Virtual Dark Tourism

Ghost Roads

Kathryn N. McDaniel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319746869
• eBook ISBN: 9783319746876
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book takes the concept of "dark tourism"—journeys to sites of death, suffering, and calamity—in an innovative yet essential direction by applying it to the virtual realms of literature, film and television, the Internet, and gaming. Essays focus both on the creative construction of imaginary journeys and the historiographic and civic consequences of such memorializations. From World War II time-travel novels to Game of Thrones, and from Internet reproductions of Rwandan genocide locations to invented tragedies in futuristic domains, authors from various fields examine the purpose and influence of simulated travels to morbid sites. Designed for a wide audience of scholars and travelers virtual and real, this volume raises awareness about the many pathways through which we encounter death experiences in contemporary society. What we know about the past—or, what we think we know about it—is shaped daily by such imagined journeys as these.

© The Author(s) 2018

K. N. McDaniel (ed.)Virtual Dark TourismPalgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflicthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74687-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction to Virtual Dark Tourism: Disaster in the Space of the Imagination

Kathryn N. McDaniel¹

(1)

Department of History, Marietta College, Marietta, OH, USA

End Abstract

Though you may not know the term “dark tourism ,” you have almost certainly participated in this practice, even if only in your imagination. If you have journeyed to a battlefield, a war memorial, a Holocaust museum, or another setting of devastation, you have been a dark tourist. Ranging from the comical to the profoundly moving, such tourist sites connect people to the past in tangible ways through objects, spaces, exhibits, and dramatic recreation. Creating sites memorializing calamity, war, genocide, and tragedy—whether for edification or thrills—the dark tourism industry worldwide is booming.

A major draw of what is also called “thanatourism”¹ is being in the physical presence of objects or spaces connected to atrocities ; however, the desire to journey to dark places of the past also extends to the realm of the imagination. Writers, filmmakers, and designers of Internet sites and video games have created virtual dark tourism experiences for armchair travelers by devising imaginary voyages to lands and times where terrible acts have occurred. Shaping popular memories of historical disasters, these simulated journeys—like the physical ones—bring the past into the present, encourage empathy for past peoples, provide opportunities for public grieving and spiritual questioning, produce vicarious thrills and chills, offer solace for tragic losses, and invite reflection on the possibility of catastrophe in the here-and-now.

The term “dark tourism” has an expansive definition, referring to travel to places that either witnessed or represent death, destruction, suffering, or calamity.² First developed in 1996, the dark tourism concept emerged from several directions at once, including a focus on dark sites,³ an exploration of the history of thanatourism as a human behavioral phenomenon,⁴ and the problem of troubling heritage memorials.⁵ Dark tourist sites include a wide variety of “attractions”⁶: some quite deeply concerned with death and the tourist’s confrontation with its meaning (occasionally referred to as “black tourism”), others more oriented toward fun and entertainment (on the “pale” end of the spectrum).⁷ Some of these sites are intentionally created; others appear spontaneously (as with some pilgrimage sites) or are encountered accidentally.⁸ Some may be more highly commercialized than others, or they may focus on the group experience (or even communal celebration) instead of individual reflection. They may be in a location not physically associated with the atrocity (like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.), or they may put tourists in actual danger because of their proximity to the event or conditions that produced the event. Some scholars have questioned whether the term “dark tourism” is too capacious, considering too many types of sites and evoking too many different kinds of experiences and emotions.⁹ Public historians concerned with studying dark tourism have typically approached it from the point of view of managing such sites and providing interpretation: what is termed the “supply side” of the practice. What attracts tourists to these sites (the demand side), what meaning tourists take from them, and how such sites shape ideas of the past’s relation to the present are more thorny questions.¹⁰

