Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Post Modern City: Las Vegas



The above picture taken from http://www.photos4travel.com/las-vegas/las-vegas-night.jpg shows Las Vegas at night. The image shows a replica of the Eiffel Tower and shows Las Vegas as a themed city and also represents nostalgia. Las Vegas presents itself as a Post modern city through its use of many other themed environments including Eve Quillin - disney world theme, Caesar's Palace - Roman themed and Mandalay Bay - Southeast Asia themed.

These themed environments include hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. Las Vegas uses theming as signs to represent itself and create a world your inside that is familiar. This leads to stereotyping and expectations. Las Vegas displays borrowed aspects of particular cultures in order to simulate the culture and appeal to the population, due to the demand of nostalgia for cultural signs . These simulations however are not always culturally accurate.

This world of simulation leads to a lack of authenticity where what people are seeing is not actually real and the memorabilia is not authentic. Las Vegas portrays a weak hyper-reality where people are aware of the difference between the real and the fake (due to the situation of replica iconic buildings not in their original countries of origin) and choose to accept it. This aspect of postmodernity can cause some concern where people are arguably perhaps no longer open to new cultural ideas.

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