They do not look like they're having a good time--especially for
people who've come so far to, ostensibly, and what you see, with few
exceptions, is actually a single face: a set expression, rather grim,
focused in what is almost a stare, as they mechanically, rhythmically
drop coins into the machines. At the roulette tables the expression is
almost the same, with the grimness soured almost to glumness as the wheel
rejects their numbers again and again. (It's hard not to take that
personally.) The blackjack tables are just slightly more animated. Only
at craps do people seem to get excited, yell, cheer, moan, applaud--but
craps is intimidating, and few play. Most remain at the slots.
They take breaks to eat, many queuing up on lines for a half hour
and longer to save money at a $5 buffet. This behavior is difficult to
understand, since before and after eating they're willing to lose those
same five dollars in minutes or even seconds at the games. Or they'll go
to a show. Or lie in the sun by the pool (not so pleasant in place that
is often more than 100 degrees in the sun). Or they'll stand around to
see the artificial volcano erupt in front of the Mirage, or the
full-scale pirate ships (complete with actors) battle in front of
Treasure Island. And, especially after dark, they'll walk up and down Las
Vegas Boulevard, known as the Strip, with the same set expression that
they have at the slots, staring, staring, staring, at each other, at the
neon, at the shadows of the desert mountains, and walking in and out of
the casinos, where they lose more money.
Since there are slot and video poker machines in virtually every
drugstore, liquor store, supermarket, restaurant, bar, and souvenir
shop--even at the airport--they lose money everywhere they turn. It is as
though they are on automatic pilot, programmed to lose that which they
most want.
But it is not enough to note their passivity, for nothing could be
less surprising than the passivity of a people who, statistically, spend
nearly half their leisure hours watching TV. It would be surprising if
they weren't passive. And it's not enough to say--as these people mill
together on a sidewalk waiting for an artificial volcanic eruption, or
take photos in front of larger-than-life scenes from The Wizard of
Oz--that they are subservient to spectacle. Most people, in most
societies, have been equally subservient to their respective spectacles,
gawking at any distraction no matter how little sense it made. Nor are
their grim faces, ever-so-slightly frightened and just a hint angry, very
unusual; you can see the same expression on people walking the average
city street. Even what can only be called their tastelessness isn't
unusual; after all, whatever else you can say about American culture,
elegant it's not. (What we lack in elegance we usually make up for in
energy.)
What is fascinating and unusual about these people, when compared
to how they spend their time elsewhere, is their complete abandon to the
act of throwing away money--money that in Las Vegas brings little in
return except the act of throwing it away. For most of them, it is not a
wild or pleasurable abandon. If anything, it seems a determined and often
even a cranky abandon. But it is abandon. They know what they're doing,
and they do it with an almost frenetic (though also somehow glum) energy,
and they've come a long way and planned a long time to do it. There is
little evidence of the passion that (for me, at least) makes abandon
worthwhile, but there is every evidence of the quality without which
abandon cannot exist: fatalism.
There are few things more un-American in style than fatalism.
People came to America to create "a city on the hill," based on a
religious faith in progress. American politics, industry, and culture are
fueled by this optimism. The GNP must increase, and life must get better
and better. No other culture feels this as passionately as ours; no other
bases its sense of well-being on such optimism. In America, to be
fatalistic is to be seen as dour, depressed.
In our culture fatalism is reserved for quirky "noir" films, or for
our great solitary novelists like Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway--but
these are often suspect in the eyes of the people at large. Though we
seem to have less and less to be optimistic about, people who question
the national optimism are seen as a threat. So for average Americans to
come a far distance to indulge, albeit not very consciously, in fatalism,
particularly fatalism about money, is a phenomenon found on a mass scale
nowhere but Las Vegas.
For it's not as though these people don't, on some level, know what
they're doing. They're not stupid, after all. People who routinely
operate the most complex technological culture in history cannot be
considered stupid. They know the odds are with the house. They know that
losing here is far more common than winning. And most of them have been
here before. Las Vegas couldn't be profitable if people came only once;
our population isn't large enough yet for that. It might be fair to say
that for so many to come so often is a terrible comment on the dullness
of their daily lives, but this doesn't begin to explain the fatalism of
regularly visiting Las Vegas. They work terribly hard for their money,
they know they are almost certainly going to lose some of that money in
Las Vegas, and they come anyway.
Tags:
anathema,
demographics,
fantasies,
fantasy,
gambling,
good reason,
impulses,
job security,
las vegas casinos,
little time,
malls,
michael ventura,
middle class,
money,
money money,
national shrine,
nothing but time,
oppression,
personality disorders,
potent mix,
rival,
Social Security,
supermarkets,
weekdays
