Question 1 When you are touring or vacationing to a country there is generally a preordained representation that the country is aiming to evoke The people heritages and overall culture are portrayed in a way that will bring tourists back Quite often this image is falsified and improperly characterizes these attractions Throughout there is a constant struggle for who has the authority to create this depiction and what it will be based on Who are the native people Who has the right to call a country their homeland What defines ownership For instance immigration issues in the region of the Battle of the Alamo in Texas continue to plague authority struggles Texans won the battle but Mexicans where the native people Who are the immigrants in that situation These questions and more have been the source of ambiguity surrounding tourist representations for years The book Sustaining Identity shows the misinterpretation of local people in a tourist location Despite being active consumers who regularly participated in the current industrial world the mountain people portrayed themselves as a barbaric people who refused to adapt to technological advancements Despite the reality generalizations about these indigenous people where made These include the false depiction that they are a hunter and gathering people who specialize on basic craft simply because of their lifestyle and the expectation of tourists In addition depicted in the movie Cannibal Tours the people of New Guinea assumed a similar role simply based off the expectations of tourists Ironically the native New Guineans used this representation to stimulate tourism a main facet of the countries economic industry These two examples essentially sum up Edward Bruners point of view in Culture on Tour In this Bruner states that the perception of a tourist spot and the culture than is the actual culture Example reminds me of Dominican republic blue water beautiful country to vacation to beaches actually very impoverished however and they face major struggles with thee neighboring people of Haiti Question 3 Metanarratives is a comprehensive explanation of a society and their motivations For example communism would effectively describe how former USSR society was run or Roman Catholicism would define a typical Italian town Metanarratives as related to tourism describes the overarching themes of societal structure and culture of a particular area Provides more depth to the history of a society and what defines their background Mecca millions of Muslims a year pilgrimage to this site hajj to express their devout religious beliefs One of the most sacred locations for Muslims and quite literally a central figure in their religion Mecca is also a site where tourists can first hand gain better insight to what the religion focuses around and what millions of Muslims worship Are we there yet the theme of this movie centralizes around the recreation of culture to promote tourist attractions and reinforce the expectations of the tourists This can be seen as a way for the native people to express and show what the original sense of their culture was to help tourists better understand and almost live in the environment Question 4 The Dean MacCannell theory is that the motivation of a tourist to go to other regions of the world is to experience exotic life styles that differ from that of their own This then leads into a hypothesis of Edward Bruner who states that the native people of a tourist region will perform in a certain way to put on the appearance of what the tourist expects staged authenticity Try to find something missing in their lifestyles by exploring that of others by which they ve never experienced Are we there yet film same dude ranch example staged by the natives of the region for tourists who want to experience authentic cabin way of living The Good Woman of Bangkok film the tourists travel to Bangkok to experience the exotic foreign women that they wouldn t normally see in their home region escape the usual Women feed into this notion and then behave in a particular manner whether that be in strip clubs or dance clubs Exploring other gender norms Culture on Tour book Lincolns New Salem staged authenticity of interpreters dressed in that periods attire and act in third person the way someone from the 1830s would act to put on an appearance Tourists are aware that this scene is faked but they are content with the portrayal and the opportunity to visit another life during another time period Question 7 Cultural Commodification is the thought that any cultural expression or representation can be sold to the dominant culture Commodification itself is originally a Marxist term that defined the transformation of ideas or other entities into goods One such example in popular culture that comes to mind is the use of Che Guevara s face on merchandise sold worldwide Completely demeans what he represented and what he stood for and still stands for Cannibal Tours movie indigenous people who hold a very secular culture Rather than worship the spirits that their culture holds dear they degrade themselves by putting on shows and dancing for tourists and commoditizing their craft by selling the artifacts they make almost mass producing them rather than making them as representations of their culture and beliefs Sun of Shadows film South Americans sold their land to private corporations who then developed beachfront resorts on them and industrialized the whole area Not only did this commoditize their land it commoditized their self worth and culture turning their hard work and watched everything in front of them become centralized tourist attractions Are we There Yet Tourists paying to live on dude ranches mocking that lifestyle and making it into a tourist gimmick rather than a legitimate way of life by paying for it and voluntarily opting to do it as a fun experience rather than a way of life
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