Dark tourism scholars have posed a variety of answers for why people are drawn to such macabre sites, including modern secularism,¹¹ contemporary tendencies to sequester death and dying,¹² postmodern anxieties about late-capitalist and post-Cold War developments,¹³ and destabilized national identities amid increasing globalization.¹⁴ Each of these trends may also be said to encourage the virtual form of thanatourism. Even as transportation technologies have made travel easier and more widely accessible, new media and computer technologies have also increased the variety and availability of high-quality travel simulations.¹⁵ The two also mutually reinforce each other. Those who explore the world’s tragedies and traumas in the one form would be likely to experience them in the other as well. Dark tourism scholars acknowledge the importance of this mutual influence and have suggested that travel begins in the imagination because the virtual experience—from news media, travel guides, and other travel literature—usually precedes the physical dark tour.¹⁶ Imaginative expressions of dark tourism also follow such experiences, as people try to put into words or images their dark tourism encounters. Anthropologist Jonathan Skinner’s edited volume, Writing the Dark Side of Travel, has recognized the importance of rhetorical strategies—including words, actions, graphic novels, and dance—in processing and representing pilgrimages to places of death and destruction.¹⁷

In some ways, the concept of “virtual dark tourism” casts an even wider net than dark tourism, since it does not in fact require travel to the actual site of calamity: the physicality of being in a place associated with death or trauma, or being surrounded by tangible objects tied to such events, has been removed. This limitation in itself helps to mark a boundary dividing dark tourism from virtual dark tourism. Virtual dark tourism need not involve physical travel—the journey is imaginary. It may be that virtual dark tourism focuses even more intensely on traveling (as opposed to destinations) as an important process for understanding death and suffering. And thus, not any experience that takes one’s imagination to another place or time qualifies as virtual tourism. The literature, film, Internet site, or game must convey a journey; it must provide some simulation of travel; it must attend deliberately to the notion of providing outsiders (tourists) the feeling of being in a place, without actually being in that place. The last of these might be conveyed by visual or auditory cues, intense levels of detail, layering of the alien with the familiar or identifiable, or even the active participation of the tourist in a game or virtual reenactment of an event. To that end, virtual dark tourism is not likely to occur spontaneously in ways described by dark tourism scholars.¹⁸

On the other hand, the “accidental” character of virtual dark tourism experiences may be enhanced. Unlike dark tourism consumers, virtual dark tourists may not realize initially that they are being taken on a journey related to death, but may simply intend to read a book, watch a film, or play a video game. The consumer’s intentionality may be somewhat or even entirely reduced, while the creator’s purposefulness is heightened. Self-conscious craft goes into design, content, and other features of the virtual tour. Consequently, there is always deliberation in the creation of meaning for those who travel virtually, though the tours themselves may be more or less successful in conveying that meaning. Because virtual dark tourism media intensely engage with questions of death or suffering in other times, those who craft these experiences have conscious messages about memory, about the past, and even about the possible future which they intend to convey to their virtual tourists. Virtual dark tourism is constrained not only by the lack of physical travel, but also by the intentionality of the form and its creators in producing phenomenological, spiritual , and historical interpretations. The artificial nature of these experiences also shapes the meanings intended and received.

Note that the nature of the interpretation does not affect whether a work or experience qualifies as dark tourism, either real or virtual. It makes no difference whether trauma and death are interpreted as unremitting tragedy, or interpreted comically or heroically, ultimately generating a positive conclusion about a terrible time.¹⁹ Regardless of the interpretation advanced, those who visit such sites—physically or virtually—are still participating in dark tourism. In fact, both producers and consumers of dark tourism sites commonly construe scenes of violence, suffering, and death as opportunities for heroism or confronting the absurd.

In short, a work of virtual dark tourism

• is a creative work that substitutes a simulated journey for physical travel;
• recognizes and emphasizes the consumer as a tourist in an alien environment;
• intentionally represents a site—whether real or wholly imagined—of death, destruction, suffering, or calamity;
• purposefully enco...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction to Virtual Dark Tourism: Disaster in the Space of the Imagination
• Part I. Literary Journeys
• Part II. Film Trips
• Part III. Internet Tours
• Part IV. Gaming Travel
• Back Matter