Las Vegas as a Rhizome

Over break, I went to see Las Vegas with a couple of friends. I did a bit of my lit theory reading as we were driving up, which, by the way I do not recommend—it is confusing enough without adding motion sickness into the mix. Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the drive, and about the city of Las Vegas, in terms of the Deleuze and Guattari essay “A Thousand Plateaus.”

If I understood the essay correctly—and I make no claims for my level of coherency on long car trips—they were basically arguing that everything is connected, like the root structure known as a rhizome. In fact, things are so interdependent that it is ridiculous to even talk about simple cause and effect. They used the example of a puppet. Though it is true that it is controlled by strings, those strings are not controlled by invisible will of a puppeteer, but another set of strings of nerves.

As a southerner, I am well aware of the effectiveness of rhizomes. Asparagus, which has such a root structure, grows along the side of the road in many parts of Georgia and Texas, and kudzu, also known as “the vine that ate the south” is so prolific and fast-growing that it entirely possible to lose a house to it over the course of a single summer. Both are all but impossible to eradicate.
It is easy to think of Las Vegas as isolated. After all, it is surrounded by miles of the bleakest scrubland I have ever encountered, rather ironically considering that “las vegas” is the Spanish word for fertile lowlands. We went for hours without seeing so much as a goat. The transition to Las Vegas is sudden and shocking. It seems to rise from the horizon.

What happens, though, when we consider Las Vegas as a rhizome? For one, it grows with all speed and tenacity of kudzu, and it may be just as impossible to kill. Even in the middle of a recession, they were building a high-rise apartment building right along the strip. Part of the reason that Vegas is so successful might be the fact that it, like the roots of a rhizome, has many nodes. No one casino is central, so if one fails, the others can continue on.

This is probably not quite the way that Deleuze and Guattari meant the idea, though. They might consider Las Vegas more in terms of the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The billboards advertising various Vegas shows and hotels started popping up practically before we left LA County. About halfway there, we encountered a tiny stand of buildings, which I will call a town only because I feel village sounds too innocent, called Baker, California, that seems to exist only to serve the streams of tourists traveling between the two cities. In this way the literal territory of LA merges seamlessly into its economic territory, and the two interact and shape each other. Las Vegas keeps billboard owners and Baker in business, and they drive the tourists onward to the city.

On the plain of ideas, Las Vegas is even less distinct. After all, what Las Vegas truly markets is hope—they don’t sell sausages, they sell sizzle. Every single person who walks up to a slot machine does so knowing that they almost certainly about to lose money, and that the machine has, at best, a 95% payout. Watching the little disks spin is not nearly amusing enough to justify the cost. The slot machine is not an object, it is an assemblage, a converges of hopes and dreams and possibility and loss and compulsion, and the city is just a larger example of the same, with a heavy dose of sin and taboo.

Or maybe I am just blinded by all the neon lights.