Travel, Tourism and the Moving Image

Sue Beeton

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781845415273
• eBook ISBN: 9781845415303
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Film & Video
• Index: Business

This book explores the relationship between tourism and the moving image, from the early era of silent moving pictures through to cinema as mass entertainment. It examines how our active and emotional engagement with moving images provides meaning and connection to a place that can affect our decision-making when we travel. It also analyses how our touristic experiences can inform our film-viewing. A range of genres and themes are studied including the significance of the western, espionage, road and gangster movies, along with further study of film studio theme parks and an introduction to the relationship between gaming and travel.This book will appeal to tourism scholars as well as film studies professionals, and is written in an accessible manner for a general audience.

Introduction: The Birth of This Book ...

You’ll go back to the lower country ... and EARN THE RIGHT TO LIVE

UP HERE!
Like your father did!
The Man from Snowy River, 1982

Many of the ‘early’ academic studies of tourism (primarily from the 1960s onwards) were undertaken by academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including geography, economics, marketing and psychology through to sociology and anthropology. Each brought a range of perspectives and strong disciplinary knowledge to this ‘new’ field of study, contributing in many and varied ways, which they continue to do. Ultimately, such interest led to specialised tourism educational programmes being established at universities, which led to a significant change in academic research and knowledge in the field.

By the late 20th century, the study of tourism took an interesting turn, where we have students graduating from schools of tourism with undergraduate degrees in ‘tourism’ as opposed to the more social science based disciplines. This includes the Bachelor of Tourism, Bachelor of Business (Tourism Management) and Bachelor of Arts (Tourism) programmes, among others. Some of these graduates went on to further study in tourism and are now among our academic leaders, teachers and researchers. Consequently, many students are coming out of their courses as ‘tourism specialists’ with only a cursory understanding of other disciplines and their relevance to tourism. Philip Pearce et al. (2011) refer to those who have travelled such educational routes as ‘Generation T’ (Gen T). While one can argue that such a limited disciplinary background is a limitation, it actually presents Gen T with opportunities to explore tourism from a range of academic disciplinary perspectives.

I am one such person. Coming to tourism and academia a little ‘later in life’ and with a tourism industry background, I had no underpinning academic disciplinary knowledge, but a great and eclectic thirst for understanding the tourism phenomenon. Whether such a situation is optimal, I will leave others to decide, but I do know that I continue to be inspired by my eclectic interests that seem to revolve around the social sciences as well as a more pragmatic approach, informed by a lifelong interest in people, groups and cultures.

In fact, I came to academic life because of a movie. In the 1980s and 1990s I began guiding horseback tours in the Victorian High Country and working with the small business operators and communities in those rural areas. These tours became extremely popular (and viable) after the release of the iconic Australian movie, The Man from Snowy River (1982). As a guide, I witnessed people trying to ride like a bushman, careering down mountainsides and generally playing out scenes from the movie. Also, for a time, I was part of the (fictional?) life of these resilient, resourceful people of whom we, as Anglo-Australians, are so proud and which, for many, still possess a high level of authenticity. In order to continue working with these small business operators and other practitioners, I returned to study to enhance my knowl-edge of tourism and develop my research skills as a consultant. At the time it did not occur to me that I would end up as an academic studying the relationship between film and tourism. To be honest, I was barely aware that this was an option until well after my return to university, when I began to understand the opportunities presented by academic research and thought.

Initially, it was relatively easy to study the film tourism phenomenon, as very few people had actually done so, giving me an enormous amount of leeway (and, some may say, licence). However, as I have continued to work in this area over the ensuing 15-20 years (including my practical experience), I find I am leaning more and more towards thinking about the disciplines of cinema (and media) studies, psychology, anthropology and sociology to inform my work and help me understand ‘why’ we do what we do. This is incredibly exciting, challenging and even frightening for one who has no grounding knowledge of any of these disciplines. However, I believe that my lifelong obsession with observing people and society, in an attempt to make some sense of ‘life’, provides me with some intrinsic, on-the-ground knowledge, as does my experience as Gen T, a tourist, academic and guide.

So, in this book I work towards merging a selection of the great work from those disciplines with my more specific knowledge of film-induced tourism. I do hope that I have been successful, at least in part, but I also trust that others will continue to work in the areas I identify in this book and continue to progress our understanding and knowledge.

I dedicate this book to all of my Generation T friends, colleagues and students.

