Morta Las Vegas

“Morta Las Vegas” focuses on Las Vegas through the lens provided by the “4×4” episode from the fifth season of CSI: Las Vegas. Like the episode, the essay itself has four segments or sections, each one nominally focusing on specific moments in this episode, but then branching out to consider larger issues having to do with postregional space/built environment, the interpenetration of history by spatial logic, and aesthetics of representation. The essay argues in general that through this CSI episode we see the lineaments of a postmodern/postregional West displayed in the built environment and in the narrative emphasis on repetition and the serial logic of reproduction. Even so, contra postmodern theorists of the hyperreal in the vein of Baudrillard and Jameson, we argue that in the end there is no complete erasure of the past and its historical traces. Rather, using Benjamin and Lefebvre as guides, we argue that CSI literally and metaphorically illustrates the past imprinting on the present through the murder mystery narrative logic and its spatial mise-en-scène.