Las Vegas perfect place to meet for stewards of popular culture

Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Overheard and out of context from the Far West Popular Culture Association conference:

I assume you have all seen 'Viva Las Vegas' - recently, I hope."

"Las Vegas is sort of the last word in popular culture."

"Any domed building looks back, of course, to Pantheon."

"It's amazing how much you can find on a relatively obscure topic."

"To be completely honest, I hated art history."

"It helps to be topless."

"I want to go to 'Coldwar America' and 'The Myths of Marilyn.' "

"The recognition of a popular music has deep and historic roots."

"I wanted to hand them out individually as a post-modern Eucharist."

"Why is Little Richard's version of 'Tutti Frutti' better than Pat Boone's?"

- Kristen Peterson

H. Peter Steeves dissects a "wonderful, existential post-modern work" - an allegory containing "the whole of history."

Starring Grover, the skinny blue Muppet from "Sesame Street," we witness the angst of the protagonist begging readers not to turn the pages because there is a monster at the end of the book.

Thus the title: "The Monster at the End of This Book."

That monster, however, is Grover.

You're thinking Kafka, aren't you?

So is Steeves, an associate professor of philosophy at California State University-Fresno and DePaul University, who approaches this "metaphoric parable of our finality" with a tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint presentation.

He joyfully invokes Kafka, Sartre and James Joyce. He references Freud: "Not a fear of the monster, but a secret desire to be the monster."

He conjures Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot:"

"Let's stop turning pages."

"We can't."

"Why not?"

"We're waiting for the monster at the end of the book."

The charm in the approach of the parody had them in stitches at the Far West Popular Culture and American Culture associations' 19th annual meeting over the weekend.

But was it a stretch?

Not so much. It's all part of the game for these academics and independent scholars who convene each year in Las Vegas for the conference hosted by UNLV's College of Liberal Arts. Though it's just one of several regional, national and international conferences - this year's international is in Reykjavik, Iceland - attendees appreciate the ambiance of Las Vegas.

"Las Vegas was built by people who understand pop culture," Doug Noverr, a professor at Michigan State University, says.

Indeed, while the academics enjoyed dinner in a fourth-floor conference room at the Imperial Palace, John Belushi was in the casino dealing cards alongside Little Richard and Elvis. Dolly Parton was in charge of roulette. Tchotchkes filled the shops on the way to the parking lot.

But while tourists come to drink in popular culture, these professors, writers and independent scholars come to study it.

Papers range from "Video Games and Philosophy" to "The Life and Times of Olive Oyl." Popular music, indie music, reality TV and race were dug into.

In "The Power of Kitsch in Caesars Palace," Barbara Burrell of the University of Cincinnati asked the intimate group huddled around her laptop: "What does Michelangelo have to do with ancient Rome or Caesars?"

Assessing nearly every statute in the hotel's interior and exterior, including a poor copy of Venus de Milo that was slimmed down to "suit modern concepts of beauty," Burrell's exploration of how marketing trumps classical accuracy at Caesars Palace wasn't meant to be pejorative. It was more a look at what drives our society.

At Caesars, she says, "kitsch adaptations must be made to get the bodies inside and to the slot machines ... People like classical antiquity. They like the idea of it. They (hotels) need to make themselves attractive and do so by appealing to their knowledge. If they make a mistake, you like it even better. You get a little charge out of it."

Holt Parker, also from the University of Cincinnati, was just as sympathetic to the bastardizing of Latin in popular culture.

Latin may have disappeared as cultural heritage, but has been resurrected (celebrated, even) in film and television as a beacon for the supernatural.

Pop icon Harry Potter and his fellow wizards utter Latin phrases to cast their magic. Teens list Latin phrases from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as favorites on myspace.com. That's not the worst thing that could happen, Parker says, even though the phrases are gibberish and not actually Latin.

If anything, he says, it inspires interest in the study of the ancient language:

"There's an actual pedagogical goal that we need to emphasize."

Is there a concern that popular culture is dumbing down society?

"Always," Burrell says. "But classics are in an age where they're being cut by school budgets."

With pop culture driving consumption and dictating our daily lives, it's worth looking at.

"If you want to understand how our society works, then maybe this is the most important thing to study," says John Bratzel, president of the Popular Culture Association.

Larry Weirather, author of "The China Clipper, Pan American Airways and Popular Culture," says we should all know why we do the things that we do.

Besides, he adds, "it's endlessly fascinating what human beings are interested in. The question is, 'Why does it become popular?' "

Referring to the iconic 1930s and '40s clipper airboats, Weirather says Pan Am's efforts to represent the clipper as all things American "changed the way we saw ourselves and how others saw us."

More than ever, American pop culture is integrating itself all over the world. Felicia Campbell, the UNLV professor who runs the conference and edits "Popular Culture Review," says popular culture is our country's greatest export.

But how far will it go?

In "The Irish Pub in America," Kathleen Heininge, assistant professor at George Fox University in Newberg, Ore., talks about how Ireland's pub scene is "migrating toward globalization" to the extent that American Irish pubs are actually redefining Ireland's pubs.

"When pubs in Dublin are mimicking the pubs in America, they've taken the level of authenticity to absurdity," Heininge says.

Fortunately for these academics, the pop culture wheel keeps spinning. There will be 2,800 papers at the national Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association meeting in April in Boston.

Noverr says, "We wouldn't have anything to study if we figured it out."