The Development of the Moving Image Around the World

The aim of this book is not to provide a definitive review of the development of the moving image in all parts of the world; rather it is to provide markers that illustrate the relationship between tourism and the moving image, dispelling the popularly held myth that film-related tourism is a recent phenomenon. Consequently, the focus is primarily on developments in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia, for a number of reasons. First, my own background is clearly Western, which helps me to interpret some of those cultural nuances. Also, much of the development of the moving image and tourism run parallel in these Western, developed countries, particularly when we consider the pervasiveness of Hollywood. As we move further into discussing some of the more modern forms of the moving image and tourism, I do make a slight shift towards incorporating additional perspectives, including a discussion of Asian popular culture and tourism, which has become an area in which I will be doing further studies with my Asian colleagues. Due to this ‘Western’ and historical perspective, there are undoubted colonialist undertones to much of the work cited and my personal interpretation, which is a perspective from which I cannot extricate myself.

Reading This Book

While the book can be read from cover to cover, developing its argument relating to audiences, tourists and moving images, it is possible to dip in and out of the work as required. Specific themes are introduced in each chapter, particularly related with the various ‘fashions’ (or developments) with regard to the moving image and tourism, which often reflect each other. While it is presented primarily chronologically, the work does not slavishly follow this line when there are direct thematic links outside what can be a restrictive (and at times conflicting) temporal perspective.

Most of the research I relate here is auto-ethnographic, where I reflect on personal lived experiences within a framework based on psychological, media and communication theory. This theory considers the audience of a moving image experience (such as film) to be an active participant, rather than simply a passive bystander. I have developed a circular, iterative model based on these theories and the research of myself and others in the field, which is first introduced in Chapter 1 and which is returned to a number of times throughout the book. A particular caveat regarding my study is that the majority of my research is based on fictional moving image experiences, and while I acknowledge the role of non-fictional works in tourism, I only occasionally stray into that area.

Following the first chapter, which sets the scene by outlining the premise of the book and provides a brief history of the relevant aspects of tourism referred to throughout the book, along with communication and moving image studies, are three broad thematic sections. The first, ‘From Static to Moving Images’, begins with a discussion of the very early era of the moving image, which begins prior to the advent of cinema and continues through to the silent moving picture era. There are a number of parallels with the emerging area of cinema as mass entertainment and that of mass tourism, which permeates much of the book. There are also interesting links between some of the early technology and cinema and tourism today noted in Chapter 2. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the role of film and travel during wartime, and the rise of national cinemas along with this era’s focus on domestic tourism as a way to recover from war and deprivation, both emotionally and economically. The next chapter takes the war stories and images into the era of the Cold War as well as discussing the introduction of modern warfare and television. I argue that many of these images present places in exotic and often appealing ways, especially the more romanticised spy movies, which all contribute to our responses to these places when we travel, or even consider travelling.

The following part, ‘Travelling In, On and Through the Landscape: Voyeur or Flâneur?’, looks at the role that landscape plays in the western movie genre in Chapters 6 and 7, which include some personal experiences related not only to the American western, but also to Italian spaghetti westerns. Subsequent chapters discuss landscape and travel in the road movie genre and then various crime genres including the Australian bushranger, detective stories and American gangsters.

Part 3, ‘Imagining Places: Illusions and Dreams’, looks at how certain places, such as movie ranches and some studios have been created, not only to film movies and television, but also to cater to tourists, while the theme park is purely a tourist construct yet inhabits the world of the moving image. The popularity of animation in Asia as well as the West provides additional travel and tourism possibilities, especially as technology improves to create places where we can engage with our imaginary friends. Chapter 11 continues the discussion to look at film tourism precincts, museums and moving image related events, such as artistic installations and festivals.

Before I attempt to make some sense of all of the discussions regarding active audiences and active tourists in the last chapter, we look at the pervasiveness of the small screens from TV to computers and mobile technology, followed by some other aspects of the moving image that are influencing our travel experiences. However, this book is does not ‘end’ with any great statements or ultimate conclusions, but presents a number of paths that future researchers, students and writers, including myself, can follow.

1 Mise-en-Scène¹

The moving image has evolved over centuries: Chinese shadow plays and eerie magic lantern shows in Renaissance Rome led to the invention of cinema in the 1890s. As time passed, Hollywood and Bollywood boomed, man’s first steps on the moon were televised and a videogame character named Mario won our hearts. Today, the Web and the mobile phone are

transforming the moving image anew.
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2011 (http://www.acmi.net.au/screen_worlds_about.htm)

Travel and tourism involve moving from one place to another - from an origin to a destination (home to away), from the familiar to the new; and/or from one state to another - from being stressed to relaxed, bored to stimulated, tired to invigorated, from desire to fulfilment, or even from anticipation to disappointment. Certainly, travel itself can be a conduit for learning, knowing, thinking and belonging (Amad, 2006: 101). Furthermore, we have created ways in which images ‘move’ (as in a film), which can create similar emotional responses in the viewer as those the traveller experiences while touring. Whenever (and wherever) these worlds intersect and interact, whether physically, metaphorically or emotionally, the results can be extremely powerful and intense.

