Popular Culture Review 29.2
most exclusive products the world has to offer in a Roman themed environment . The authors conclude with an analysis of the Forum as a cathedral of consumption , an entrepreneur ’ s dream where people pay , not for the intrinsic worth of goods and services ; but for the status attached to them .
KEY WORDS
Caesars Palace , Forum , themed casino , Walter Benjamin , Roland Barthes , gambling , cathedral , consumption , Caesars Entertainment Corporation , art , replicas
INTRODUCTION
Caesars Means Business ( Caesars Convention Center Motto 2018 )
An advertisement in the Los Angeles Times on 27 July 1966 , announced the opening of a new casino in Las Vegas . The ad proclaimed , “ I CAESAR , INVITE YOU ” ( A2 ). It featured a cartoon of a scantily clad slave girl feeding grapes to a rotund , toga-clad caricature that looked remarkably like owner Jay Sarno . It promised a liturgy of titillating memes ; “ AN ORGY OF EXCITEMENT ,” “ Caper and cavort in Bacchanalian raptures of revelry !” and “ rub shoulders with the Jet-set ” ( A2 ).
After fifty-two years , the theme , style , and predominately male high stakes gambling clientele of Caesars Palace remain much the same . It still epitomizes what French post-modernist Jean Baudrillard said about Las Vegas : “ Here one could find a greater variety of large-scale reproductions than in any other place ” ( 91 ). These reproductions take the form of replica art . Fredrick Jameson , another post-modernist , described it as a pastiche where “ all that is left is to imitate dead styles , to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum ” ( 4 ). Architect Robert Venturi noted ,
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