I recently visited Laughlin, Nevada on a family vacation. Griselda, a friend of mine and fellow blogger, told me it would be like a family-style Las Vegas. She was right. As soon as I saw the eighteen story hotel, I knew what I was in for: forced family bonding, a lot of eating, and swimming everyday. As we walked into the hotel, I was grateful for the cool rush of air conditioning. So grateful, in fact, that I tried to inhale a lungful. This was a bad idea. Instead, I got a lungful of the smoke that was curling, in a thick cloud, from a gambler's cigarette. I finally started to look around myself, and I couldn't decide where to look. Each brightly lit machine was screaming for my attention. Each sign was covered in neon and lights, even the one for the restrooms. I enjoyed my stay in Laughlin, but I was continuously reminded of Amusing Ourselves to Death, particularly when I saw a sign for "Don's Celebrity Church". The next time I went down into the gambling area that was the first floor of the hotel, I saw the same gambler from the first day, sitting at the same machine, smoking a new cigarette. I could only pray that he hadn't been there overnight, but his clothes did look awfully familiar.
Despite all of this, the trip was normal. It was the same as all of our many trips to Las Vegas. But therein lies the problem. I was the only one in my family to even think of any of it as out of the ordinary, and if I hadn't read Amusing Ourselves to Death, I wouldn't have noticed either. Vegas definitely is a metaphor for our current society. Many other cities, including Laughlin, are slowly turning into it, or lesser versions of it. What's worse is that no one seems to notice, and if they did notice, they probably wouldn't care. How did we get to the point where a hundred people all crammed into a room absorbed by a brightly lit screen as they give away their money is considered normal? When will we say enough is enough? Will we say enough is enough? Or are we too busy "amusing ourselves to death"?
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I just arrived back home from Vegas after a long week of fun in "Sin City". And I could not agree with Tashiana more. Everywhere I turned something or someone reminded me of either Amusing Ourselves to Death or Brave New World. The main point that stayed in my mind throughout my stay was a specific quote. "Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment."(3). As I was walking down the "strip" with my family, I was searching for examples of Postman's ideas. I found that life in Vegas is run by extreme marketing and mass media, shows, gambling, money, showgirls, clubs and parties, drugs, alcohol, and of course, sex. Postman believes that these things create the content of our culture, and represents our society and the people that make it up. Also, I pondered on what can be seen as a metaphor for Huxley's "soma". I concluded that in the society portrayed in Las Vegas, drugs and alcohol are equivalent to "soma", gambling to sex, etc. Our culture, especially in Las Vegas, can be compared and are similar to Brave New World and Amusing Ourselves to Death. After a trip from reality in Las Vegas, I have obtained a strong view of how Huxley and Postman saw our society and how it may become.
I definitely agree. I just returned from Vegas a few days ago. I've been there many times, but the endless amount of slot machines never fails to amaze me. They have those things everywhere, even the grocery stores. You can't go anywhere in that city without finding something to "entertain" yourself. Not to mention, new casinos are constantly going up, which means new slot machines, and new ways to be amused. I don't know if we'll ever say enough is enough, but I don't think we'll be seeing an end to the Vegas phenomenon anytime soon.
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