I remembered this ever since I was a kid. Pinocchio gets temped and tricked into going along with the ‘bad boys’ of the neighborhood to PLEASURE ISLAND: An isolated place where one can do bad things, eat a lot, drink a lot, smoke a lot, and gamble a lot, without ever getting in trouble or thinking about consequence. Unfortunately for the boys, their misbehavior ends up getting themselves turned into donkeys. Originally, this movie was intended to teach young children ‘life-lessons’ by personifying common metaphors used in day to day life. For example, « Don’t lie or your nose will grow » and in this case on pleasure island « Don’t be bad or you will make an ass out of yourself. » In both cases, the common saying becomes a reality for the characters in the film. The boys end up turning into donkeys and are forced to work for the owner of Pleasure Island.
If you strip down Las Vegas to its bare-bones and look at what is actually happening there, it is not hard to see that this children’s-story is constantly being retold. A lot of people go to Las Vegas because they know it as the place where they can do bad things, eat a lot, drink a lot, smoke a lot, gamble a lot, and now, have sex a lot, without ever getting in trouble or thinking about consequence. What we don’t see in reality is the sprouting ears and donkey hoofs. Still, no bad action comes without some form of consequence; Las Vegas has one of the highest suicide rates in America. These high numbers are not made up of the people who live in the city, but by the people who go there to discover their own « pleasure-island. »
Learning from Las Vegas 