October 9, 2003- Spectacle
For the last few days, there have been all sorts of stories in the news about that fuckin' Roy Horn magician dude, he of Seigfried And Roy fame. Last week, Roy Horn got himself mauled and bitten by one of the Siberian tigers that are part of their act, in fact, they are about all of the act really. These Siegfried and Roy dudes have had this magic act for many years now where they do all kinds of stupid tricks and shit with these Siberian tigers. Roy does all the usual animal trainer tricks, like kissing the tigers and having them sit up and jump through hoops and all that shit while the paying customers go wild. Last Friday, he was doing a part of the show where he is pretty much face-to-face with one of the tigers, and he took his microphone and tapped the tiger on the nose with it. The tiger did not like this tooo much, so went and swiped Roy and knocked him down ( "sucker-punched" him, as one fan put it) then went for his throat. Other performers were able to pull the tiger off of Roy, but not before he sustained many injuries. Now, Roy is hospitalized, and no one knows whether or not he will ever perform again, and the Siegfried and Roy show has officially closed. Many are calling this a tragedy of the highest proportions. Everywhere you turn, you see someone or another talking about Roy and usually saying how great he is, and how awful this all was and so on, typical shit you'd expect from the man's friends and colleagues. They are going on about Roy like he is some kind of living saint or something. They tell the courageous tale of how Roy pleaded with the other people not to euthanize the tiger that attacked him just before he lost consciousness and went to the hospital. We Are hearing all about how Roy works with zoos and conservationists to protect and breed these Siberian tigers, which are a highly endangered species. Roy has been an outspoken defender of these beats for years now, and railed about how man has driven them to the brink of extinction by hunting them for use in traditional medicines (their gall bladders are made into some kind of traditional medicinal powder, I believe), and by destroying the tigers habitat in Siberia. Everywhere you go, you are hearing someone else go on and on about how Roy is a friend of the tigers and a great man and a gift from God and so on. Dudes from zoos are chiming in about how Roy helped them get and raise Siberian tigers properly, and how he is instrumental in the breeding if them. To hear all this shit, you would think that Roy was the greatest friend the Siberian tigers have ever known. The public eats this shit up too, they are all agreeing with these "experts" about how grand and glorious Siegfried and Roy are. The general consensus is that this is such a great tragedy because Mr. Roy Horn has been gravely injured. No one is delving into the other side of all of this, and that is that Siegfried and Roy exploit these tigers every bit as much as the hunters and businessmen do. These dudes are not about running some kind of animal shelter for endangered species or anything, they are about having a big Las Vegas show spectacular. They use these cats as props in their stage act and nothing more. Siberian tigers are not supposed to come riding out onto a stage in Las Vegas in some little clown car to the thunderous applause of fans. This act of Siegfried and Roy has these tigers doing shit like jumping through hoops, jumping around on a stage set, and the aforementioned face to face contact between man and beast. The part of the show where Roy was hurt was the part where he takes his microphone and puts it in the tiger's face so that the audience can hear the tiger growling and shit, and go crazy with delight. Last week, the tiger was not paying attention and has his head Turned the wrong way, so Roy tapped him on the nose to get him to face the proper way so that the audience could hear the growling, and the tiger mauled his ass. Anyone with a fuckin' brain of any kind knows that man should not be getting in the face of a Siberian tiger just to make him growl, it is not at all natural. Neither is having them jump around like toys or ride in clown cars. These tigers are being used as props in a stage show. What any of that has to do with magic, I do not know. These fuckers Siegfried and Roy bill themselves as magicians, but most of their act is making Siberian tigers do unnatural things. That is a funny way to be a friend of the tigers. These dudes are just making money off of these tigers, same as a poacher, same as a businessman that destroys habitat to build something. Just because these two assholes do their thing on some gaudy stage in Las Vegas in front of a bunch of dumbfuck tourists does not make it any different. The only reason that Siegfried and Roy use these Siberian tigers in their act is because of the way that these tigers look. They are snow white with black stripes, giving them a very pleasing look to the eye. That majestic look is what made them so valuable to the medicine people in the first place. They sold the gall bladder products as something that made these beasts so majestic and cool, and that if you had some of the same stuff, you will be majestic and cool also. They never would have done this with some wimpy little ugly-looking animal. No one would but that. So they did it with these tigers, and people believed it. The people never stopped to think just what the fuck good that any animal's gall bladder could really do them. Most of them did not even know what a gall bladder was. But when they were told that it had some mystical powers that made Siberian tigers so great, they bought that argument lock, stock, and barrel. Siegfried and Roy use a variant of that same argument with their act. They don't do this act with some little, scrawny, ugly looking cats, no, they have to use Siberian tigers, whose whiteness gleans so appealingly in the spotlights of a Vegas show. They want the public to be all agog and amazed at these tigers, and then overlook the fact that they are doing shit that is about as unnatural for them as it gets. Just the fact that these tigers are not roaming the forests of Siberia and are instead in the desert of Las Vegas should be tip-off enough about this. But no one notices because the tiger's white coat shines so brilliantly under the lights. The fact that a Siberian tiger in the wild does not have its coat so well-groomed and brushed and washed so that the brilliance shows through as much as possible is again brushed aside. Siegfried and Roy exploit every single thing about these tigers that the poachers and the others do, that being their size, grace, agility and appealing appearance. They don't do that do save these tigers from extinction, they do it to make money.
