Day 1: Arrival

Whilst the attacks of September 11 2001 had worldwide repercussions in terms of airport security and immigration, it is apparent that the process is a lot more stringent in the U.S. While this may be scarcely surprising given the shock the destruction of the Twin Towers created, it is remarkable how wide-reaching and entrenched the response has become nearly 15 years later. The U.K., for example, does not require the provision of fingerprints as part of the entry process, and visitors certainly do not see several security staff with holstered guns prominently displayed at their hips patrolling the arrival area. As we waited to be processed, an immigration officer quickly spotted a woman using her phone, and directed his colleague to tell her to switch it off, a small illustration of the tension and nervousness that pervades America when it comes to the issue of terrorism. Things were not like this for those arriving at Ellis Island a century ago. The 'Land of the Free' is under threat.

The New York skyline as depicted is just one of the many examples of 'simulation' one can encounter on the Strip of Las Vegas. 

Escaping the port of entry, we travel in to Las Vegas, often characterized as a “postmodern” city, “one that is ever-changing and reinventing itself to new markets and cultural shifts” (Smith et al, 2002:1). We reach the heart of the city’s prosperity, “the Strip” or Las Vegas Boulevard, where the truth of this becomes abundantly clear. Passing the iconic Las Vegas sign, we are welcomed by Luxor’s Sphinx and Pyramid, quickly followed by a replica of the Statue of Liberty and a skyline mimicking that of New York. This is clearly the world of the imitation and the fake, everything out of context, which is unsurprising in a city reinvented by the Mob (McGowan, 2016), who loved 'glamour', whose essence is cheap and without substance. The gigantic replicas were not created to reflect the culture of their original locations in the middle of a desert, but rather to “create impressive simulations…that result in an even better experience than the original” (Smith et al., 2002:2). No one comes here for aesthetic purposes, so there is only a need to lay the thinnest of veneers across the reality of money, to briefly entice visitors and ultimately encourage bravado in the casinos. The essential purpose of Las Vegas, or to be more specific, the Strip, is to distract and console those who must inevitably lose. The whole experience is deliberately unreal and unconvincing, given that most of the buildings are for the most part modern in nature and retain little character of the past. There is always a need to “build again, and build bigger” (McGowan, 2016) on the profits to be made from 'suckers'. But they need to be made to feel important.

McGowan, P. (2016) Why Las Vegas is the Ultimate American City. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/why-las-vegas-is-the-ultimate-american-city-54370 [Accessed May 14, 2016]

Smith, R., and Bugni, V. (2002) Architectural sociology and post-modern architectural forms. AIA Connections. Available at: http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=sociology_pubs [Accessed May 14, 2016]