Behind the Irony Curtain 13
which cultural icons are endlessly but never convincingly quoted .” 35 Ralph Rugoff agrees : “ Las Vegas ,” he wrote , “ is a comic spectacle . [ It ] has become a place you visit in order to go someplace else , but your destination is a joke .” 36
In addition to the New York New York with its Manhattan skyline and its Statue of Liberty , there is the Luxor with its Sphinx , Caesar ’ s Palace with its statues ( classical and Renaissance ) and Roman Forum , the Paris with its Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower , the Bellagio overlooking Lake Como , the Venetian with its Doge ’ s Palace , and the Excaliber with its knights and turrets . Why not a Red Square with its own lifelike statue of Lenin ? As Jan Carter , a casino visitor , commented , “ This whole place is about fantasy . Why would anyone take it ( Lenin ’ s statue ) seriously ?” 37
Temporal Irony
There is also an element of irony in the timing of the sequence of events , which we call temporal irony . At the close of the millennium , a statue of Lenin went up in the United States just as statues of the Soviet founder were coming down all across Eastern Europe and Russia . For some 65 years Lenin was revered and deified in the Soviet Union as the ultimate hero of the revolution . Though he died in 1924 , Lenin ’ s image survived , “ peering out from millions of icon-like pictures , memorialized in countless statues — his stem visage looking to a distant radiant future .” After Lenin , a series of Soviet leaders came and went , but he remained , the ultimate father figure , lying in state in the mausoleum in Red Square . Called a “ sacred ” place that provides an “ inexhaustible source of revolutionary energy ,” this mausoleum has been visited by tens of millions of Russians who waited patiently in long lines , often in freezing weather , to pay their respects to the embalmed hero of the revolution . 38
The “ Cult of Lenin ,” while somewhat overshadowed during the reign of Stalin , lasted for seventy years , serving to legitimize Soviet policy and glorify the motherland . As late as 1967 , Lenin played a key role in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and was further exalted in 1970 when the nation commemorated the centennial of his birth . In both instances , civic , political , and cultural life was saturated with the slogan , “ Lenin lives .” Factories , publishing houses , looms , kilns , bakeries — everything that could produce artifacts contributed some manner of Lenin-abilia for the occasions . There was no way to escape the ubiquitous trappings of the cult : Banners with his gargantuan face hung from the sides of buildings and a balloon with his portrait hovered over Moscow . The GUM department store featured a bed for three because ( as the ad read ) “ Lenin is always with us .” 39
This virtual deification changed almost overnight , however , with the collapse of the Soviet Union . Throughout Russia and much of Eastern Europe , likenesses of Lenin were abused , besmirched , and exploded ; many statues were pulled down or beheaded ; and the city of Leningrad returned to its prerevolutionary name of St . Petersburg . 40 Lenin remains a hero to some , as