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Popular Culture Review
world from the material devouring of the Laestrygonians. Ulysses loses a few
more men.
Once more succumbing to temptation, the men unpack the fierce winds
from the sacks they had been warned not to untie and suffer all the hardships of
rough seas. They then barely escape with their lives from the land of the
cannibals. Finally the ships arrive at Aeaean, the land of the goddess Circe, and
sojourn for twelve months of abundance. The Circe is an enchantress, sister to a
magician, who uses her bag of tricks to keep Ulysses on her isle by subduing the
men and magically turning them into swine, a fitting state for their uncivilized
natures. The description of her palace is reminiscent of the home of local Las
Vegas magicians, Siegfried and Roy. From his first sight of the home of Circe,
Ulysses describes its unnaturalness:
It was an open place, and put together from stones, well
polished and all about it there were lions, and wolves of the
mountains, whom the goddess had given evil drugs and
enchanted, and these made no attack on the men, but came up
thronging about them, waving their long tails and fawning, in
the way that dogs fawn about their master (Homer 157)
Like the myth, the appearance of harmless wild animals in many of the Las
Vegas shows reminds audiences that a magical realm has been entered. If reality
implies common sense, then the tourist has left the real world. Cars, tigers,
elephants, and women disappear, while men are cut in half or moved across the
stage. Seen by 400,000 people per year in Las Vegas, the avatars of magic,
Siegfried and Roy, breached the mythical realm, only to arrive unexpectedly and
tragically into reality, when one of the show’s tigers lunged at Roy Horn,
grabbed him by the neck, and then dragged his limp body off the stage. Before
losing consciousness, Roy’s last words were orders not to harm the tiger.
Circe, as does the Vegas entertainment industry, recognizes the limited
time she will have with Ulysses and the help she must gi ve him to leave her. She
serves as the perfect xenoi and helps Ulysses plan for his departure from her
arms to Hades. She instructs him that he must go there to meet with the blind
Theban, the prophet Teiresias, “whose reason is still unshaken” even in Hades
(Homer, para 40). Hades reinforces the message of self-recognition and self
acceptance familiar to the reasoned. Enlightenment ideal. The motif of death and
rebirth suggests that the visit to Hades is pivotal in the reconstruction of the
personality. Las Vegas is resplendent with images of death and rebirth as the
many death-defying acts and magic shows suggest. Revisiting the Luxor Casino
with its allusions to Egyptian motifs of life-afler-death enhance the associations.
But the message reinforced to both Greek and 21^ century heroes is the message
that Teiresias delivers: use restraint in the face of temptation. Ulysses is to warn