The premise that informs the work in this book is that the moving image has been (and remains) a powerful emotional and physical presence as well as a mirror of the culture of the time in which it exists and, along with travel and tourism, that it can also be an agent of change. To paraphrase the aim outlined in the Introduction, the myth so often proliferated by students and academics alike, that film related tourism is a recent phenomenon (see Gjorgievski & Trpkova, 2012; Rewtrakunphaiboon, 2009), needs to be seriously reconsidered. Certainly, formal study of this relationship is relatively recent, as outlined in this chapter, yet travel and tourism has been linked inextricably with the moving image since its 19th-century inception.

As with various aspects of travel, the concept of the moving image can be considered in various ways; that is, the images move, the place of screening moves, enabling one to view one place in another (for example, watching an IMAX movie of Antarctica in New York) and, finally, (moving) images move people emotionally. By studying the effects of these moving images on contemporary culture, travel and leisure, we can situate the traveller within this discussion.

Throughout this book I examine various forms of the moving image and its concomitant travel and tourism themes, links, subtexts and connotations, bringing together research from a range of disciplines including cinema studies, communications and sociology as well as anthropology, considering it through a tourism lens, being my own background and perspective. Furthermore, research into the moving image itself (especially film) has shifted from what began as a more linear study of the technology and structure of films (primarily taking a supply-side perspective) towards considering the place and role of the audience (Popple & Kember, 2004). This provides us with a number of synergies with tourism studies, which has also moved from a more singular quantitative, economics-based field to incorporate more research into why tourists do things and not simply what they do, particularly in terms of its influence on, and being influenced by, cultural change. Notably, the view that audiences and tourists are passive consumers is being challenged, and forms the basis of much of the work introduced in this book.

While the direct observational elements of film-induced tourism have been well covered in the tourism literature, particularly in relation to destination marketing and management, there is little published work relating to the less quantifiable elements of this phenomenon such as travel and tourism and moving images in the cultural context ‘of the day’, particularly from the perspective of tourism academia. As Connell (2012: 19) concludes:

Clearly, film tourism research within the cognate area of Tourism Studies has reached a tipping point. As a research community, we are now aware that film tourism occurs, that it is part of a range of motivators in the tourism destination decision-making process, that it creates a range of impacts, and has been adopted by savvy tourism marketers and businesses seeking uniqueness and novelty. . . . It is an apposite time to move on from this point to prompt a more critical understand of film tourism, and in this shift, it will be essential to draw from cultural geography, social psychology, media studies and film theory approaches in future research.

Such disciplinary and thematic developments can also be represented visually, which is covered later in this chapter and has been based on ongoing studies outlined in various knowledge-based reviews (Beeton, 2010a, 2011). Running tangentially to Connell’s and my own state-of-the-art reviews, others have taken the field of the moving image, travel and tourism further inwards, with researchers including Reijnders (2011) talking about their personal relationship with film and TV, tourism and the tourist’s imagination, further internalising the experience of travel.

In addition, there have been some thought-provoking approaches published in the sociological and anthropological literature that assist to inform this work. As a case in point, Friedberg (1993) considers the link between film and tourism from a postmodern perspective, especially in terms of the subjective effects each has on their respective audiences and travellers/tourists, proposing that ‘tourism produces an escape from boundaries’ (Friedberg, 1993: 59). A further social sciences example is Strain’s (2003) anthropological work on entertainment, cinema and tourism, where she notes that:

the institutions of cinema, tourism, and anthropology all began their processes of development in the late nineteenth century . . .: tourists provided information for ea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Birth of This Book ...
• 4 The Emotions of Motion 2: War Propaganda, National Cinema and Travel
• 5 Travel in the Era of Modern Warfare and Moving Images
• Part 2: Travelling In, On and Through the Landscape: Voyeur or Flaneur?
• 6 Badlands and Beauty: Landscape, Travel and Place in the Western
• 7 Simply a Story? The Cultural Pervasiveness of the Western
• 8 Travel and Transformation: Road Movies and Touristic Journeys
• 9 Baddies in the Old and New Worlds: Bushrangers, Gangsters and Crime On Screen
• Part 3: Imagining Places: Illusions and Dreams
• 10 Creating Place
• 11 Spaces and Places: Travelling for/to the Moving Image
• 12 Conclusion: Manifestations of Tourism Through Film and Television: Making (Some) Meaning from Moving Images and Moving People
• References
• Index