{"id":10219,"date":"2017-10-15T18:33:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T18:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10219"},"modified":"2017-10-15T18:33:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T18:33:18","slug":"in-las-vegas-excess-and-fantasy-bleed-into-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-las-vegas-excess-and-fantasy-bleed-into-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"In Las Vegas, excess and fantasy bleed into tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Gottdiener<\/a>, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In Sin City, people often do bad things to themselves. <\/p>\n

Rather than deal with their lapses \u2013 moral, financial, marital \u2013 there\u2019s a ready-made marketing slogan<\/a> to fall back on: \u201cWhat happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a way of permitting yourself to indulge, and Vegas casinos \u2013 built on a manic dynamic of gambling, sex and food consumption \u2013 make their owners billions of bucks off this mantra. <\/p>\n

Although living a long 60-mile desert drive from the city, Stephen Paddock spent most of his time there gambling. How did a seemingly happy habitual casino player conjure up serial murder by killing and injuring hundreds using enough firepower to equip a small army? <\/p>\n

As an urban sociologist, I\u2019ve written about<\/a> how Las Vegas operates as a \u201cthemed environment,\u201d one that channels the power of fantasy to promote a form of boundless, excessive indulgence.<\/p>\n

We may never know Stephen Paddock\u2019s true motives. But what if his horrific act were to be interpreted through this lens of fantasy and indulgence?<\/p>\n

The power of theme<\/h2>\n

The famous French literary critic Roland Barthes<\/a> was the first to discuss the multilayered power of \u201cthe sign\u201d as a myth that can project multiple meanings, while uniting them under the umbrella of a \u201cmegatheme.\u201d For example, he saw the Eiffel Tower as a structure that fused early industrialization with modernity, as well as the international symbol of Paris.<\/p>\n

The American semiotician Charles S. Peirce had a similar name for this phenomenon; he called it<\/a> an \u201cicon.\u201d Think of the American flag. It means different things to different people and, simultaneously, the same thing to millions. <\/p>\n

Any themed environment, from Disneyland to the Olive Garden, uses an overarching message to unite consumers around a single purpose, whether it\u2019s a reverie of youthful innocence or the prospect of an abundant, family-style Italian dinner. <\/p>\n

These signals \u2013 conveyed and repeated through architecture, design, advertisements, logos and slogans \u2013 have the power to attract large audiences in a way so that each individual can find something meaningful in the consumer experience. <\/p>\n

Eat the most, spend the most, win the most\u2026<\/h2>\n

I argue that in Las Vegas, the sign of \u201cexcess\u201d is the unifying element of its themed environment. And I\u2019ve compared its culture to that of Dubai<\/a>, a Middle Eastern city that has experienced rapid development over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

Yet the two are distinct. In Dubai, excess is purely symbolic and simplistic, with every material object directly alluding to it. Hotel rooms cost thousands of dollars a night. They come with gold faucets, gold beds, gold bedding \u2013 gold everywhere. <\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to be rich to go to Las Vegas. But its excess is palatable, with threads that work through a range of connotative associations. Buffets compete for the privilege of serving the most food; casinos promote games with the allure of \u201cwhale\u201d level jackpots; luxury goods, gold or otherwise, saturate hotel rooms and shopping malls; and spectacular shows take place on a nightly basis. Excess in Las Vegas cues the lizard brain to indulge and spend.<\/p>\n

Although people may imagine that they journey there to be winners, they are merely on a conveyor belt of excessive consumerism the moment they step off the plane<\/a>. When casinos began a copycat period of renovations in the late 1970s, they started incorporating shopping malls and Godzilla-scale buffets, inventing a closed circuit of excessive spending. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Patrons take food from the buffet line at Las Vegas Hilton, which set a Guinness world record for the largest buffet in 2006.<\/span>
\n Jae C. Hong\/AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, fantasies of the Old West, Ancient Egypt, the circus and tropical paradise are built into casino environments that, at their core, simply offer different flavors of the same thing: manic gambling, eating, drinking and sex. <\/p>\n

Perhaps this is why Ceasars Palace has no apostrophe after the \u201cr.\u201d In Las Vegas, everyone can be a Roman emperor, even if they cannot be an Arab prince.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know much about Stephen Paddock, the mass murderer. But we do know that he wagered excessive amounts of money every day<\/a>. It was his way of life, and he could afford it.<\/p>\n

Excess is also one way to end your life. Just look at \u201cLa Grande Bouffe<\/a>,\u201d James Gandolfini, Orson Welles or any celebrity who took what\u2019s called an \u201coverdose\u201d to die. <\/p>\n

Kill the most?<\/h2>\n

\u201cSmokin\u2019 Aces\u201d was a 2006 Hollywood film directed and written by Joe Carnahan. It tells the story of an assortment of assassins who have been ordered to kill a Las Vegas entertainer set to testify against a casino mob boss. The heavily armed assassins converge on a hotel where the entertainer is holed up awaiting trial; one sets up a M82 50 caliber sniper rifle on a tripod, similar to Paddock. The ensuing mayhem results in at least 20 law enforcement officials and civilians dead or wounded. <\/p>\n

Of course, this was only a fantasy. Nobody died. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott called it<\/a> a \u201cdumb film,\u201d adding that it might cause \u201cdumbness in others.\u201d Carnahan, the auteur, went on to do two more \u201cSmokin\u201d films, so popular was the (dumb) original. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s something fitting about Las Vegas being a place where a fictional fantasy ended up mirroring tragic reality. In the wake of the shooting, conspiracy rumors abound. Law enforcement officials and the news media report little about Paddock\u2019s motives. I don\u2019t possess any more knowledge than they do. <\/p>\n

\"TheHowever, I do wonder if Paddock, as he slapped those automatic rifles onto tripods, had Las Vegas-style excess \u2013 high stakes, big numbers, bright lights, the book of Guinness \u2013 dancing through his mind.<\/p>\n

Mark Gottdiener<\/a>, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Gottdiener, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York In Sin City, people often do bad things to themselves. Rather than deal with their lapses \u2013 moral, financial, marital \u2013 there\u2019s a ready-made marketing slogan to fall back on: \u201cWhat happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.\u201d It\u2019s a way of permitting yourself to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[3337,450,3338,144,664,372,1115,3260,3339,2225],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10221,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10219\/revisions\/10221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}