Jamie Reynolds- MacCannell "Authenticity"
I find the process of staging authenticity in tourist productions and McCannell’s description of Goffman’s front/back model particularly intriguing. Having worked in numerous tourist settings, I have found myself in both of these constructed areas. The front space is established as a welcoming social space for the tourist, and also the “on-stage” area for the players producing the experience. According to MacCannell, this is a place for tourists to “overcome or to get behind” in order to have an “authentic” experience. This raises issues of access and an aim to penetrate a socially constructed off-limits area within the tourist production. Today our culture is rampant with the pursuit of this privilege. For example, audience members (tourists) zealously attempt to get “back stage” in order to get autographs (souveniers) from the performers, or even just to get a glimpse of them in an alternate setting. Even restaurants are marketing this strategy by advertising a “special chef’s table” in the kitchen, which provides the diner an “inside” view of what goes on behind the scenes of the restaurant, thus granting the tourist a more “authentic” experience.
This is complicated by the idea of the staged back stage area. A production that invites the tourist to the back has carefully crafted this area, albeit different than the front, but constructed nonetheless. When reading this, I could not help but think of Schechner’s “not-not”, in that the back stage is not the actual tourist production, but it is not-not part of the production. This reminded me of a couple of personal instances when these front/back areas were established in different ways. First, in the instance of Disney, they are vehement that the public (tourists) only have access to the front, as if there was no back area at all. MacCannell finds that where one finds exploited leisure, one also finds exploited labor. This could not be more true than in the case of Disney, where workers meet extreme demands, sometimes in extreme weather conditions, all while keeping up the parks “magical” image. Another moment I was reminded of happened this past summer while in Peru with the Hemispheric Institute. Our student group went to see a circus production called La Tarumba, which was in the tradition of European circuses and quite different from the American Barnum & Bailey experience I grew up with. Following the performance, our professor crossed from the “front” to the “back”, relatively unannounced, with all of us in tow, which made many of us very uncomfortable because not only were we in a different culture, but now we were crossing another boundary and we didn’t want to seem disrespectful. Upon entering the performers back stage area, they were caught a bit off guard, but were very welcoming to our group, and we proceeded to share our complements in broken Spanish and English. Of course, their behavior altered immediately in our presence, which brings up the argument that every area or “stage” of the tourist production is socially constructed in some way.
In thinking of how I might define “tourist”, I must also consider MacCannell’s distinction between the traveler and the tourist and, thus, how I might define “traveler”. (I am still wrestling with this and hope we can unpack it further as a group.) If the traveler is said to be in search of a more authentic/ real experience (i.e. “getting in with the natives”) and the tourist in pursuit of a more contrived setting, then it seems this issue has to do with individual reality and values. What I read in MacCannell’s finding is that the tourist/traveler’s search for their respective version of a “true” experience is really a search for a “true” self-discovery. Whether staged or not, this plight for personal understanding is a timeless ritual, and the authenticity we might find in tourist spaces depends not only on those who construct them (labor), but also on our behavior within them (leisure).