Review by Ed Quillen
Tourism – July 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
Devil’s Bargains – Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West
by Hal K. Rothman
Published in 1998 by University Press of Kansas
ISBN 0-7006-0910-5
THE CLASSIC “DEVIL’S BARGAIN” was doubtless an old plot in 1589 when Christopher Marlowe wrote “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.” Lucifer or his agent Mephistopheles appears with an offer: ephemeral money and transitory power, in exchange for one’s eternal soul.
Foolish Faustus signs the pact in blood, and then there’s no turning back as the portals of Hell draw ever closer to the high-living hero.
But at least Marlowe’s Faustus knew what he was getting into. In Devil’s Bargain, University of Nevada professor Hal Rothman argues that communities often don’t know what they’re buying into when they strike a deal with the Devil (the profits of industrial tourism) in exchange for their souls, the character that the community had formed over the years.
Rothman, who hails from Las Vegas, is a witty and dynamic speaker. He appeared at a tourism conference in Boulder a couple of years ago, and told us that “No matter how much you talk about heritage tourism or cultural tourism, or even eco-tourism, the simple fact is that it’s all a leisure activity. It’s entertainment. Las Vegas is the future, and you can’t avoid it.”
Alas his writing, until the last two chapters, suffers from too much exposure to academia — there may be an occasional legitimate use for locutions like “hegemonic” and “fin de siècle,” but these words were repeated like a mantra — often appearing several times on the same page.
Rothman states his case in the introduction: “Tourism is barely distinguishable from other forms of colonial economies. Typically founded by resident protoentrepreneurs, the industry expands beyond local control, becomes institutionalized by large-scale forces of capital, and then grows to mirror not the values of place but those of the traveling public.”
People go on vacation, looking for new places that offer both variety and authenticity. But the more tourists a town gets, the less likely it is to offer either. As increasing numbers of tourists arrive, its local shops, inns and eateries are replaced by national franchises.
Rothman provides rather detailed histories — mostly social and economic — of a variety of Western tourist zones: Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Santa Fé, Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, Durango, and of course, Las Vegas.
Their pasts vary. Aspen was a decrepit mining town that was supposed to become a haven for philosophers after World War II; skiing was just a sideline that took over to be in turn subsumed by money and celebrity. Santa Fé’s leaders deliberately fabricated a “traditional” appearance to make it a tourist destination. Sun Valley and Grand Canyon — one a private resort and the other a national park — were both the results of railroad marketing. Steamboat Springs was the town where skiing was a necessity, not a diversion.
But they all seem to be converging on Las Vegas — an environment constructed solely for visitors where nothing is “real.” Although Rothman never says so explicitly, the implication is that just as Faustus eventually ends up in Hell after buying into his “Devil’s Bargain,” so does every town become Las Vegas after it successfully markets itself to tourists.
Rothman’s history looks generally solid, although I found a few mishaps, mostly in his railroad lore.
If you can get through the dense prose in most chapters, he offers some penetrating insights. Primarily, the construction of a tourist zone involves creating a “script” so that tourists know what to expect and their hosts and servants know what to say and do.
There’s a struggle as the script is developed and imposed by outside capital. The “natives” — people who were there during the traditional extractive industries — generally move on quickly. The fight comes from the “neonatives” who moved there early during the tourist development and developed an affection for the place based on its funky and ramshackle characteristics.
They’re the ones (I seem to fit in this neonative category) who feel most threatened by continued tourism development. They have the education and the knowledge of the political process to put up a gallant fight — but generally they lose to the big invading companies who want to redefine the community to serve their interests.
The flash point seems to be the “off-season” or “shoulder season.” Neonatives can put up with busy seasons if they have the attractive place to themselves during the off season.
The forces of modern capitalism work against off-seasons, though. If a company gets its capital from Wall Street, investors expect growing returns, not seasonal swings. The resort thus has to attract visitors throughout the year, rather than just during ski season or the summer. The neonatives feel overwhelmed, and the struggle ensues.
Along the way, Rothman offers some penetrating and clever insights. A few samples:
After 1970, “The travel public still distinguished between au thentic and inauthentic. It no longer understood why authentic was more significant.”
“Going beyond the elitist roots of tourist travel in the late nineteenth century and the democratized travel made possible by the automobile, Las Vegas turned gaming into an offering of all things to all people. In the process, it set a tone for tourism without deep meaning. It was neither to inform daily life, nor to promote physical strength and prowess; it was merely to occupy, distract, and arguably to pacify its audience.”
“Aspen no longer had meaning; it was another stop on the underground railway of the 1970s, places where lost individuals went to make themselves feel important, to breathe the elixir of faux freedom brought by wealth and status.”
Rothman has given us the best examination to date of tourism — past, present, and future — in the American West. Tourism is the largest industry in the world, and one whose forces are shaping our part of the world. Rothman has done an impressive job of amassing the relevant information, organizing it, and analyzing it. Be forewarned, however, that it’s not easy reading.
But on the other hand, your efforts will be rewarded with a better understanding of what’s going on around us and why it’s happening.
— Ed Quillen