The Half-Baked Cultural Detective
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America where pioneers and adventurers often struck out in search of quick wealth,
gold or land. With the gradual extinction of the wilderness and the subsequent shift
from rural space to urban space, the search for the American Dream moved to the
city — to the business, real estate, and entertainment industries where the new
fortunes were being made. This always created a criminal shadow world of failed
possibilities, a noir world predicated on the failed realization of the American Dream
and revelation of the American Nightmare.
Relatively new Western cities like San Francisco and especially Los
Angeles, became spaces where individuals went to make their quick fortune, to
effectively achieve the American Dream. But as the cities solidify, the opportunity
to achieve the American Dream lessens. A new space is needed and is created in
Las Vegas to mass-produce the pursuit of the American Dream. Anyone can go to
Las Vegas to gamble and theoretically achieve the American Dream. The association
of gambling with achieving the American Dream connects addiction with American
ideology. The American Dream becomes a noir revelation of addiction underneath
the “clean” American character. Those who believe in the American Dream can
become literally addicted to a faulty ideology that can be as destructive as any
significantly addictive drug.
It is ironic but seemingly appropriate that Duke and his attorney become
privy to the American Dream as deluded ideology/addiction, when they are
themselves deluded from the effects of mescaline in the Circus-Circus, witnessing
gamblers “still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner
somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas
casino”(57). It is then that Duke tells his attorney that they have found the main
nerve of the American Dream. His attorney replies, “I know, that’s what gives me
the Fear”(48). Fear is at the center of acknowledging that the American Dream
itself is corrupt, predicated by greed, avarice, violence, and addiction. Belief in the
American Dream can help to exaggerate these potentially destructive impulses,
which is what Duke arguably does, but he is aware of his drug-induced delusion
while the gamblers he witnesses are not.
The American Dream that the gamblers pursue in a Las Vegas casino is a
perverted version of Duke’s idealized pursuit of the American Dream. Duke
repeatedly refers to Horatio Alger as a symbol of inspiration. Alger preached that
by honesty, cheerful perseverance, hard work, and a measure of good luck, a poor
person could achieve some kind of fortune or fame. This may be the “honest man’s”
American Dream, which has been perverted over time or adapted to adhere to a
modern or postmodern world. Duke is in actuality a veritable antithesis of Horatio
Alger. Indeed, he calls himself a “monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger” (204) at
the end of the novel. Yet while Duke is deceitful, lazy, and self-indulgent, he does
position himself as a cultural detective. Duke is earnestly deluded that all of his