Fan Sites

Film Tourism and Contemporary Fandom

Abby S. Waysdorf

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781609387938
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Theme parks break attendance numbers with the promise of "stepping inside" a film's world. Pop-up "experiences" are a regular part of promotional cycles. All this is accepted in the contemporary media environment—but why? What is the appeal of film tourism, and what can its rise tell us about contemporary fandom? Fan Sites explores why and how we experience film and television-related places, and what the growth of this practice means for contemporary fandom. Through four case studies— Game of Thrones tourism in Dubrovnik, Croatia and Northern Ireland, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks in Orlando, Florida, fandom of The Prisoner in Portmeirion, Wales, and Friends events in the United Kingdom and United States—this book presents a multifaceted look at the ways place and fandom interact today. Fan Sites explores the different relationships that fans build with these places of fandom, from the exploratory knowledge-building of Game of Thrones fans on vacation, the appreciative evaluations of Harry Potter fans at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, to the frequent "homecoming" visits of Prisoner fans, who see Portmeirion as a "safe vault" and the home of their fandom. Including engaging accounts of real fans at each location, Fan Sites addresses what the rise of fan tourism and places of fandom might mean for the future of fandom and its relationship with the media industry.

CHAPTER ONE

The (Meaningful) Experience of Film Tourism

The actual act of visiting places because of their connection to a film or television show touches upon many intriguing debates. For tourism researchers, film tourism points to new directions in destination marketing research—what draws tourists to particular locations—as well as both challenging and enforcing long-held theories about how and why tourism, especially the practice of sightseeing, functions in contemporary society. For media researchers, it presents a glimpse into the way in which the borders between imagination, fantasy, and reality shift in the contemporary media environment, and showcases ways in which the media industry utilizes physical space in its power negotiations with the audience. Its interdisciplinary nature makes film tourism such an intriguing subject of study, but also a somewhat difficult one. The fields of tourism and media research do not always converge, and do not frequently consider the other when investigating the phenomenon of film tourism.

As a media researcher with a particular interest in the study of fans and fandom, I have personally approached the topic from that perspective. Those who make a point to visit places associated with a film or television show are, in some way, a fan of the text—they make an effort, whether it be large or small, to make a connection to it, and therefore tourism clearly falls into the category of fan practices. This interest in tourism, seen as a counterpoint to the digitized nature of contemporary fandom, is increasingly visible within academic circles as well as within fan circles themselves. However, understanding tourism itself is also integral to understanding film tourism and what kind of experience it is. Tourism research provides particular insight into the ways in which visiting places, particularly famous locations and sites, has become part of our standard repertoire of practices.

In this chapter, I explore film tourism theoretically, looking at how it can be conceptualized and framed, and consider different ways that this has been done in the past. I begin with an exploration of film tourism as a form of tourist practice, as this is how film tourism first rose to academic prominence, showing its connections to other tourist practices and particularly highlighting the importance of “co-presence”¹ and “embodiment”² to the experience of tourist locations. I also discuss the way in which film tourism both works with and complicates traditional concerns of tourism research, such as authenticity and the nature of sightseeing.

Following this, I explore film tourism as a media, and particularly a fan, practice, following on the work of Hills,³ Sandvoss,⁴ and Reijnders⁵ on how film tourism links the fantasy world of the text to the physical world, and show how concepts from tourism studies can deepen this understanding. Of particular importance here is the role that the idea of “reality” continues to play in contemporary life, and the way this idea is constructed, valued, and ultimately made sense of by media audiences. This aligns fan studies with the so-called spatial turn in media and communication studies⁶ in showing how issues of space and spatiality matter in a mediated, heavily digital environment. I will also consider the implications of the growth of the practice of film tourism for fandom, particularly in light of the emerging questions of power relations between the media industry and fans as the potential economic value of such visits—well documented by tourism researchers—becomes clear to the media industry. In this way, this chapter develops a theoretical understanding of film tourism as a practice and points to issues that will be explored in more depth in the case studies that make up the rest of the book.

