They're building a new hotel/casino in Las Vegas called Vegas World. In the same way that the New York, New York hotel is a simulation, a microcosm of New York City, Vegas World will be a simulation of the city of Las Vegas.
Imagine it. Each hotel in Vegas, takes on a theme, location, or time period of its own, ever-increasingly grand. Each hotel is an encapsulation of some remote reality. Not even attempting authenticity. And Vegas World, the mother of all hotels, will be a simulation of the grandeur, the full-tilt, big breasted, bright lights, glamour and sin that is Las Vegas. Only on small scale.
The concept of Vegas World is infinitely clever and hilarious to me, if, as I suspect, the idea was conceived after some rich bastard's all-night drunken gambling binge. As he stepped out into the pink creeping fingers of morning, maybe he thought, wouldn't it be funny to parody ourselves? But the idea is more than a clever joke. It says something about our culture. This is a culture that needs a small scale version of a city... within that very city? So imagine you're the tourist. You’ve just flown hundreds of miles to stay in a hotel that is a small-scale version of the very city you are now in? Somebody tell me if this makes any sense.
Vegas World is simulacra of simulacra, endlessly self-referencing. I wonder, among all the micro-hotels and casinos contained within Vegas World, if Vegas World itself will be found. It's rather like standing between two mirrors and seeing yourself eternally reflected.
When you make a photocopy of a copy of a copy, the text begins to blur and lose its content. The same is true with other things. The nth generation of simulacra loses all original meaning. But this is not important to the Vegas visitor.
The Vegas World phenomena reveals a compulsion in our culture to minimize things into small, bite-sized pieces. Into easily digestible parts. The lowest common denominator. Everything about Las Vegas, but particularly Vegas World, demonstrates a stunning disregard for authenticity. Why settle for reality, when you can have the cartoonish, the garish, the über-real?
Copyright 7/99 Jennifer Chung.
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