| Perhaps no two cities in the United States mirror one another as closely as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Both sit in deserts, both sprawl near large bodies of water, but swelter as if they were hundreds of miles from them. Both cities have populations of people who try to form communities against the odds. This study looks at two groups of people as they work within the post-modern urban sprawls that are Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Though the populations couldn't be more different on the surface---tourists in Las Vegas and lesbians in Los Angeles---they use very similar folkloric forms to make connections, and many of the same themes occur again and again. How is sexuality manifested? How do gender roles get reified? And ultimately, how do people find people they like, trust, and feel akin to, when they're in a car, or beneath a flood of neon, or faced with mile after mile of city and millions upon millions of people.; This study examines certain folkloric forms: festival, narrative, personal aesthetics, and weddings to discover the ways in which people search for and sometimes find community in cities that discourage connection.; In looking at lesbians in Los Angeles and tourists in Las Vegas, I have used a variety of fieldwork methods and techniques including interviews, participant observation, and electronic documentation.; I examine very specific folkloric phenomena and the nature of community and focus on issues such as gender, sexuality, urban space and place. I have found some of the ways in which we, as modern Americans, both succeed and fail to move into the technological age still using traditional expressive forms and still forming human connections and community. People tend to make tentative connection through narrative and personal aesthetic. Weddings can form and reinforce community for a select group of people. It is through festival, even though the form is necessarily bounded in time and space, that people are best able to connect to one another. |
