Popular culture and the mob: An ethnography of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas

This research is based on an ethnographic study that started in 2015 at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas, during which the author aimed at understanding the role of mafia movies in Las Vegas tourism, undertaking participant observation, informal conversations—with the museum employees and visitors—, and content analysis of texts, such as the museum’s brochures and social media. The current study draws from different topics that are crucial in today’s tourism studies, such as film induced tourism, dark tourism, and celebrity culture. Even though tourists are aware that mobsters are criminals and consider them “the bad guys,” they also express fascination for said people, often relying on those romanticized and inaccurate images they saw in fictional characters. Thus, this study’s findings show that to understand how Las Vegas rebranded its image through mob tourism, it is necessary to comprehend tourists’ fascination for the mob, and the key role of pop culture in the downtown tourism development.