Tourism & Authenticity
by Ron Edwards - Strategy Director (01 June 2009)
Mmmmmmm SPAM!
Most 'indigenous' experiences in the travel industry are canned ham. Chopped up from the dregs, reconstituted, moulded into shape, injected with some artificial colour, and VOILA! Authentic Thailand.
This questionable authenticity has been at the top of my mind for years. So when I came upon this blurb recently while doing research for a client, I was really intrigued. It’s the product description for a book by anthropologist Edwards M. Bruner:
“Recruited to be a lecturer on a group tour of Indonesia, Edward M. Bruner decided to make the tourists aware of tourism itself. He photographed tourists photographing Indonesians, asking the group how they felt having their pictures taken without their permission. After a dance performance, Bruner explained to the group that the exhibition was not traditional, but instead had been set up specifically for tourists. His efforts to induce reflexivity led to conflict with the tour company, which wanted the displays to be viewed as replicas of culture and to remain unexamined. Although Bruner was eventually fired, the experience became part of a sustained exploration of tourist performances, narratives, and practices.”
I loved this. Partly because of the sadistic streak in it. Maybe someone should have given the Indonesians cameras so that they could fire back and assault each unsuspecting load of tourists as they stepped off the bus. I bet after about four of five stops, they’d get the picture. I also loved it because someone was blowing holes in the magic.
A lot of this cultural packaging is developed by well intentioned people. They think this is what tourists want. Slap some people in artificial costumes that are a semi-approximation of what some people wore 400 years ago. Throw in some headlines about golden glimmering shimmer of gilded wonder of Thailand. Add some body copy about centuries-old tradition (never mind that the copywriter, who very well may be Thai, is wearing Levis and Burberry and probably spends that traditional holiday out at a bar with friends instead of prancing around in a costume and bowing their head).
Even the sophisticated versions of cultural authenticity are, to be honest, more like something culturally inspired than culturally genuine. Then again tourism is not anthropology. Most tourists are not looking to toil in rice paddies for a week or to immerse themselves in an experience that is basically the same as home except the surrounding skin tones may be a little different.
And tourism infrastructure can also provide a safeguard for local communities. Herd the camera-toting crowds into an amphitheatre, for a couple hours. Do a song and dance routine. And then get them the hell out so you can go back to your own authentic life without the voyeurs around.
Maybe that’s how it should stay?
Can authenticity be profitable? Should it be?
Comment on this post.
Comment 2: Amelia Salyers - Concept Developer
I don't buy this whole "search for authenticity" juggernaut. The search for authenticity is often really a search for some sort of idealized and exoticized version of the past. While I think this is partially your point, Ron, I don't think your Bruner example is a fair one. For example, for him to ask how tourists feel getting their picture taken is rather patronizing. Ogling the Other is a two-way street. I for one often get my picture taken with and without permission in Asia - as a white woman, I am seen as an exotic and strange object by “the locals." It is inherent to human nature to gape at difference.
For me, the "authentic experience" is what you are experiencing in the here and now - whether that is a local ceremony in a tiny village in northern India to which I was once invited or the ubiquitous "traditional fire shows" set to electro music on every Thai beach. The real fascination for me is how a culture tries to give an audience of outsiders what that culture perceives the audience wants. I think the careful observer can learn a great deal about modern Thailand from the colourful, overblown, pseudo-historical fantasies called a “tourist trap” by the cultural elite.
Comment 3: Ron Edwards - Strategy Director
Well, you're both right. I think this "search for the authentic" is profitable. But I don't think 99.9999% of what's on the market is genuinely authentic. Except in Amelia's 'here and now' sense -- which I'm very much in agreement with by the way. I also refrained from going off on a huge tangent about simulacra in my post. But I do think the very definition of 'authentic' is key to this whole issue, at least from an intellectual perspective.
Philosophical arguments aside though...
What I'm really wondering is if something that more closely approximates the authentic (in its generally accepted sense) is possible. I don't even know if there is a mass market for it. But I do think there is a significant amount of people who would pay more money for a more authentic experience (even if it's still not the Holy Grail of authenticity... which they probably would not recognize if it beat them over the head with a Centurion card). I also think there's a significant market for grassroots enterprises -- homestays and the like.
The majority of tourist experiences will still range from the vulgarly cliched and artificial to the moderately cliched and artificial, but like Cody says, who's complaining?
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Comment 1: Cody Griggers - Director, Advocacy Communications
Is it profitable? Oh certainly. I've paid to be a camera-toting tourist viewing contrived displays of reconstituted "culture" the world over--from "Colonial Williamsburg" in my own country to spectacles of light and sound set against the backdrop of Borobudur in Indonesia or, closer to our current home, down at the Siam Niramit Theater. So have millions of others.
Should it be? Well I don't really see why not. Such displays not only bring livelihoods to people who wouldn't otherwise have them (so they can go buy their Burberry and iPods, pay for their education or feed their families). More than that, is it not also serving to preserve these cultures, even if in a slightly over-packaged way? I doubt that too many Bangkok teens would be performing spontaneous displays of Thai traditional dance in the streets on their own--but they certainly will if tourists are willing to pay for it. And maybe--just maybe--that in some way keeps what would otherwise be a dying art alive, and connected to the current generation.
I think the whole matter hinges on your definition of "authenticity"--and I don't think anyone actually thinks of these kinds of displays as "authentic" within a modern context. I think most of the time, those camera-toting oglers know that this is a set-up just for their lenses. And as long as the whole set-up is mutually beneficial, who's complaining?