Allegory Las Vegas Weddings
Allegory “Marrying Absurd” is an article written by Joan Didion in 1967, for a magazine called the Saturday Evening Post. Didion portrays exactly how ludicrous the marriage “industry” has become in Las Vegas. The reader is lead to see the cheapness of the Las Vegas industry. Las Vegas has managed to make a mockery of the sanctity of marriage. ... Didion opens with this statement: “To be married in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada, a bride must swear that she is eighteen or has parental permission and a bridegroom that he is twenty-one or has parental permission. ... The author is implying that there is a “cheapness” about Las Vegas weddings, not only in a literal sense but a physical sense also. A great deal of the Las Vegas wedding business is based on marketing, much like you would experience with a fast food joint. In approaching Las Vegas one billboard reads “Getting Married? ... Such mass amounts of weddings bring into question whether these individuals were uniting for love or as a means to avoid the draft. ... If people expected “more” then probably wouldn’t be in Las Vegas and they certainly wouldn’t want a three-minute ceremony. ... “Las Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification.