent Disneyland and a consumer society. Disney had much altruism in wanting to bring the corners of the world to the local, the American people, as a means of education, entertainment, family bonding, and, well, to make a profit (perhaps not in that order of importance, but who knows?).

Applying Baudrillard’s theme of hyperreality, of design and humanity in all the inanimate objects, policies, and means of conducting ourselves that we look to for guidance, stability, control, and meaning, this place is an obvious comparison. That’s the beauty of the juxtaposition of the day’s events – meeting one of the head thinktanks in producing exactly what it is that Las Vegas, well, is, experiencing the heart and matter of his production, beautifully laid out for us to enjoy, romanticize, and deify. I saw an elderly couple cuddling alongside the dancing fountains of the Bellagio, a situation I can look at one of two ways (or really a hybrid, which I prefer): a) the cog in a machine, the deaf, dumb, and blind consumer with a romantic moment produced time and time again by the Hollywood and Hallmark; b) a couple enjoying their time together and sharing a moment through which they can grow closer in their relationship. I’m going to go with a mixture – yes, this fountain cuddle moment produced for their (and our) consumption, but their humanity is still intact…including the ability to love.