Las Vegas Odyssey
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To provide a visitor with the sense of well-being, safety, and
permission to act out an internal imaginative world. Las Vegas underpins its
entertainment product of the mythical experience with the ancient Greek spirit
of xenia. Xenia represents the reciprocal guest/host relationship between two
xenoU a word which means at once guest, host, stranger, friend, and foreigner.
The relationship suggested by xenia is not based on friendship, but rather on
obligation, the non-filial interaction of the host and guest. It works only if each
side does not violate the terms of xenoi. In the Greek world, to do so is to offend
Zeus himself In Las Vegas, the judge of compliance to xenoi includes middle
management casino monitors. Perched above the casino floor behind one-way
mirrors, they serve as panopticons as they monitor gamblers. Security guards
provide surveillance at ground level to maintain xenoi.
Perhaps every Las Vegas tourist, upon arrival in the city, wonders, as
did the mythic Ulysses upon arrival at each new shore: “Ah me, wiiat are the
people wfrose land I have come to this time, and are they violent and savage, and
without justice, or hospitable to strangers, with a godly mind?” (105:120,
141:175, 203:200). Not only does the city promise safety, efficiency, and
protection, indicating a well-run society where the social contract is clear, it also
promises a no-questions-asked escape to an oasis where desire is not only
acknowledged, but also encouraged and often fulfilled. Las Vegas suggests that
the tourist can beat the odds and hold the gods in check.
Ontological transportation between realms shores up the escape trope
of the mythological journey. Traveling through the desert may not consume ten
years of Odyssean wandering, but the journey to an oasis does assume a
separation from familiar landscapes. Although, for Ulysses, the journey itself is
the site of the poetics of domination where survival is the hope, the original
setting sail from the shores of Calypso complies with the morality of xenia. She
speaks, “[M]ake yourself a large raft with an upper deck that it may carry you
safely over the sea. I will put bread, wine, and water on board to save you from
starving” (Homer, Book V, para 12). Although the approach by land and air to
Las Vegas is safe, the liminality of transport between the two modes of reality
still figures large in creating the Las Vegas experience. Liminal space is that
time and place when participants in ritual (communally shared activity) enter
into mythical time where history and accountability are suspended and wiiere
return to the status quo is assumed and guaranteed. Las Vegas entertainment
banks on the anticipation and the promise of secrecy and the guarantee of a safe
re-entry that occurs in the transition. As long as the tourist behaves. Las Vegas
will deliver.
Just like Ulysses after the battlefields, the tourist comes to Vegas
because of the fatigue of the often unpleasant and unrewarded civilized life
where reason and reflection, not imagination and passion, provide the engine of
intercourse. Like the epic hero leaving the battleground of Troy, the Las Vegas