[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75th anniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]
On a
necessary challenge to our Puritanical roots, and how it can go too far.
The iconic
journalist and legendary quipper H.L. Mencken once
wrote that Puritanism can be defined as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
may be happy” (which has sometimes been adapted into “may be having a good time”).
While I believe it’s easy to oversimplify the Puritans, a multi-generational transnational
community that featured a variety of perspectives and ideas to be sure, all you
have to do is look at the way they responded
to Thomas Morton and his Maypole of Merrymount to recognize that yes, they
had some problems with fun (a subject about which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote
pitch-perfectly in his
short story on Morton and that problematic pole). While we’re of course talking
events that transpired nearly 400 years ago, many of the Puritans’ more extreme
fun-repressing laws remain
on the books up here in New England, and as that hyperlinked Yankee Magazine article indicates even
have the occasional effect on our day to day lives in the 21st
century.
Beyond
those regionally specific laws, it’s also fair to say that a culture which
originated in part with the Puritans—and I do mean in part; I hope you all know
how much I would disagree and have disagreed
in print with the idea that the Puritans are the origin point for America—has had some issues with fun and “sin”
over the centuries. It’s impossible to understand the decade-long travesty that
was Prohibition
without this context, for example; I would say that it’s equally impossible
to understand our aversion
to sex and nudity in media (compared in particular to our widespread
acceptance for violence in media) without grappling with these Puritanical
influences. All of which is to say, it’s quite striking that this same nation
features a major metropolitan area in which gambling and prostitution are legal
(compared
to the rest of the country at least), in which free alcoholic beverages
flow as freely as the Fountains
of Bellagio, a community which has from its earliest moments more than
earned the moniker Sin
City. The Mathers would no doubt roll over eternally in their graves at the
thought, and that’s an effect this AmericanStudier is okay with.
At the
same time, there’s a single moment from my
one and only visit to Vegas (my family began and ended a Southwestern
National Parks trip in the city during my 7th grade year) that has
always stood out to me as an embodiment of the destructive downsides when such
pleasures are taken too far. I wrote about it in that hyperlinked post, but to
quickly recap: we briefly entered a casino, and in our few minutes there, I saw
a woman win thousands of dollars at a slot machine and immediately (and I do
mean immediately—I don’t even recall her taking a moment to celebrate) begin
putting those quarters back into the machine. I’m not suggesting that such
excesses are always or necessarily present in Vegas, but I think even the
unofficial slogan “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” depicts a place where “sin”
is free of consequence. Whereas the best way to enjoy pleasures is to make them
part of our lives, not treat them as something which can be enjoyed separately
and then forgotten entirely. Not sure that’s any healthier than the Puritan
view, ultimately.
Next Vegas
context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?
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