Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Humanities and Cultural Studies

Major Professor

Andrew Berish, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Amy Rust, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Todd Jurgess, Ph.D.

Keywords

Cartesian self, slot machine addiction, gambling rhetoric, cultural narratives

Abstract

The ability to take risks is nothing short of heroism in the modern United States which thrives on a diet of hyper mobility, technological progress, and globalized, deregulated “free” markets. Such relentless instability affirms scholarly contentions that the U.S. is now a “risk society.” Indeed, in Gambling with the Myth of the American Dream: The Pokerization of America, rhetoric scholar Aaron Duncan suggests that media stories of modern poker tournaments signify a collective desire to grapple with this heightened modern “chanciness” within our established gambling lore and make it cohere with our deeply cherished notions of American individualism. While Duncan indicates that such narratives have successfully reduced this collective dissonance, I hesitate to accept that media narratives could fully tap into the pulse of the U.S. populace. While poker is popular in television and media, when it comes to risk-taking practices, there is no question that, in casinos, Americans prefer slot machines—a game which not only renders individual agency and skill irrelevant, but also reduces its player to a button-pusher, a gear in an automated process. Even in this banality, the game is notoriously addictive as Natasha Schull reveals in her groundbreaking book Addiction by Design, which builds on firsthand accounts of slot machine addicts. I examine these through the lens of Gregory Bateson’s Cartesian self and Lacanian theory in order to bring slot machine addiction into the realm of cultural narrative. Where Duncan’s poker players successfully reconstruct cultural narratives, the story of the slot machine addict reveals that there are certain realities in American culture which have been left unresolved. I ultimately contend that the slot addict’s experience tells the story of an American subject in today’s neoliberal risk society who remains stuck in the contradictions between hyper-individualism and its increasingly uncertain, unpredictable socioeconomic context.

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