And they make money too, lots of it. The Siegfried and Roy show is the highest-grossing act in Las Vegas and has been for some time. They have their own theater there and sell tickets to their shows for a bundle. No shows in Las Vegas are cheap, and theirs is as or more expensive than any others. It is not tree-hugging environmentalists and animal rights people that are coming to that theater and packing it night after night, show after show, it is the high-rolling Las Vegas crowd. For it is said that if you really want to do Las Vegas in style, you have to check out Siegfried and Roy. So the people do, and they pay through the ass to do so. The theater employed about 250 people, all of which are out of a job now. The friends of Roy are pointing to this as an economic catastrophe, but the reality is that the loss of 250 jobs, no matter if they are in a Las Vegas show or in a factory, have negligible impact on the unemployment problem. The only ones that are really affected by these job losses are the 250 that are out of work. But the Vegas entertainment industry is acting as if the loss of this one show is going to wreck everything. They are doing that because all that they see in that show and the Siberian tigers is money. Many tourists come to Las Vegas just to see the Siegfried and Roy show. These yokels come from all over and spend lots of tourist dollars, which is the lifeblood of Las Vegas. When they are not at Siegfried and Roy, they are at some casino or another, gambling away their money, or at some restaurant having a meal or at another show watching some other has-been or total square of some type do their act. But the highlight of these people's visits is not Caesar's Palace or the Vegas strip or the gambling, it is watching these two magicians do this act with these tigers. Take that away, and these folks will no longer go to Las Vegas. They will just stay at home and reminisce about the good old days of the show, and wish that they could have some Siberian tigers of their own to train. The tigers are the center of this. Without them, Siegfried and Roy are just another bullshit Las Vegas magic act, full of hokum and smoke and mirrors, making barley any money at all if they are lucky. Las Vegas is full of two-bit magic acts, they are in all sorts of theaters there. Even real big time magicians like David Copperfield play shows in Vegas. Magic is big there. Maybe that is because that entire town is built on tricking people out of their money, and magic acts of all sorts are performed by the populace every day. Most magic acts (and all Las vegas acts), are all about sleight-of-hand trickery built upon illusions. What makes Siegfried and Roy stand out from all this other dross are the tigers. If they don't have the gleaming white tigers riding out in clown cars and growling into microphones and jumping all about,these dudes are just another magic act. So they exploit these tigers for all it's worth. They do this with the enthusiastic encouragement of the Las Vegas Establishment, who know money when they see it. They don't know anything else when they see it, but they do know money. The town that lives by ripping people off and exploiting them would not think twice about exploiting some Siberian tigers. Not if there is money to be made, and Siegfried and Roy have shown that there is. But Las Vegas and magic acts are all built upon illusions, so there had to be one created for Siegfried and Roy. So the Vegas people got together and created this image if these two dudes as animal lovers and defenders of the endangered, when in fact they are profiting off these species just like anyone else. These two guys are not living in some trailer in some mobile home community out in the desert. No, they live in luxury, in the finest homes that Las Vegas entertainers can have. They drive expensive cars and dress impeccably, like any good Vegas icons would. They live the life of and promote the image of themselves as Las Vegas elite, and that means people with lots of money. In Vegas, money is about all that they judge you by, so Siegfried and Roy are judged to be high muckety-mucks indeed. They can appear all they want at some animal shelter or a zoo helping some Siberian tigress give birth to cubs all they want, they are there for the publicity and that is it. For days now, we have seen endless film of Roy at zoos and shit, assisting in tiger births, all the while proclaiming their undying love for these magnificent beasts. Then that night, they go and put on a spectacle for the money carrying tourists that revolves around these tigers and having them act in unnatural ways. Their self-righteous statements and attitude about it all are just as fake as they are. If you take Siberian tigers out of the picture, Siegfried and Roy might well be doing gay porn movies there in Vegas, not headlining their own theater and making millions. So anyone that calls these two frauds a friend of the animals is a fuckin' liar. They have probably made more money for themselves off of the Siberian tigers than almost any poacher could ever dream of. Plus, they have become world famous in the process, and what poacher could say that? So they have mined these tigers for more money than anyone else in history, so they can take their sanctimonius talk and fuck off. They did what they did for the sake of spectacle and money and nothing else. The best for the tigers does not matter to them, no matter how much they say otherwise. The tragedy here is that these two fuckheads have ben able to build such an empire off of these tigers. The fact that one of them got his ass mauled is just desserts in a way. One of the tigers had enough of the spectacle and showed his dissatisfaction. I hope that all the money and fame that Roy has gotten from this was worth it so that he can reflect on that as he sits in his hospital bed not knowing what is going to become of his life. I am sure that he thinks about the disappointed tourists that had planned their entire vacations and lives around watching him perform. If he would think about what he and his partner have really been doling al these years, he might want to find that tiger so that it could finish the job, because the life of lies and deceit that he has led has brought him everything that he has, including where he is lying at now and the uncertain future that he faces. It is hard to feel sorry for him , for he went and did exactly what he said that he was against, he just sugar-coated it and made it look good. He is now paying the price for that, and I bet that his spectacle that he put on for so long looks pretty feeble now.