Home and Away

Vegas and Dubai. Dubai and Vegas. Same thing right? To many, yes they are - both are a manufactured environment, very hot, are built in a desert, advertise glamour, celebrities own homes/hotels/whatever else people who have too much money buy and yet in reality they are so very different to each other.

This is immediately evident in the texts of this weeks reading. Dave Hickey's "At home in the neon" certainly puts forth a warm feeling to Las Vegas that is no way similar to that of the straight talking, mainly negative fact checks of Mike Davis' "Fear Sand and Money in Dubai". Even the titles scream of polar opposite of language, Hickey's reference to Las Vegas as "Neon" immediately puts a bright and warm feeling to the forthcoming chapter where as Davis' "sand" suggests a dry, inhospitably environment of the desert.

Hickey's writing I find is far more novel, in that when first reading and reflected upon it, it felt almost like a diary, I've changed my mind since and reclassified it as more of a letter. A unique type of writing as it is both private but sharing feelings and experiences to an audience (even if that audience is just one person). And thats exactly how this came across to me. Describing his adopted home with such pleasant thought and happy tales with charming delight of "food to cocktail"

I can't quite recall most of "Fear Sand and Money in Dubai" such was the density of factual prose and angry sentiment. I've read some of Mike Davis before and his description of downtown LA was on a far lighter note than that of his plain disdain of Dubai.

Though my observations may be sweeping, I don't particularity think they are controversial, many may think the same. Vegas being sin city where you go for a good time in the good ole US of A, where the waitress/strippers/bartenders/card dealers are all part of the fun and are certainly not just the help. Where as Dubai, a supposed paradise, but in the middle of a war torn region and bordering countries has been built up on slave labour and inequality for most of its citizens.

They are certainly not twin cities Vegas and Dubai, maybe distant cousins born from bastard children at the beginning of the 20th century where boom and consumerism came into its own. Luckily we have writers like Hickey and Davis to show as the difference, simply in the tone of their written word.