The Mainstreaming of Porn: Part I - Viva Las Vegas
By Mike Monaco
According to legend, during the 1940s mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel had an inspiration: Build a fabulous casino resort within driving distance of Los Angeles in the middle of the Nevada desert - where gambling was legal - and they would come.
As his nickname implied, Bugsy may have been nuts - but he wasn't dumb. He knew that to be able to draw large numbers of visitors to the inhospitable southern Nevada desert, he had to offer something sinful.
The Town That Bugsy Built
Gaming was something for adults only, a sort of forbidden fruit that was illegal in most states. And, along with roulette, craps and slots, Bugsy knew that star power, too, would attract postwar crowds, and the Flamingo's opening night entertainment included some of the biggest show biz names of 1946: Actor George Raft, singer Rose Marie and comic Jimmy "the Schnoz" Durante. Georgie Jessel emceed and Xavier Cugat's orchestra provided the music. Up to 40 Hollywood celebrities attended, including Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Caesar Romero.
The debut was a disaster and shortly afterwards, the Mob whacked Bugsy. But not even the visionary gangster could foresee the multi-billion dollar bonanza that the Flamingo kicked off, as over the decades millions flocked to Las Vegas from not only L.A., but from across the nation and around the world.
Part I of this series on the mainstreaming of porn examines how adult-themed entertainment has ebbed and flowed on the Vegas Strip over the years, and found a 21st century formula for appealing to millions with sexual content presented in a way that attracts, rather than repels, the masses. Even if they make love, while the racketeer made war, adult webmasters can learn lots from Bugsy's marketing savvy. Cybersexers have even more to learn from "Sin City's" business model, which has been in the forefront of adult entertainment for six decades.
Family Values Vs. Adult Entertainment: Vegas' Culture Wars
"We had a choice in the '70s - you either had very, very sexy burlesque shows, that were all topless, except for the headliners, and that was the 'G'-rated show, such as Wayne Newton's," recalls Wayne Bernath, a former editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who is currently a prominent publicist in Vegas. "There were Viva Les Girls at the Dunes, and the [Tropicana's] Follies Bergere... They had showgirls who were just drop-dead gorgeous women, and they'd just be walk-ons. Now, a showgirl could be a dancer, so there's no such thing as the walk-on showgirl anymore."
A keen observer of Sin City's entertainment scene since 1973, Bernath has a 30-year-plus overview of the development of Nevada's largest city, as it grew from 330,000 residents to 2 million, and its entertainment evolved over the years. "In the early '90s, Orlando, Florida - with Disney World, Epcot Center and Universal - was beating the heck out of us as a very tough competitor to Las Vegas as a travel destination. They were beating our tooshes, a big family market... Vegas wanted to take its share of the family business, so they built the MGM Grand, and started with The Wizard of Oz 33-acre theme park, the same size as the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The $70 million Star Trek: The Experience was built at the Hilton... The City wanted the billboard for the Crazy Girls to come down because it showed bare buttocks," remembers Bernath.
However, "They forgot that it was 115 to 120 degrees here in the summer, and families couldn't take that," Bernath points out. "And our winters are cold; we don't have that moderate temperature like Southern California or Orlando... The Star Trek attraction is unsuccessful, except when the Trekkies are in town... The Starlight Express family show by Andrew Lloyd Webber...it had a $3 million advertising budget and still failed... You can't compete with Disneyland or Disney World - visitors will come to Vegas as an adult place," insists Bernath.
"Every time they tried something family, the people just don't want it, the people rejected it over the course of the '90s," Bernath goes on to say. "They finally woke up to this in the new millennium... Lots of copies of Crazy Girls came out. Rio, Harrah's, Luxor, Les Femmes at MGM Grand - they're all trying to compete with Crazy Girls, they have the big hotels behind them. They saw the adults are coming, and what emerged now, couples are coming to these types of shows. When I started, Crazy Girls was a show for males - it wasn't homogenized enough for women. Now couples come; it's the way mores have changed in Las Vegas."
The Fashionistas
Emerging out of this renewed adult sensibility is The Fashionistas, the first 'Vegas revue based on a 'pornographic' movie. Bernath, who is its publicist, adds: "The Fashionistas is the first dance musical to open on the Las Vegas strip. It homogenizes a triple-X rated film, which won 10 AVN Awards. They do it by following the rules, but yet it has all the innuendo of exotic and erotic and all the taboo subjects: BDSM, lesbianism, bi-sexuality, having sex with a neighbor... It's in a story form, though the dancing is the most incredible and alluring thing about it."
The successful porn producer and director John Stagliano, known for his Buttman series, created the four-hour-plus film The Fashionistas, in 2002. The Evil Angel production was showered with Adam Film World, XRCO (the X-Rated Critics Organization) and AVN awards, including AVN's Best Film, DVD, Director, Actress (Taylor St. Clair as Helena), and Supporting Actress (Belladonna as Jesse) honors.
