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Las Vegas Mon Amour

University of Nebraska at Kearney

Here, the author uses the film/screenplay Hiroshima Mon Amourto discuss contemporary trends in Las Vegas. A new elitism/renaissance in the city can be contrasted against an absence of history/memory. New gambling technologies promote a smoother capitalism while simultaneously encouraging nostalgia and distracting players from considering the house's edge. Television has also gained greater importance in defining Las Vegas, both nationally and locally. These seemingly innocuous patterns, though, belie a core (yet often unspoken) truth: that what is commonly promoted as entertainment in Las Vegas is also destructive. The city is one that ethnographers should take more seriously as an expression of deep, contradictory currents in postmodern life.

Key Words: elitism • entertainment • ethnography • film • gambling • Las Vegas • postmodernism • technology • television • tourism • social problems • atomic testing

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 74-96 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1532708605285625


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