Film Tourism as Tourism

As Connell states in her excellent overview of film tourism research, “as a research community, we are now aware that film tourism occurs, that it is part of a range of motivators in the tourism destination decision-making process, that it creates a range of impacts, and has been adopted by savvy tourism marketers and businesses seeking uniqueness and novelty.”⁷ Essentially, this means that film tourism is an accepted and well-recognized form of tourism, one that is increasingly prominent in tourism marketing as destinations attempt to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market. There is clear acknowledgment within the field of tourism research, both sociological and management-driven, that film tourism is a practice worth considering. What is less clear is how, or even why, it is experienced by tourists. Connell herself calls the tourist experience “an emerging field of study”⁸ within the broader research field.

This is not to say that there is no consideration of the tourist experience in existing literature. As Karpovich⁹ discusses, the tourist experience has been approached differently by tourism researchers and media researchers. Tourism researchers are largely concerned with understanding film tourism as a tourist experience, either tying it directly to industry concerns of tourists’ motivations, expectations, satisfaction levels, and specific activities at locations or linking it more theoretically to concerns of how place is represented and understood through these trips and what this means in terms of the “authentic experience” that tourists are thought to seek out. Media researchers, similarly, approach film tourism in order to consider its relation to media practices, investigating issues of media influence and power at these places and the interaction between reality and mediated fiction that these visits represent.

These studies show that film tourism is a multifaceted phenomenon, one that touches upon many aspects of contemporary culture and can be explored in a range of different ways. What’s common among them, though, is that, for tourists, being at these locations is “a point of access to something ‘special’”:¹⁰ a meaningful experience. By this, I mean that it is an experience that the tourist finds valuable and significant (emotionally, intellectually, or so forth), one that is worth the effort to have or even repeat. “Being there” at a filming location, while still a niche activity compared with visiting established tourist sites or even engaging in “film-induced tourism”¹¹ more broadly, is clearly something worthwhile for many. But what makes this so?

Part of the explanation can be found in the concept of tourism itself. Generally, tourism and travel are seen as an important part of contemporary life, a “secular ritual”¹² that is necessary to undertake for health, relaxation, and even education.¹³ It is most frequently built around the practice of sightseeing, looking at notable things and places. When we go somewhere, we make a point of seeing its landmarks, taking in its cultural works, and “look[ing] at the environment with interest and curiosity.”¹⁴ For many, sightseeing is what tourism is all about, in both a positive and negative sense—it is “tourism’s default [ . . . ] the only thing tourists are supposed to be good at.”¹⁵ Sightseeing is a basic building block of leisure travel as a cultural practice, a subject of parody and scorn¹⁶ but also of acceptance and desire. To be a tourist is to want to see things outside of one’s home.

Adler¹⁷ traces the evolution of this visual focus of travel among Europe’s elite, showing how the value given to traveling moved away from learning from and conversing with experts abroad as the fashion for “scientific” visual observation took hold. This was part of a general focus on the visual in Western society. The first “sightseers” thought of themselves as scientists, objectively observing and recording the landscapes and lives of others for an audience back home. As this market became saturated and the societal ideal of the neutral scientist was challenged by that of the Romantic aesthete, sightseeing became an emotional experience, “simultaneously a more effusively passionate activity and a more private one,”¹⁸ that focused on the pleasure and enlightenment of the tourist as they gazed upon the extraordinary, alongside an increasing sense that it was “important” to see certain places and objects. The Romantic ideal also stressed the importance of “getting away” from everyday surroundings, particularly urban environments. Building on this, Urry and Larsen show how a combination of technological and social developments—railroads, workers’ rights movements, educational norms, and so forth—moved sightseeing from exclusive to mass practice, making it “one of the characteristics of the ‘modern’ experience.”¹⁹ If it was valuable for the elites to sightsee, in both a moral and pleasurable sense, it was also so for the masses, who, after all, needed to be “educated.” As it became possible for “everyone” to travel, it became assumed that everyone should—and that an important part of doing so was seeing the sights of elsewhere. In contemporary times, the practice of sightseeing is so unremarkable as to seem natural.