The Fashionistas also stars Rocco Siffredi as Antonio, a trendsetting fetish designer from Italy. The story - yes, this is a skin flick with a plot! - is set in downtown L.A.'s fashion district. The vampy Helena heads an upstart fetish fashion design outfit, and Helena seeks to connive Antonio to sign a contract with her group, called the Fashionistas. However, their real behind-the-scenes talent is the unsung designer Jesse. A complex triangle develops between Jesse, Helena and Rocco, with much kinky sex, from bondage to girl-girl scenes.
The stage adaptation of The Fashionistas opened in late 2004 at the Krave nightclub, adjacent to the Aladdin Casino & Resort on the 'Vegas Strip, and plays Mondays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. Admission is restricted to those18 and over. This highly energetic, almost avante garde production uses its plot as a springboard for a wildly inspired cacophony of choreography, fashions, video screens and a soundtrack of throbbing techno and industrial music (via recorded songs by Evanescence, Tool, etc., and a live percussionist). In several eye-popping scenes athletic female dancers climb and descend curtains hanging from Krave's ceiling and swish across the stage on swings.
To be sure, the theatrical sextravaganza tones the film's sex down. Although the kinky costumes reveal lots of female and male flesh, including derrieres, the actresses' flesh colored costumes cover nipples and no genitalia are revealed. Belladonna and the other porn stars have been replaced by Enrique Lugo (who co-choreographed with longtime 'Vegas choreographer Nick Navarro) as Antonio, Kelly Adkins (Helena) and Marceea Moreno (Jesse), along with a cast of about 17 other hoofers.
Nevertheless, the overall effect of The Fashionistas is electrifying. A riveting dance number is choreographed to Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, as the set design incorporates a spider web motif to express BDSM. There is also humor - the American obsession with big breasts is lampooned with a droll dance number involving lots of fruits (think watermelons) and the Lords of Acid's I Must Increase My Bust.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal gushed: "Adult video mogul John Stagliano has shown the producers of Skintight, Midnight Fantasy, Bite and even Zumanity what a real Las Vegas adult show can be..." This production is not only a breakthrough for Las Vegas, but for adult entertainment, as it epitomizes the trend of the mainstreaming of porn - and the porning of mainstream.
CJ, Creative Director of Purve.com and CelebrityBling.com, and a writer for Klixxx Magazine hopes that "this type of show could open the minds of its viewers to accepting a format of adult entertainment where previously they may have found it offensive."
La Cage, Crazy Girls and Comedy
Las Vegas has a reputation as America's playground, where "what happens in 'Vegas stays in 'Vegas," as the witty advertising slogan puts it. As such, other forms of adult entertainment abound at or near Sin City, from world famous casinos to legalized brothels in the Nevada desert, to strip clubs and shows. Three adult-themed acts take place on the north end of the Strip in the Mardi Gras Pavilion at the famed Riviera Hotel and Casino, which retains its ambiance of vintage 'Vegas, when Frankie, Sammy, Dino and the rest of the Rat Pack romped at this urban oasis. The Riviera - built only eight years after the Mob rubbed Bugsy out - turns 50 this year.
An Evening at La Cage is a jaunty gender bender revue of female impersonators, outrageously coiffed and costumed as Cher, Liza, Madonna, Britney, Celine, Dolly, and but of course, the inevitable Judy Garland. Frank Marino emcees the show in drag as comedienne Joan Rivers. La Cage probably derives its name from the 1978 French film about a loving gay couple, La Cage aux Folles (Robin Williams and Gene Hackman starred in a 1996 Hollywood remake). This Riviera revue retains the films' tolerant philosophy about sexual identity.
Crazy Girls is a more overtly sexy show, and is billed as "Las Vegas' sexiest topless revue." Like La Cage, Crazy Girls is a Norbert Aleman Production. It features a bevy of beauties cavorting about onstage in g-strings, dancing and performing acrobatic feats. They even occasionally exhibit the beauty of the female form in all its glory in several aesthetically staged vignettes. Thongs are coyly and discretely removed in a couple of numbers, but there's no overt display of genitalia.
The cabaret-style act includes a lengthy comic interlude - often, juggler Romano Frediani joins the jigglers and performs his deft derring-do, amidst much kibbitzing with and heckling from an audience anxious for the naked chicks to return onstage. The combination of music, dance and comedy gives Crazy Girls a bit of an old-fashioned Ziegfeld Follies quality. Bernath likens it to "an old-type burlesque show. It's a fun show for couples - it has acts."
The Crazy Girls are immortalized in Vegas' largest life casting statue, depicting the hoofers from behind and greeting visitors at the Riviera's main entrance at street level on the Strip. Bernath said sculptor Michael Conine's 1997 bronze statue was created at the time the City government was trying to remove the Crazy Girls' billboard. In homage to the topless dancers' butts, the statue is suggestively titled "No 'IFs, ANDS, OR...", and it won the Addy Award for Best Advertising (the advertising industry's equivalent to Oscars). As legend has it, rubbing the bare bronze bottoms will - like rubbing Buddha's belly - bring good luck.
