Synopses & Reviews
From Shamu the dancing whale at Sea World to Hawaiian lu'au shows,
Staging Tourism analyzes issues of performance in a wide range of tourist venues. Jane C. Desmond argues that the public display of bodiesand#8212;how they look, what they do, where they do it, who watches, and under what conditionsand#8212;is 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.
Synopsis
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Touring the EssentialPART I: Staging "The Cultural"INTRODUCTION: Cultural Bodies: Hawaiian Tourism and PerformanceONE: Let's Lu'auTWO: Picturing Hawai'i: The "Ideal" Native and the Origins of Tourism, 1880-1915THREE: Pictures Come to Life: Rendering "Hawai'i" in Early Mainland PerformancesFOUR: Advertising, Racializing, and Performing Hawai'i on Site: The Emergence of Cultural Tourism in the 1920sFIVE: Tourism and the Commodification of Culture, 1930-1940SIX: Surfers and "Beachboys": Euro-American Representations of Native Hawaiian Men and Interracial RomanceCONCLUSION: Up to the Present: Profiling VisitorsPART II: Staging "The Natural"INTRODUCTION: Looking at Animals: The Consumption of Radical Bodily DifferenceSEVEN: The Industries of Species TourismEIGHT: In/Out-of/In-Fake-Situ: Three Case StudiesNINE: Performing Nature: Shamu at Sea WorldCONCLUSION: Bodies and TourismNotesReferences CitedIndex
About the Author
Jane Desmond is a Professor in Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies atand#160; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Co-founder and current Director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Touring the Essential
PART I: Staging "The Cultural"