George Ritzer, and Todd Stillman 2001 The Modern Las Vegas Casino-Hotel: The
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- George Ritzer
- Todd Stillman
M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99 Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas 95
country. It is also a good example of the compression of time because it removes barriers to consumption by making racing available for a far greater part of the day than it would be at any single track. In what could also be considered both a form of simulation and implo- sion, Las Vegas casinos make spectacular use of time by drawing on the past, the present and the future to produce spectacles. Such manipulations fall under the category of implosion because past, pre- sent, and future worlds co-exist at a given time. They fall under the cat- egory of simulation because they involve inauthentic recreations from other times and places. While these techniques for manipulating time are common to a hyperreal or postmodern condition, and can be found in a variety of consumer settings (e.g., Disney World), the case can be made that Las Vegas casino/hotels manipulate time more ambitiously and on a larger scale than other cathedrals of consumption. In no other place than Las Vegas can a consumer find a greater variety of large- scale simulations of other times and places. For example, the Strip offers the ancient past at the Luxor and Caesar’s Palace, the Dark Ages at Excalibur, the Old West at the Golden Nugget. The present, at least in a simulated form, is to be found at places like Bellagio, Vene- tian and Paris. The future can be found at the Stratosphere and at Star Trek at the Las Vegas Hilton. The ready availability of such a variety of time periods is quite alluring to visitors and helps to bring them to Las Vegas and the specific casino-hotels. Casino-hotels also manipulate space in order to create spectacles and to thereby re-enchant themselves. This is often achieved through the creation of a sense of enormous space. Huge shopping malls like the Mall of America and gigantic cruise ships like Carnival’s Destiny exem- plify the allure of the large. However, it is once again in Las Vegas that we find the paradigmatic use of large spaces to lure consumers. Las Vegas casino-hotels, of course, are among the largest in the world. It is difficult to describe in words the enormity of these settings. The Luxor takes the form of a glass pyramid into which it would be pos- sible to stuff nine Boeing 747 aircraft. Adjacent to the pyramid is a sphinx that is larger than the original sphinx in Egypt. The Stratosphere has a 1,000 foot observation tower touted as the tallest building west of the Mississippi. New York, New York has a 150-foot high replica of the Statue of Liberty. Paris has a half-scale copy of the Eiffel tower and a full-scale model of the Arc de Triomphe. All of this, of course, says nothing about the huge number of guestrooms, gaming tables, and slot machines inside the casino-hotels. NEW DIRECTIONS IN SURVEILLANCE The preceding sections of this essay have followed the logic of
casino-hotel is the paradigmatic new means/cathedral of consumption. That is, it is the model for the interrelated processes of rationalization, disenchantment, and re-enchantment through the use of simulations, implosion and manipulations of time and space. In this section we want
M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99 Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas 96
to go beyond the logic of that work to argue that the casino-hotel is paradigmatic of the cathedrals of consumption in another sense— surveillance. We argue that the pattern of surveillance pioneered in Las Vegas casino-hotels has been, and is likely to continue to be, adopted by many of the new means of consumption. The new means of consumption place a premium on controlling and eliminating crime and for this reason are under heavy surveillance. Security guards and electronic cameras help protect against shoplifters, employee theft and other problems. However, it is in the Las Vegas casino-hotel that the threat of crime, and the efforts to control it through surveillance, reaches their apogee, suggesting the direction surveillance in consumer society in general will take. After all, huge sums of money change hands daily in the casino. The high stakes attract all sorts of gamblers intent on cheating the casino. There is the ever-present possibility that employees (e.g., those who run the roulette wheels or deal the cards) will conspire with others to bilk the casino out of large sums of money. Then there is the threat of thieves who might attempt to rob the casino and/or some of its high rollers. All of these threats and others have led the casino-hotel to spearhead the effort to find new and better methods of surveil- lance.
