LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

 Research Posting 2009

Kathleen Breaux

30 June 2009 

Las Vegas: A Utopian Mirage

Every year more than 37 million tourists migrate west in search of the gleaming beacon of possibility known as Las Vegas (Only Vegas).  Whether in search of nickel slots or legalized prostitution, retirees and bachelors alike migrate toward America’s gilded desert with their eye on a skyline of glittering signs.  The city is a playground for the rich and a palace for the poor, and the two can interchange as swiftly as the roll of dice.  Las Vegas—a land as free from temporality as it is from inhibitions—has come to represent the attainable utopia.

However, if history and literature have proven anything about utopian societies, it is that they are generally flawed, even despite their best intentions.  With this in mind, we must ask ourselves if Las Vegas has come to characterize the name for one if its most famous hotels—a mirage.

Las Vegas thrives off the inherent human desire of escapism, and profits from the promise of a separate society that holds tight to the secrets that take place within its walls.  Separated from urban reality by a vast expanse of desert, Las Vegas is the accessible oasis that many consider heaven after dark. 

Thrill seekers from every walk of life are drawn to Las Vegas like children to a youth-craving witch’s hypnotic song, their noses upturned toward the scent of America’s utopia.  However, before we enter the open gates of this adult playground, we must ask ourselves if these utopian elements will follow the path set by history and literature to turn Las Vegas into a modern day dystopia, addicting in its camouflaged demise.  Do the utopian elements of Las Vegas amalgamate to form a mere mirage to mask the functioning dystopia that lies beneath the promise of limitless possibility?

Las Vegas is the golden beacon of hopes that rest on the secret belief that Luck really is a lady when she wants to be.  This city is the Holy Grail of escapism, but we must question whether the confines of Las Vegas actually provide as much freedom as they promise.  While a weekend jaunt to Las Vegas might render freedom from the realms of responsibility and reality, tourists tend to forget that they are actually under heightened surveillance and control during their stay in Sin City.  We can drink on public streets, and even better, we can drink for free.  We can gamble away every cent of our savings if we so wish; in fact, we can gamble away more than our savings.  (Somehow, the threat of debt doesn’t ring with quite as much doom within the city of lights.)  We can create ourselves anew, if only for a weekend, in the realm of the uninhibited.  We can drink in every last drop of our freedom; for what happens inside the hollowed walls of the casino or the club is sacred, locked forever inside the Vegas vault.  For Las Vegas does hold true to its promise.  What happens there does, in fact, stay there—on security film.     

Big Brother may be watching, but it matters not to him whether we are in Las Vegas for a golden wedding anniversary or an affair; he could care less if we are attending a Red Cross charity event or on a stint to spend as much fraudulent tax money as we can in twelve hours.  Big Brother only cares that we are sitting at a slot machine dazedly punching away rolls of quarters by the hundred, lost in pensive contemplation over thousands of dollars held in the hands of one-eyed Jacks, or cheering at a roulette table as millions of dollars dance around a windmill of black and red.  In this city that was built on bluffing and calling, we can take on whatever identities we choose, if we know how to play the game.  A rented Trans-Am can transform a Mormon from Salt Lake City into a sports car driving salesman from Sacramento.  A well-chosen wig might make the shy schoolteacher from Alabama into a raven-haired vixen who dances on tables and doesn’t even know how to divide.  Las Vegas is the land where we can be whoever we want to be, where every visitor is an individual of their own discretion—as long as we conform to the, albeit unorthodox, traditions of the city.  For, in asserting our own individualism we are actually conforming to the norms of this escapist colony.

From the imported and scented oxygen that wafts through the vents of the city’s finest hotels to the recycled sink and shower water that flows through the world famous Bellagio fountain, Las Vegas is a city built on a mirage (Vegas Today and Tomorrow).  Individualism is camouflaged conformity; freedom is for all as long as it can be caught on tape.  Las Vegas, a transparent society that thrives off of its own control, is a dystopia in its most definite form.  Why then, has it survived for so long?  Perhaps, because we agree to exist under its control while within its other-worldly confines, but we always have the freedom to leave, to return to our inevitable realities.  After all, we may return to life as we know it under the regime of reality, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  

Works Cited

“Fun Facts.”  Only Vegas.  27 June 2009.  <http://www.visitlasvegas.com>

“Interesting Tidbits.”  Vegas Today and Tomorrow.  27 June 2009.  <http://www.

            vegastodayandtomorrow.com/tidbits.htm>