Strip Cultures: Finding America in Las Vegas
384
Strip Cultures: Finding America in Las Vegas
384eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822375234 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Strip Cultures
Finding America in Las Vegas
By Stacy M. Jameson, Karen Klugman, Jane Kuenz, Susan Willis
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2015 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7523-4
CHAPTER 1
Framing Las Vegas "Reality"
To approach [reality], one has to strip away clichés that keep it hidden from sight. — Michael Ignatieff
On my first day of photographing in Las Vegas, I took a picture of one of the locals, a waitress who was taking a break from her shift at the Harley-Davidson Cafe. My intent was to make a documentary-style portrait of a particular individual who lives in Vegas and works along the Strip. So I focused my subject in the frame, pushed the button, and said, "Thanks for letting me take your picture, Brenda." Brenda gave me a puzzled look, then glanced down at her bodice, fingered her badge, and replied, "Actually, my name is Angel. I forgot my name tag today, but luckily Brenda left hers in the drawer."
Yes, a waitress anywhere might borrow a name tag, but Angel had so casually slipped into this alternative identity that she seemed to have forgotten about it. Could it be that, in this city where so much is fake, people reinvent themselves as freely as you and I get dressed in the morning? By Angel's reckoning, the recurrent Vegas theme of luck had played a big role in her name that day. However, I suspected that the odds of someone wearing a misleading name tag were greater in Vegas than in other cities.
Earlier that morning, as the check-in clerk at Harrah's Las Vegas handed me a book of discount coupons, she said, "Now figure out your game plan. And good luck!" She meant, of course, that I should think about how I was going to optimize my money on gambling, shopping, entertainment, and eating, but my game plan was to take pictures along the Strip in the hopes of uncovering some truths about Vegas. Programmed by the hotel clerk to believe that, no matter how well I strategized, chance would play a role in my day, I indeed felt lucky to have stumbled upon that little white lie of a name tag. But the longer I explored the culture of imagery in Vegas, the more I came to realize that the misleading evidence in my so-called documentary photograph was emblematic of the game of deception that is everywhere in Vegas. The portrait of Angel (a.k.a. Brenda) would resurface in my vision not as a lucky find but as a constant reminder, like the inscriptions on wide-angle mirrors, that in Vegas, nothing is as it appears.
As a teacher of photography, I frequently remind my students that, once a photograph has been taken, what is inside the frame is all that we know. Even though a picture might seem to represent a one-to-one correspondence to the materials of the real world, there is always something missing. A photograph is, after all, a two-dimensional rectangle of visual information that has been removed from its original context in time and place. A photograph is based on the stuff of the real world, and yet it has the potential to deceive. In the picture of the waitress, one might note the woman's expression, her makeup, her hairstyle, her clothing, her gesture with the cigarette, and that little rectangular piece of evidence naming her Brenda. From the information contained within the frame, however, a viewer could not possibly know that outside of her existence in this frame she was known as Angel.
With its reputation for seeming to present evidence and its potential for creating fiction, photography is a perfect medium to play games with notions of reality. In Vegas, renowned for elaborate fabrications, a culture of picture taking has evolved that reinforces the idea that nothing is real. Like every entertainment center, Vegas takes advantage of the hordes of camera-toting visitors to promote an image that supports its main industry. Just as we might primp in front of a mirror before we pose for a picture, Vegas is camera-ready with backdrops, costumed characters, and visual games that tout its reputation for being fake. In other parts of the country, when I ask if I might take someone's picture, the disclaimer "Careful, I might break your camera" is the cliché of choice, conveying both modesty and tacit permission for me to press the shutter button. But in Vegas, the city's motto, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," is recited facetiously as a preamble to picture taking. With every repetition of this catchy phrase, an imaginary frame forms around the people within earshot to cordon them off from the rest of the world. It's as if they are reciting a mantra to remind one another, just as I remind my students about photographs, that what is inside the frame is all that exists. These days, people are surely aware that any pictures could end up on the Internet, yet the shopworn motto still has the power to invoke temporary amnesia about the present day and conjure up images of Vegas in an era when it might have been possible to control information. When I asked a young man who wore his alcoholic beverage in a plastic guitar strung around his shoulder if I might take his picture, he recited the motto as one might utter a prayer before a risky act, then struck an in-your-face pose as a rock star. A beer-toting man responded to my request for a picture with an abbreviated, "Okay, baby, but remember ..." as he swelled out his chest for me to read the Vegas motto printed on his T-shirt. I overheard the phrase recited by two young couples who took turns posing with their hands on the brass frieze of female buttocks — a favorite photo spot in the hallway of the Riviera Casino Hotel. A middle-aged man who was imitating a "smutter" (Las Vegas lingo for a distributor of "calling cards") by flicking his own collection of porno cards and pretending to offer them to passersby, paused to pose for his wife's camera and then (because he noticed me watching?) recited the magic protective words.
