RitzerIABD2000.html

A number of new means of consumption have come into existence since WW II and the contemporary Las Vegas casino-hotel, with its roots in Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel (1946), is not only an example, but a paradigm for all the rest. Like all new means of consumption, the contemporary casino-hotel is highly rationalized (or McDonaldized), but a high degree of rationalization tends to be disenchanting and offputting to consumers. In order to deal with this problem, the casino-hotel must continually re-enchant itself, primarily through the postmodern processes of simulation, implosion, and manipulations of time and space. Such re-enchantment, if it succeeds, must inevitably be rationalized (if it is not from the beginning) and this causes the cycle of rationalization-disenchantment-re-enchantment to repeat itself in an endless and escalating series.