Las Vegas is a city with a thousand faces. This town has been portrayed in popular culture as everything from a place to finally make it and the ultimate party paradise to a bastion for second chances. The city’s allure is so strong, there’s practically an international dialogue about the state of what happens here.
The story of Las Vegas, as told through pop culture, is just as fascinating as its real history. Each work preserves what Vegas really “means” at that point in time, joining the larger narrative filled with many interesting and entertaining twists and turns.
Vegas Vacation
One film favorite is 1997’s Vegas Vacation, a movie rife with Las Vegas tropes and released, appropriately, around the time when the town was reinventing itself as a family destination. Era staples include Siegfried and Roy’s show and in a double-whammy of Vegas-ness, the Frank Sinatra impersonator giving underage Rusty a high-roller identity. It takes a lucky break in the end for the vacation to work out for the dysfunctional Griswolds, but that kind of deus ex machina feels appropriate for Vegas.
Compare that to another popular film released during the same time period, 1996’s Swingers, where Las Vegas is the place to get over a long bout of heartbreak. Even if it’s brief, the Vegas segment is one of the most memorable parts of the movie. One has to wonder how many visitors have repeated Vince Vaughn’s “Vegas, baby!” (some, perhaps, without even realizing its origin) when arriving at McCarran International Airport.
Love and heartbreak are a frequent theme in Vegas-centric stories, the town’s image making perfect fodder for romcoms and dramas alike. There’s the old standby of couples reversing their misfortune, as in Honeymoon in Vegas, which features a group of skydiving Elvis impersonators saving the day. The video for Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas,” likewise, has a couple go through a succession of ups and downs (with plenty time for sightseeing) before hitting those lucky three 7s.
On the flip side, Leaving Las Vegas is a somber tale of love, dependence and obsession, and the Sheryl Crow song of the same name (loosely based on the same book as the film) is only a little less bleak, its music video juxtaposing Vegas symbols like showgirls, dancing blackjack dealers and, once again, flying Elvi.
It’s hard to blame anyone for the recurring Elvis obsession. The King is one of the top icons of classic Las Vegas, and one of the earliest films set in the city, Viva Las Vegas, starred him alongside Ann-Margret.
The version of Old Vegas in 1995’s Casino is not as upbeat as the King’s. Names are changed—for both characters and casinos—but it is very much based on very real figures in a time when the mob ran much of the town.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The same era is less grim, but much more surreal in Hunter S. Thompson’s novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and its film adaptation. Thompson’s narrative is hardly reliable when you consider the circumstances, but it paints a vivid picture of 1970s Las Vegas before turning into the hallucinogenic romp it’s best known as.
These days, Las Vegas is more of a party destination, with reality shows like the 2002 and 2011 seasons of The Real World and Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel reinforcing that notion and setting the stage for the kind of Las Vegas where something like the hit comedy The Hangover could take place. That film was big enough to have an impact on Vegas. Caesars Palace employees are allegedly asked, “Did Caesar live here?” and “Is this hotel pager-friendly?” at check-in on a regular basis and the hotel even sells shirts with the former quote.
Now, that’s just a drop in the bucket. The recent film Last Vegas seems like a Hangover for another generation, while HBO’s Behind the Candelabra is an in-depth look at an old Vegas fixture, Liberace, that couldn’t possibly have been made in his time. Even genre flicks have fun in Las Vegas, with the 2011 remake of Fright Night, serving up a Criss Angel-esque magic show at the Hard Rock Hotel headlined by a secret vampire hunter.
In pop music, Britney Spears’ music video for “Work B**ch” shows familiar Strip locations (including the site of her residency, Planet Hollywood Resort) and with the city’s ability to attract world-class EDM artists, expect it to pop up in even more music videos and lyrics each year. On the small screen, CSI marches on for its 15th season, and Vegas pops up in a map for the ultra-popular video game series Call of Duty. Even campy cult classic Showgirls had new life breathed into it with the release of the 2014 book It Doesn’t Suck, a defense of the film mainly beloved for how terrible it is.
It’s hard to say what the next Vegas-related hit will be, but one thing is certain: There will always be plenty of stories involving this city just waiting to be told.
