The last movie I saw was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which partly chronicles the search of a journalist and his attorney to find the ‘American Dream’ while on assignment in Las Vegas. For many people, the American Dream is to find, most simply, happiness. It is to find happiness, freedom, and peace in having a comfortable middle class life style where you no longer have to become the producer, but the consumer. It is a prosperous world, where your money can go to be spent on material items which can bring you further happiness. Las Vegas in Fear and Loathing represents a place where one might find the ‘American Dream’ and be able to enjoy it. It is a place where you can enjoy some of the ‘great’ things that America has to offer, and to enjoy your ‘American Dream’ fulfilled by celebrating in buying yourself more and more happiness and living in excessive amounts of everything that you want to have or experience. This is how the two protagonists in Fear and Loathing see and find the ‘American Dream’ that they were searching for; a gross celebration in excess of happiness through material indulgence viewed through the eyes of drugs which turn their thoughts “real” into frightening and fantastic visions of the ‘American Dream.’ It is shocking and quite literally inspires “fear and loathing” in the main characters and presumably in thousands of others who come to Vegas, sober or not, in search of a dream. The only difference is that the two protagonists experienced their “fear and loathing” through drugs, and the irony is that they didn’t need the drugs to experience that. The drugs merely made everything more profound and terrifying and showed them a harsher more exaggerated view of Las Vegas and what can happen to society because of that ‘American Dream;’ Las Vegas became a flashy materialistic hideaway for you to spend all your time and money on trivial and entertaining pursuits for your pleasure with little restriction as to how wild and crazy things could become. They found Vegas as the place where all the excess runoff of the successes of a thousand people’s ‘American Dreams’ had collected and became an exaggerated sort of creature full of illusions of every aspect of life, where all the proponents and seekers of said dream came to celebrate it and find a gross satisfaction that they couldn’t find in their normal lives, where all the craziness happened and the ‘American Dream’ had corrupted itself, and you didn’t need to be high like the protagonists to see it.
Even though the book on which this movie was adapted from was written in early 70’s, much of it is still true today. People still seek out their own personal ‘American Dream’ to better their lives, and it is true that for a thousand people out there, that dream must be realized in material and financial wealth. It is also true that there are those who already have it may not realize it or not see it as “enough”, and seek to experience it going through the excess, (or realize what they have always have by going through an extreme shortage of what they had.) Others will always choose to celebrate what they have by flaunting it and obtaining more. You shouldn’t live the entirety of your life in this way; it’s fine and natural to enjoy it and want to experience it, but constantly living it in can be damaging and turn into a negative experience along the way. Moderation is the key to a more stable life; you can do anything you want except take those things in excess and so prevent an imbalance that could cause you (and others) harm whether it be physical, psychological, or financial. Certain environments, like Las Vegas in Fear and Loathing, thrive and are built on overindulgence and survive because no matter how horrible or crazy it gets, people will always want more of it. It’s an environment that is created where you can find happiness in exaggeration to celebrate your dream (or realize it more clearly). Some, like the two main characters in the movie, see these types of environments as a sort of corruption of the American dream and the overall gradual sort of corruption of society itself, as an exaggeration of what already exists. In real life there are always people who are horrified by what they see as ‘stark materialism’ and ‘degradation’ of a person/society through people ‘selfishly’ following their own desires. In real life, Las Vegas can symbolize this for many people. Las Vegas is an exaggeration, people know this, and it is why many come and why many stay away. It is the celebration of excess. It can be intriguing, exciting, and fun, but it can also inspire jealousy, fear, and loathing and should be taken, as the protagonists of the film failed to do, in small doses; in moderation.
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