I read some interesting quotes in Spectacle by Bruce Mau and David Rockwell recently. Spectacle is the latest offering in lush volumes from the design mind of Bruce Mau—a rich photographic journey through a variety of celebrations, festivals and amusements from around the globe. I took particular interest in the chapter on Las Vegas, and an interview with cultural critic Dave Hickey entitled "real fakery." Hickey is surprised that the visual excess of Las Vegas—what he calls the "great American backlash"—is not widely admired and respected outside of Sin City. "A great many Americans are addicted to solemnity" he says. "I think the Disney thing works and I think Vegas works because they fulfill a basic human need. They wouldn't be working so well if they didn't...the sheer puritanical ugliness amidst which Americans dwell so happily...I've never been able to figure it out."
This echoes the sentiments of famed architect Robert Venturi, who observed once that "Disney is nearer to what people really want than anything architects have ever given them."
The Dave Hickey interview really got me thinking about theming as backlash. did modernism—with its stolid insistence on function and efficiency—deprive us of the sugar? Of the good stuff? Have we been on this architectural diet for so long, that Walt Disney World and Las Vegas and the like are a metaphor for ordering seconds at desert time? Maybe so.