Dori Lubliner on MacCannell
How do I define the tourist? First of all, I think that MacCannell is correct in saying that although there is a negative quality associated with being a tourist, everyone is one. Tourist attractions are cultural experiences. Even the most hyper-sensitive, liberal-minded philosopher or scholar must admit his/her culpability within MacCannell’s model. It is about human behavior in response to “otherness” in varying forms. The tourist is of all classes, races, cultures, religions and identities; he/she is looking to understand, revere, mock, inspect, escape, and experience something “other” that is not quotidian. The tourist seeks a cultural experience whether it is for educational, socioeconomic, religious, or leisure purposes. The tourist looks for an affirmation in a system of signification in which the attraction is a marker of semiotic meaning; however, MacCannell aptly points out that the tourist often confuses recognition for perception and therefore misidentifies the symbolism by conventionalizing it. Therein lays his, and every other scholar’s problem with tourist identities.
Studying tourism is all about the context. For my purposes the semiotic approach will be most helpful in discerning the abundant misidentification of the Broadway musical. There is nothing more stereotypically artsy New York tourist attraction than the spectacle of Broadway as a particularly Bourgeois American cultural experience. It is also helpful to think about the mechanics behind the Broadway musical and the work/leisure dichotomy reflected through back/front social space as well as the public and private experiences of such a spectacle. Looking at the Broadway musical is a two-fold performance studies project because the musical is a performance in and of itself as well as being a tourist destination. Performance Studies would approach tourism from an anthropological standpoint in which the tourist is an inherent identity that is constantly performed through dynamic acts of performative spectatorship. Performance Studies finds a significant place most obviously in the ritualization of tourism. Tourism as a modern ritual exemplifies how people perform a sequence of events that climax in the encounter with the attraction, which fulfills a kind of tourist rite of passage.