Staging Tourism

by Desmond, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780226143767
• ISBN10: 0226143767
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

From Shamu the dancing whale at Sea World to Hawaiian lu'au shows,Staging Tourismanalyzes issues of performance in a wide range of tourist venues. Jane C. Desmond argues that the public display of bodieshow they look, what they do, where they do it, who watches, and under what conditionsis profoundly important in structuring identity categories of race, gender, and cultural affiliation. These fantastic spectacles of corporeality form the basis of hugely profitable tourist industries, which in turn form crucial arenas of public culture where embodied notions of identity are sold, enacted, and debated. Gathering together written accounts, postcards, photographs, advertisements, films, and oral histories as well as her own interpretations of these displays, Desmond gives us a vibrant account of U.S. tourism in Waikiki from 1900 to the present. She then juxtaposes cultural tourism with "animal tourism" in the United States, which takes place at zoos, aquariums, and animal theme parks. In each case, Desmond argues, the relationship between the viewer and the viewed is ultimately based on concepts of physical difference harking back to the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Touring the Essential	xiii
PART I Staging ``The Cultural''
Introduction Cultural Bodies: Hawaiian Tourism and Performance	2	(8)
Let's Lu au	10	(24)
Picturing Hawai`i: The ``Ideal'' Native and the Origins of Tourism, 1880--1915	34	(26)
Pictures Come to Life: Rendering ``Hawai`i'' in Early Mainland Hula Performances	60	(19)
Advertising, Racializing, and Performing Hawai`i on Site: The Emergence of Cultural Tourism in the 1920s	79	(19)
Tourism and the Commodification of Culture, 1930--1940	98	(24)
Surfers and ``Beachboys'': Euro-American Representations of Native Hawaiian Men and Interracial Romance	122	(31)
Conclusion Up to the Present: Profiling Visitors	131	(13)
PART II Staging ``The Natural''
Introduction Looking at Animals: The Consumption of Radical Bodily Difference	144	(9)
The Industries of Species Tourism	153	(23)
In/Out-of/In-Fake-Situ: Three Case Studies	176	(41)
Performing Nature: Shamu at Sea World	217	(50)
Conclusion Bodies and Tourism	251	(16)
Notes	267	(50)
References Cited	317	(14)
Index	331