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By Dean MacCannell
As tourism becomes the central drive, the unifying trait, in urban
and regional development, it transforms itself and the world around
it in ways that undermine and subvert the original motive for cultural
travel—and even the original basis for culture. Accordingly,
we must question every idea we have about cultural tourism and its
effects. We must especially question belief in the continued beneficial
effect of tourism on cultural and other conservation efforts.
It has been assumed by many that tourists—hungry to see historically
significant architecture, pristine nature, or authentic native ceremonies,
rituals, and dances—will automatically contribute money and rationale
to the preservation of historical and cultural artifacts, endangered
cultural expression, and ecologically fragile natural environments.
This notion is wrapped in sufficient common sense that it easily
can be taken for granted. Recently, however, it has been subject
to authoritative criticism. One of the strongest intellects in tourism
studies, Marie-François Lanfant, comments:
The discovery of heritage, by procedures such as restoration,
reconstitution, and reinvestment with affect, in some sense breaks
the very chain of significance which first invested it with authenticity,
in that on subsequent occasions it is retouched and elevated to
a new status. The object of heritage is reconstructed through
this process of marking, and thereby it certifies the identity
of a place for the benefit of anonymous visitors. Tradition, memory,
heritage: these are not stable realities. It is as if the tourists
have been invited to take part in a fantastic movement in which
. . . collective memory is constructed through the circulation
of tourists.
Architectural critic Michael Sorkin has commented along the same
lines:
Today, the profession of urban design is almost wholly preoccupied
with reproduction, with the creation of urbane disguises. Whether
in its master incarnation at the ersatz Main Street of Disneyland,
in the phony historic festivity of a Rouse marketplace, or the
gentrified architecture of the Lower East Side, this elaborate
apparatus is at pains to assert its ties to the kind of city life
it is in the process of obliterating. Here is urban renewal with
a sinister twist, an architecture of deception which, in its happy-face
familiarity, constantly distances itself from the most fundamental
realities.
Several years ago, I was involved in a film project that provided
detailed documentation of the contradiction at the heart of cultural
tourism. It was the case of Torremolinos, Spain, presented in segment
three of the BBC miniseries The Tourist (directed by Mary
Dickson and Christopher Bruce). Over the past fifty years, Torremolinos,
on the Costa del Sol, changed from a mere place to a tourist destination.
Its transformation is characteristic of places where the local and
the global are linked through tourism.
Torremolinos, initially a place of work—the beach where small
fishing boats were hauled out, nets repaired, today's successes
and failures discussed, and tomorrow's activities planned—was
reframed as a potential "work display" for tourists. The
original tourists were to be German workers rewarded by Hitler's
"Strength through Joy" program. The entire scene was to
become an object of touristic consumption, an example of "the
picturesque" with a message: traditional work is "natural,"
is "beautiful," is "picturesque." In the actual
course of history, Torremolinos did not become a "Strength
through Joy" program destination. Instead, as often happens,
some famous people, or "beautiful people," members of
the international elite leisure class, "discovered" "unspoiled"
Torremolinos. After initial contact with the wealthy pretourists,
it was no longer necessary for any fishing or associated activities
to take place, as long as some of the boats, nets, and fishermen
remained photogenically arrayed as a reminder of their former purpose.
Eventually the picturesque elements were selectively integrated
into the decor of the beach bars and discos, which today still retain
a traditional fishing village theme. Thus work was transformed into
entertainment for others.
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Fishermen bringing their boat ashore in
a rural area of Haiti (above) mostly untouched by tourism.
As such, it remains authentically "picturesque,"
as opposed to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco (below),
which has been transformed over time from a place primarily
for fishermen to a tourist site with a fishing theme. Photos:
Dean MacCannell (Haiti), Juliet Flower MacCannell (San Francisco).
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During the 1960s and 1970s, Torremolinos overreached as it reproduced
itself and the markers of its heritage. Planned for German tourists
and now overdeveloped, the place caters to "cheap and cheerful"
packaged tours for British working-class vacationers who want the
Spanish sand, sun, sea, and tokens of its former culture—without
giving up their beer and chips, the enjoyments of home. Torremolinos
has become a mélange of markers of Spanish fishing village
traditions, working-class fantasies of jet set luxury, and Spanish
versions of British fish and chips cuisine. The Spanish fishermen,
or their children, are now integrated into the global economy as
service workers for transnational tourists.
Elsewhere I have commented that it is harrowing to suggest that
this kind of transformation is the creative cutting edge of world
culture in the making. But such a suggestion seems inevitable, in
that everywhere we look, local practices and traditions are hollowed
out to make a place for the culture of tourism. This is happening
even, or especially, in those places where the tourists originally
came because they were attracted by the local culture, heritage,
and traditions. And, as Sorkinâs comment makes clear, this type
of transformation is by no means restricted to development for tourism
that occurs at the edges of the global economy. It also happens
in New York and in Orange County, California.
It is evident that we cannot continue to study cultural tourism
while holding on to empiricist assumptions that culture is somehow
prior to and separate from tourism and tourists. Development for
tourism has become the primary engine driving the growth of a new
kind of metastatic anticulture that rapidly reproduces and replaces
the culture that we once believed tourists were coming to see. This
is evident on a small scale in new museum practices that substitute
the display of artifacts with electronic entertainments featuring
images of the artifacts as game characters. It is evident on a larger
scale in the casino copies of older cultural destinations—The
Paris Experience, New York, San Francisco, Luxor, Venice, Bellagio—as Las Vegas positions itself to become the symbolic capital
of the 21st century. It is also evident in urban and regional redevelopment
plans everywhere, in education, and in other cultural programming—all of which are becoming variations on a theme park. While this
may be the only game in town economically, it is not a very human
thing. It marks a moment when the people, via treachery or other
means, have been made to give up on themselves as consumers of their
own heritage, believing they must accept cultural assembly line
work, making reproductions of their heritage and culture for anonymous
others.
