Tourism, Cinema, Spectatorship
In his chapter, The Paris Case, MacCannell quotes a contemporary Michelin guide to New York City inviting visitors to enjoy, "A typical sight... the rush at noon after the factories close: solid waves of workers emerge, sweeping everything before them." (MacCannell, 59) Curiously, an identical scene is featured in what is widely reputed to be the first film created by the Lumieres brothers in turn of the century Paris. The film can be viewed on youtube, here: Workers Exiting a Factory. This was my first clue to the many parallels between emergent forms of cinematic spectatorship, and the rise of touristic spectatorship as detailed by MacCannell.
Vanessa R. Schwartz, in an essay entitled "Cinematic Spectatorship Before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," examines forms of spectacle prevalent in turn of the century Paris that, in her opinion, prepared the populace for the emergence of cinema at approximately the same moment. Importantly, her analysis largely centers on one of the sights to which MacCannell turns his attentions, the Paris Morgue. While MacCannell's analysis of the Morgue is brief, and focuses on the sociological import of the sight ("What is represented is the importance of social order and of leaving society in an orderly way..." (MacCannell, 72)), Schwartz's analysis of the morgue links it more closely with the concerns over authenticity that MacCannell explores throughout much of the rest of his book. Schwartz writes in her introduction, "I hope to situate early cinema as a part of the public taste for reality." (Schwartz, 87) Of the Morgue, she comments, "The Morgue served as a visual auxiliary to the newspaper, staging the recently dead who had been sensationally detailed by the printed word." (Schwartz, 90) Schwartz seems to identify here a link between marker and site similar to those detailed by MacCannell in tourist productions. Ironically, the link here seems somewhat reversed, the morgue(site) is the 'visual auxiliary'(marker) of the newspaper article, that details the real, authentic event that might be the true object of interest to the tourist/public.
While there is likely more to be said on this specific connection, what interests me most is the affinity it indicates between cinematic forms of spectatorship and touristic forms. This affinity can be found throughout MacCannell's book, as when he relates the experience of tourists to the experience of pornography (see the second paragraph on page 99 of MacCannell, too much text to quote here effectively). Significantly, this affinity seems to center on the shared ocular emphasis of both cinema (especially early cinema) and tourism (sight-seeing). While in our first class we discussed several tourist productions that eschew the visual, after reading MacCannell, such events would appear to be the minority, and visual experience the dominant mode of tourist production. I am curious what might be found in a deeper examination of the parallel rise of modern tourism and the cinema.
While reading MacCannell, I also found myself reminded again and again of a passage from Don Delillo's novel White Noise in which the protagonist visits the "Most Photographed Barn in America." The specific passage can be found here. The passage details an extreme case of 'marker involvement,'(MacCannell) and also feels like it quotes MacCannell directly, as when MacCannell updates Benjamin, noting, "The work becomes 'authentic' only after the first copy of it is produced. The reproductions are the aura..." (MacCannell, 48) The Barn does not appear to be a work of fiction, however, and images of it can be found here, on flickr. This particular type of kitsch tourism, tourism that revels in its own absurdity, is of particular interest to me. While the photographer I have linked seems sincere in his admiration for the barn, I cannot help but imagine he does retain a certain tongue-in-cheek distance while photographing the barn. When taking a road trip, I always keep my copy of Roadside America, with me. The book is a travel guide to the trappiest of tourist traps across the US, and reading MacCannell, I find myself asking whether such sights are a primarily USian phenomenon. While certainly the Paris Morgue or Sewers are non-traditional tourist attractions, they are not quite so vulgar as the World's Largest Stump in Kokomo, Indiana (quite a sight at 57' in diameter) or the World's Largest 'Catsup' Bottle in Collinsville, Illinois (less impressive, it needs a new paint job). How do such ironic or self-reflexive forms of tourism fit into MacCannell's model?