This, of course, does not mean that it is. As Urry discusses in his landmark concept of “the tourist gaze,” looking—gazing—at places and people is a constructed practice, “conditioned by personal experiences and memories and framed by rules and styles, as well as by circulating images and texts of this and other places.”²⁰ It is not a “natural” reaction to a site, but rather one that we learn how to do, that can be done differently in different circumstances. The “privileging of the eye”²¹ in Western society meant that tourism became organized by the sense of sight—of looking—and what is worth looking at is determined by specific cultural values of the extraordinary, something “distinguish[ing] it from what is conventionally encountered in everyday life.”²² Ideas of beauty, strangeness, otherness, uniqueness, and so forth are enacted in the determining of what should be seen when we travel. MacCannell refers to this process as “sight sacralisation,”²³ the marking-off of certain attractions as important to view through labeling and promotion. This process traditionally appealed to the universal—the established great works of art and architecture, the spectacular natural views, the site of major historic events. In visiting them, we commemorate their importance, once again confirming that these are important places that need to be seen. As tourism has proliferated, however, more niche sites—such as filming locations—have also become worthy of the gaze.

The importance of promotion indicates the importance of the media to sightseeing. MacCannell called the “mechanical reproduction” of a site via postcards or newspaper articles “the most responsible for setting the tourist in motion on his journey,”²⁴ while Urry and Larsen state that the “anticipation of pleasures” that makes travel appealing “is constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist technologies, such as film, TV, literature, magazines, CDs, DVDs and videos, constructing and reinforcing the gaze.”²⁵ Images of places, important landmarks, and travel are omnipresent in contemporary media culture, promoting both specific locations and the idea of travel and tourism itself. This is not a new phenomenon, as media have played important roles throughout the different historical stages of tourism, showcasing previously unknown destinations and creating appealing impressions of the experience of visiting.

These images then circulate widely, in advertisements, newspapers, magazines, television, film, and so forth, creating a shared cultural imaginary around what is worth seeing when one travels, and the value, both personal and social, of doing so. The role of media images in creating sights has led to some talk of a “hermeneutic circle”²⁶ or “circle of representation”²⁷ of tourism where “what is sought for in a holiday is a set of photographic images, which have already been seen in tour company brochures or on TV programmes,”²⁸ as viewing and photographing these sites for oneself “proves” that one has been to the location. Photography and film are considered important elements in creating and sustaining the tourist gaze by determining what is worth viewing and stimulating the desire to see it, and then to bring back proof that one has done so in the form of more media.

In recent years, tourist imagery is considered to have greatly proliferated, in line with the general proliferation of media in contemporary life. There has been an increase in travel programming on television and coverage in magazines and newspapers, alongside the “on-demand” media access of home video, the internet, and especially social media. As this type of programming first entered the culture, some predicted that it would lead to a decrease in the desire for corporeal travel as “seeing the sights” could now “be experienced in one’s living room, at the flick of a switch; and it can be repeated time and time again.”²⁹ Instead, “on-demand” tourist imagery ended up functioning in much the same way as older forms, increasing the demand for corporeal travel. As Jansson³⁰ and Månsson³¹ show, the major change has instead been in who determines what the important sites are and how to view them, as tourists themselves join media professionals in showcasing their visits to the public. This has become a lucrative new mode of travel media.³² Social media sites like Instagram encourage engagement and self-promotion through showcasing beauty and/or an enviable lifestyle, both of which travel pictures fulfill. Showing that you went somewhere special is a cornerstone of social media practice; there is now an entire new media ecosystem based around the visual promotion of travel by “influencers” and those who want to be them. Instead of a decrease in travel because of media, we instead see phenomena like film tourism—where the desire is to go to a place that has been vividly, and often frequently, seen.

If “seeing the sights” is so important, why is seeing them through photographs and films not enough? To answer this, we begin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why Are We Here?
• Chapter One. The (Meaningful) Experience of Film Tourism
• Chapter Two. Game of Thrones: The Role of Imagination in the Film Tourist Experience
• Chapter Three. The Prisoner: Fan Homecoming and Placemaking in Fandom
• Chapter Four. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Immersion, Authenticity, and the Theme Park as Social Space
• Chapter Five. Friends and Corporate Places of Fandom
• Conclusion: Film Tourism and the Future
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List