Is it possible to begin to undo the damage to culture that is
being wrought by cultural tourism? Probably not by turning back
the tide of tourists, though certainly some will adopt this strategy.
Nor can one critic, curator, or conservator acting alone shift the
current direction of cultural tourism. The thing is simply too big.
What is needed are: (1) development of strong cultural theory, (2)
education programs that create deeper understanding of the function
and value of cultural heritage, and (3) reinvention of the museum,
restored heritage site, monument, memorial, and every other representation
of heritage, tradition, and collective memory. Let me suggest some
general principles that might guide the development of such a program
and indicate my willingness to work with others who share the same
goal.
Minimally, tourist destinations should ethically demand that their
visitors become implicated in an authentic reengagement with cultural
heritage conceived as a gift that everyone can possess equally but
no one can own. It is impossible to overestimate the difficulty
of this demand, because the drive to distance ourselves from our
own humanity is so strong. This drive is precisely what makes the
obliteration of culture by cultural tourism and commercial tourism
development so easy. To counter it, critics and curators must be
honest about the origin and essence of cultural gifts. Cultural
gifts are things passed on to the living by the dead and by their
most creative contemporaries: useful and other objects, practical
and high arts, and formulas for conduct, music, dance, poetry, and
narrative. But what exactly is exchanged if no one can actually
own them? The gifts are not the objects themselves but their symbolic
meaning.
Does symbolic meaning involve reverential awe or a gee-whiz factor?
Perhaps a little—but this should not be overdone. Appreciation
of cultural heritage should never be predicated only on the emotional
impact of virtuoso cultural display. This approach leads immediately
to the commercialization of nostalgia, sentimentality, and the kind
of tourism development that buries culture and heritage. It is only
when cultural heritage is received with a specific kind of attitude
of respect and admiration that the grounds are established for symbolic
exchange. What needs to be cultivated in tourists is respect for
the gap between themselves and those who created their cultural
heritage, a gap that can be narrowed but never completely closed.
They must attempt to grasp the signification of cultural material
for those who created it in the first place, knowing that they will
never be able to understand it completely.
Stories can be retold, and the reteller can remember the circumstances
of first hearing the story, and even the impact it had on his or
her life. But when a story is retold, the one thing that cannot
be conveyed is its full significance for the person who told it
in the first place. The stories that stick with us are the ones
we just don't quite "get"—the ones that must be retold
over and over, precisely because no retelling is capable of exhausting
their meaning. Tourists must somehow be taught how to act and made
to feel welcome on this most hallowed ground of cultural tradition,
even as it inevitably involves "not quite understanding."
Another way of saying this is that the only way a tourist can take
in culture authentically is by assuming the subject position of
a child. Tourists must learn that heritage is not something that
is in a story, an old building, an often repeated traditional formula,
or folk or high art. Rather, it is in a certain attitude toward
the story or artifact, and especially toward the hero of the story
or the maker of the artifact. It is this attitude that can be shared
by those presenting the heritage event or object, and the visitors/audience/tourists.
It is an attitude that renders the importance of the story
or artifact as probably beyond our grasp. It is only when heritage
is understood as probably beyond the grasp that it can renew itself
by inspiring a second reach. Otherwise, people will slumber in ersatz
cultural reproduction. "Importance beyond the grasp" is the surplus
value of cultural heritage, a surplus value that can only accrue
to an authentic human community composed of the living and the dead
and their honored guests, and probably their plants, animals, spirits,
and the places they inhabit as well. And it is precisely this surplus
value and the possibility of sharing it that is obliterated by commercial
cultural tourism development.
What tourism developers are calling "heritage" is a mask for the
intensity and the pain—and the possibility of failure—that
is inherent in all creation. It is a pretense that every object
and sentiment from the past can be routinely reproduced; that the
biggest break with the past that has ever been engineered is not
a break at all; that Main Street at Disneyland is a mere repetition
and continuation. We will not be able to stop the destruction of
culture in the name of "cultural tourism" until we, as tourists,
refuse to allow representations of cultural heritage to continue
to function as a mask for the pain of origins.
What is suppressed by commercial tourism development always involves
the beautiful and death. And it involves metaphysical
embarrassment about the proximity of beauty and death in our
cultural heritage and traditions. There may be psychoanalytic reasons
why we voluntarily pay so dearly for the cover-up and delusion as
cultural tourism blocks our access to cultural origins. The only
antidote is to embrace heritage as a challenge to the living by
the dead to keep on living, to try to fill the real gap or void
of death, even though we know this is not possible—a challenge
that must be met with full awareness of the impossibility of telling
the same story twice, the impossibility of fully honoring our ancestors
and our creative contemporaries and their accomplishments.
Representations of cultural heritage should also serve as a reminder
that full speech and authentic meaning are constantly leaking out
of human interaction. And the only way to plug those leaks is a
certain type of artfulness that in its first enunciation would never
be seen as "traditional"—but which very quickly moves to fill
the void opened by tradition, and which is powerful enough to open
a new void of its own.
Dean MacCannell is professor and chair of the Landscape Architecture
Program of the University of California, Davis. A founding member
of the International Tourism Research Institute and the Research
Group on the Sociology of Tourism, he is the author of The Tourist:
A New Theory of the Leisure Class and Empty Meeting Grounds.
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