On the casino floor, surveillance serves not only the purpose of pro- tecting against employee theft and card-cheats, but it is also used to keep track of, and dispense rewards to, active players through a sys- tem known as “comping.” In the comp system, players who average a certain amount of money wagered over a certain amount of time are entitled to perks. The casino bases this calculation on the per- centage it can expect to win from each bet. Average players can receive free lunches while bigger players (“whales”) get such things as free flights, rooms, limousine service, fight tickets and deluxe meals. For those games involving large wagers, the comps can be very high indeed. Casinos are happy to dispense perks because they keep gamblers playing and returning at later dates. Since the more one gambles, the more likely one is to lose, increasing the number of times a gambler plays, increases the chances that the house will win, and win big. The comp system is also a way casinos keep track of players and induce consumer loyalty. Reflecting the paradigmatic status of the casino-hotel, systems based on this model are rapidly spreading to other means of consumption. Many supermarket chains, for example, now use swipe cards to track customer purchases. These same cards are used to activate discounts on some items (instead of the tradition- al sale price) and shoppers can accumulate vouchers if a certain amount of money is spent monthly. We can expect that surveillance will be used in conjunction with incentives in more and more cathedrals of consumption as the value of customer loyalty and repeat consump- tion is emphasized increasingly. The comp system is especially important because it provides a method through which large, often faceless, consumer settings will be able to personalize their interaction with customers—especially preferred cus-
M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99 Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas 97
tomers—through the use of advanced technology. This technology runs parallel to accounts, such as Harvey’s ideas discussed above, of the so-called post-Fordist model of production. Recall that in the post- Fordist model of production, new technology enables more flexible production techniques than the mass-production associated with the Fordist model. The “comp” model suggests an emergent flexibility in rationalized systems with the development of new ways of monitoring, rewarding, attracting and retaining consumers. Such a model enables a modicum of individualized treatment in otherwise faceless, phantas- magoric systems. CONCLUSION: SELF-ILLUSORY HEDONISTS IN FANTASY LAND It is clear that gambling, like all other forms of consumption, has its allures. There is an adrenaline rush associated with placing a wager that can be both exciting and enjoyable. A problem exists when the casino environment encourages gamblers to bet more than they wish and more than they can afford. Casino gambling involves self-illusory hedonism in its purest form. Casino gamblers believe that they can win despite well-known statistical evidence to the contrary. After a losing bet or a losing evening, self-illusory hedonists return to the gaming tables to try their luck again and again, each time sure in the belief that a jackpot is imminent. Casino-hotels do their best to support and foster the self-illusory hedonism of gamblers by providing them with a spectacular and enchanting setting in which to gamble. The casinos create a spectac- ular environment that is far more stimulating and glamorous than the mundanity of everyday life, usually by simulating well-known attrac- tions from the past, present, or imagined future. Further, they implode boundaries between gambling, shopping, travel and entertainment thereby making it possible for gamblers to bring their families, to reduce the regrets associated with excessive gambling by normaliz- ing it as just another form of consumption, and to increase their expenditures on things that are peripheral to gambling itself. The casi- no-hotels also manipulate time and space to create a setting in which time seems not to matter and traditional spatial boundaries to con- sumption are eliminated. Lastly, through the comp system they create a system of incentives for those who frequently gamble large sums of money. The result is a situation in which the setting increases the like- lihood that one will gamble more than is prudent. Gamblers seem to prefer the simulated environment of the casino to the more mundane settings of everyday life. It is the purity of the casino-hotel which makes it paradigmatic of the new means of consumption. At least some people seem to prefer con- suming to other everyday activities. At least some seem to suffer, as Campbell (1987) argues, from a form of self-illusory hedonism where the next piece of clothing or electronic gadget promises to make life live up to fantasy, but never actually does. The new means of con- M@n@gement, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001, 83-99 Special Issue: Deconstructing Las Vegas 98
sumption nurture this hedonistic impulse by feeding individual fan- tasies with the more macroscopic fantasies associated with simulation, implosion, manipulation of time and of space. What results, at least for some, is a situation in which people consume too much or in which consumption, and the costs associated with it, come to interfere with other parts of their lives. There is certainly nothing wrong with consuming now and again, just as there’s nothing wrong with an occasional trip to Las Vegas. Not everyone over-consumes or is unreflective about the ways in which they are manipulated by the new means of consumption. But it is incumbent upon us to understand the logic of these consumer settings and the Las Vegas casino-hotel is the perfect laboratory in which to understand the essence of this logic. In gaining an understanding of why so many people are drawn to these casino-hotels, and why peo- ple spend so much money in them, we can gain a greater under- standing of the more general process of consumption that increasing- ly takes place in cathedrals of consumption. George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. He has been awarded the 2000 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award by the American Sociological Association (ASA). He has served as Chair of two Sections of the ASA—Organizations and Occupations and Theoretical Sociology. In addition to The McDonaldization of Society (translated into a dozen languages), his other books include Expressing America, Enchanting a Disenchanted World, Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science, and Metatheorizing in Sociology. He is co-founding editor (with Don Slater) of the Journal of Consumer Culture. Sage has just published (2001) two volumes of his collected works: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization, and Fast
interests include the sociology of consumption and social theory. He works as an assis- tant on the Journal of Consumer Culture. He has co-authored essays on Situationism, Globalization, customer service and baseball stadia. REFERENCES s
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s Gottdiener, M., C. C. Collins, and D. R. Dickens 1999 Las Vegas: The Social Production of an All-American City, Malden, MA: Blackwell. s Harvey, D. 1989 The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford: Blackwell. s Jameson, F. 1991 Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke Uni- versity Press. s Littlejohn, D. 1997 They took Manhattan—to the Desert, Wall Street Journal, January 21: A16. s Miller, M. B. 1981 The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. s
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