A hodgepodge of costumed characters located throughout Vegas helps to create this "anything goes" atmosphere that encourages people to momentarily suspend the notion of reality. Costumed actors within the resorts, such as groups of gladiators in the shopping area of Caesars Palace and the dwarf in a leprechaun suit advertising cheap beer outside O'Sheas Casino fit the theme of their territory. But on the sidewalks of the Strip, the cast of costumed characters resists classification. There are the characters paid to advertise for events and resorts — rows of Rollerbladers in sleek silver outfits bearing flags to advertise the Russian Ice Capades, scantily clad women with feather headdresses handing out coupons for bars and restaurants, men draped in sandwich boards depicting helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon, and of course Liberace. The everyday street party includes a rotating crew of costumed visitors — pairs of brides and grooms, groups of guys wearing fraternity letters, and squadrons of bikers clad in silver-studded black leather. Amid this cast of regular characters, individuals parade the streets wearing T-shirts with messages that normally wouldn't be seen outside a bar, such as "My Mother Wanted Me to Be Something, So I Became an Asshole" or "I [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to Fart." On St. Patrick's Day, women stroll the sidewalks wearing skirts with sewn-in nude butts on the back. Within this Felliniesque setting, even the Catholic priest who silently holds a donation basket outside the Excalibur Resort seems to be just another character playing a temporary role.
In an area of the Strip lined with cheap souvenir shops and rent-me convertibles, one of the costumed regulars, an Elvis impersonator, implores tourists to pose with him for a picture. But, unlike Mickey Mouse, whose simultaneous appearances in several places in the Magic Kingdom are carefully choreographed to make it seem as if there is only one Mickey, two Elvises often work as a team. A visitor can pose with Elvis or, for the same price, pose with two Elvises. In exposing the Elvises as actors, Vegas works like the MGM Studios portion of Disney World, where everything is acknowledged to be fake. Over and over again, by posing together, the two Elvises invite visitors to share the joke that they are only pretending to be Elvis. Their mirror-image poses frame the take-home photos (suggested price of $5) as a true Las Vegas souvenir that flaunts the idea that everything is artificial.
The idea that no particular Elvis is authentic is also promoted by wedding businesses that encourage prospective marriage couples to select the Elvis of their choice. Clients are encouraged to read the actors' bios, learn their real-life names, and view pictures of them in costume in order to select the style and age of Elvis that suits their tastes. Not only will a particular business offer multiple Elvis packages (options to ride in the convertible, have Elvis sing and officiate the ceremony, or even ride in a helicopter with him), but many of the packages include multiple Elvises. In one of the Vegas wedding videos posted online, a bride was accompanied by four Elvis impersonators — the wedding minister, the Cadillac driver, an escort, and the groom. I couldn't help but wonder if the Elvis-themed package included the husband as part of the deal.
The two sidewalk Elvises often work alongside a woman who looks as if she stepped out of the Folies Bergère in a long, tight, sequined skirt, a bra-like top, and a feathered headdress. Like the Elvises, she works the Strip posing for pictures. She has a huge smile for everyone's camera and adds sexual innuendo to her pose with men, who often recite the Vegas motto to acknowledge their embarrassment as their wives snap the photo. After each picture, the Folies Bergère woman discreetly pulls down the waistband of her skirt from her bare midriff and adds a bill to her growing wad. One day I watched her pose with a family that included two young boys, one of whom attempted to pull down her bra top as she held the toddler in her arms. She and the family laughed at the boy's indiscretion, but no one seemed to feel that posing a child with this sexual charmer was out of the ordinary. It was simply what was done here, as if the woman herself were merely another backdrop indicating that one had been to Vegas.
I took several pictures of the Folies Bergère woman posing with various men before her smile turned downward and she suddenly asked if I personally knew the man around whose body she currently had her leg curled. "What kind of creepy person are you, anyway?" she yelled. "Taking pictures of another woman's husband! What are you going to do with the picture? Put it under your pillow?" At this point, the wife of the posing man became alarmed, and suddenly everyone in the vicinity imagined that I was a pornographer. Even the Elvises broke character and glared at me. Here I was in Las Vegas, accustomed to a public persona as a nearly invisible older woman in a society that worships youth and beauty, and, simply by breaking an unspoken code about photography, I had achieved the status of sexual deviant in Sin City. I might as well have been wearing a badge naming me "sexual predator." Like Angel, I wanted to explain that there had been a misunderstanding — that I would never put the photo under my pillow. But it seemed way too complicated to explain that I might put it in a book.
I had a similar experience of stealing attention from a Vegas attraction when I tried to take a picture of two Chippendales (again, like the Elvises, this Vegas species occurs in pairs) in the very public plaza of the Fremont Street Experience north of the Strip. When the bare-chested Chippendales pose for pictures with women, they select from a menu of choreographed poses as predictable as the order in which they remove their clothing in their performances at the Rio. They pull their signature black sleeveless vests off their shoulders and, depending on the woman's age and probable agility, they either hold the woman's leg against their bodies or place her hand on their nipples or flat against their six-packs. On this particular day, they were each holding a young girl, one perhaps eight years old and the other a little younger, whose mother had volunteered them for a picture. When the Chippendales opened their vests and arranged the girls to reveal more skin and breast for the mother's camera, I was truly shocked — shocked by their suggestive pose with the girls, shocked that the mother was delighted, and shocked that no one else in the crowd appeared to be shocked. Had the Chips realized that they had crossed a line when they spotted my camera in the midst of a crowd and yelled, "Stop! No picture taking"? Or did they just want to be paid?