The Riviera Comedy Club is located in the Mardi Gras Pavilion, across from the Crazy Girls' showroom. The night I attended, Murray Langston, the so-called Unknown Comic - famous for performing stand-up with a paper bag on his head - was the hilarious headliner. In late 2004, other comics appearing at the Riviera included Jimmie J.J. Walker and Don Irrera. The Riviera Comedy Club also features monthly late night extreme comedy, which Bernath described as "the equivalent of what satellite radio's going to be... Redd Foxx was the innovator of that. He did midnight shows in the '70s and '80s that sold out at the Aladdin and the Hacienda. It was triple-X rated comedy - he was the Lenny Bruce of comedy." The monthly late night extreme comedy features profanities and raunchy routines for adult audiences.
According to the Australian webmaster CJ, La Cage, Crazy Girls and the Riviera Comedy Club, "All fall into my favorite niche market - NAUGHTY ... not porn, not conservative, but not offensive to most people. All use techniques from mainstream theater and entertainment to draw people into a cheeky environment that is sexually charged without being sleazy."
Putting the Strip Back into the Las Vegas Strip
The San Fernando Valley may be ground zero for adult films and e-porn, but Las Vegas remains America's adult playground. "People come to Vegas to set themselves free, to be, to do what they want, they leave the family stuff at home," Bernath stated. "Las Vegas has always been branded - you tie into gambling, you tie into entertainment, which has always been adult or else headliners. You either want to meet a star, or see some adult stuff... We have the biggest gentlemen's clubs in the world; once the lap dancing came along, it took off like there was no tomorrow... Look under 'entertainers' in the Las Vegas yellow pages and Ma Bell is a madam. You're talking $5 million plus in advertising revenue for the yellow pages; I mean, there're probably almost 100 pages... 'Vegas did come out on top, because we still have the masses of 38 million visitors coming this year. We offer something for everyone, but we're heavily going back to where the adult market is," the in-the-know P.R. man asserts.
Bernath sees the emergence of The Fashionistas and 'Vegas' other adult entertainment as symptomatic of porn becoming more mainstream, and asserted that this is occurring because "of the advent of the Internet. Pornography and adult shows are going to become more mainstream. Because of the easy availability, because of the privacy, you can now look at porn... The Internet is like pouring gasoline on the fire - now everyone has access [to sexual material]. Even women are getting into it much, much more... The Internet gives people privacy to discover; hey, they're aroused - it's not 'dirty,' it's 'adult.' What better place to experience sexuality than in a theater? It feels comfortable for couples... During the '50s and '60s, what woman would go into adult bookstores? Now, 95% can easily view erotica privately, discretely... The mores of Americans are going to change. That's going to help, when people come here to select a show, it's going to be more adult-oriented. Las Vegas is going to be the porno-copia of America," the veteran publicist told Klixxx.
Although Las Vegas will continue to have something to offer the kiddies, Sin City's primarily orienting to and focusing on grownups. It seems sensible. CJ points out, "With the promotion of any adult market comes a responsibility - to achieve your commercial goals without negatively impacting the minds of children."
Of course, the Internet also plays a key role in promoting and selling all of the above shows. Tickets can be purchased at FashionistasTheShow.com, which also has video clips, photos, and music of the show, as well as an e-store that e-sells jewelry and fashions. Video of and tickets to Crazy Girls, La Cage and the Riviera Comedy Club can be seen and purchased at RivieraHotel.com/Entertainment.asp. Reservations to stay at the Riviera Hotel & Casino can be also be made online.
Of course, Sin City's "anything goes" ambiance as America's playground has designated it as a major site for adult Internet industry conventions, such as InterNext.
Las Vegas' Lessons for Adult Webmasters
Las Vegas, which has been in the vanguard of adult entertainment for almost 60 years, has many lessons to offer adult webmasters, who came on the scene half a century after Bugsy built the Flamingo. Sin City has moved with the times; in keeping with classic supply-and-demand economics, it has responded to an ever-changing marketplace, just as adult webmasters must respond to changes in online e-commerce to remain relevant and profitable.
'Vegas has long known the value of star power. Starting the day the Flamingo opened, celebrities from Gable to Sinatra to Elvis to "Mr. Las Vegas" Wayne Newton have been deployed to draw crowds to the desert metropolis from far and wide. The adult Internet needs to develop more big names like Jenna and Danni Ashe to attract the masses to its sites in our celebrity-worshipping, star-driven culture.
The city is segregating adult from children's entertainment. This has the benefit of protecting minors while it indulges grown-ups, and a fine example for the online medium.
In order to also appeal to the growing couples and women's markets, the 'Vegas Strip has skillfully shaped sexual content to expand beyond a primarily male audience. 'Vegas has adapted e-porn into a theatrical event that is acceptable to mainstream audiences. The town that Bugsy built has been influenced by online erotica, even as it uses the 'Net to market itself, and profits from adult trade shows.
Above all, Las Vegas has prospered by making the taboo accessible to the masses.
Who knows? With the coming of The Fashionistas, perhaps the next big thing will be adapting a cyberporn site into a revue or cabaret act on the world famous 'Vegas Strip!
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