Observing strangers in the act of fantasy play seemed to be perfectly acceptable and even encouraged. The Elvises, the Folies Bergère actress, and the Chippendales attracted crowds of people who watched groups of friends or families mug for the camera. Even though these performances occurred in public places, where free speech laws include the right to take pictures, there seemed to be some prohibition on picture taking in Vegas that overrode the First Amendment. Was the rule a variation on the Vegas motto allowing for what happens in Vegas to leave Vegas so long as it stays in the family, as the Folies Bergère poser had implied? Or did these performers claim to be immune from free-speech laws simply because they too wanted to be paid?
The unspoken rules of photography in Vegas were confusing. Costumed street workers hired by businesses — those employed to hand out monorail discounts, restaurant advertisements, and theater specials — happily posed for pictures for free. Selling a commodity other than their appearance in photographs, they were paid either by the hour or by the number of tickets that would be cashed in. None of them seemed to mind or even notice that I took pictures of multiple people posing with them. The problem is that it is hard to distinguish the posers whose reproductions were the commodity being sold and those whose images helped to sell another product. For example, when I snapped a picture of two women in green sequins and feathers who were dressed almost exactly like a woman who had been posing near Bally's for free, the pair yelled at me indignantly, saying that they "only allow pictures for money." Was I supposed to recognize that because they, like the Elvises and the Chippendales, were already identical reproductions of one another, they had some the authority to charge people for making yet another reproduction of them?
On the same day that I was publicly humiliated in front of the Elvis–Folies Bergère crowd, I was called a whore by a smutter wearing a Santa Claus hat. Again, my transgression was trying to take a picture of a public act in a public place. Smutters are men and women usually wearing brightly colored T-shirts advertising "Girls Direct to You," who hand out small cards with phone numbers and pictures of nude women flaunting large breasts, often in spread-eagle or bare-butt poses with tiny stars in crucial spots. In keeping with other duplicates in Vegas, some of the cards advertise two women, such as the Barbie twins or the Asian schoolgirls. One card offered a special for $65 or two for $99. Like many other street workers in Vegas, smutters also work in groups. They stand in a row, offering cards to males of a certain age (I don't know how they assess the lower limit, but there is definitely no upper age limit for the men they target). The solicitors all flick their stack of cards in the same manner, which produces a regular clicking noise as if they are using sound to reinforce an addiction. Their hands operate quickly, so that it is very difficult to get a picture of one of these cards actually being handed off to a potential customer. I had various experiences trying to photograph them. A few distributors reluctantly let me take their pictures while they hid their deck of cards from the camera as if they were concealing a poker hand. A few smiled for the camera and splayed the cards at crotch level. But most scattered like pigeons when I raised the camera and settled back into formation after I passed. On this particular day in December, Salvation Army workers were huddled around collection baskets and ringing bells, forming a second battalion behind the line of smutters. I especially loved the image of the smutter with the Santa Claus hat passing out escort cards near a Salvation Army person collecting money from a family. And so I raised my camera to take the picture. And that's when the smutter swore at me. "Whore!" he yelled. My mind shuffled through a rapid sequence of possible responses, such as, "Why am I surprised that you detest the product you are selling?" and "Another first for me!" Instead, I essentially put myself in the same category as a smutter. "Hey, I'm just doing my job," I retorted. "You work the streets and I work the streets."
No guidebook tells people that smutters are as opposed to having their pictures taken as the Amish in Pennsylvania. Yet everyone seemed to understand that this quintessential Vegas phenomenon needed to stay in Las Vegas. The smutters were real people, mostly Latinos, and photographing social reality was not part of the Vegas game plan. Not only did people not take pictures of them, most dared not even look their way. For a man, looking at a smutter would be an invitation to have the escort card flashed in his face for a longer period. The smutter might even walk a few paces beside a man who did not keep his eyes averted.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Strip Cultures by Stacy M. Jameson, Karen Klugman, Jane Kuenz, Susan Willis. Copyright © 2015 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Riding the Deuce 11. Framing Las Vegas "Reality" 23
2. Playing the Penny Slots 50
3. S.I.N. City 70
4. sH2Ow 110
5. Bread and Circuses 134
6. The Whole World on a Plate 160
7. Gaming the Senses 184
8. Nature in Vegas: Cultivating the Brand 215
9. The Shipping Container Capital of the World 243
10. Ghosts of Weddings Past, Present, and Yet to Come 290
11. Memories: Made in China 322
Epilogue. Sucker Bet 338
Bibliography 359
Index 367
What People are Saying About This
"Rabelais does Las Vegas."
"Bringing fresh perspectives to our understanding of the Las Vegas Strip, the authors offer a compelling set of observations that speak not only to the over-the-top world of the Strip, but to larger trends in American culture. They allow readers to catch a brief glimpse of another Vegas, the one occupied by those who keep the city's economic wheels of gaming and tourism turning."