Tourism

Between Place and Performance

Simon Coleman, Mike Crang, Simon Coleman, Mike Crang

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780857457134
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Many accounts of tourism have adopted an almost paradigmatic visual model of the gaze. This collection presents an expanded notion of spectatorship with a more dynamic sense of embodied and performed engagement with places. The approach resonates with ideas in anthropology, sociology, and geography on performance, invented traditions, constructed places and traveling cultures. Contributions highlight the often contradictory, contested and paradoxical constructions of landscape and community involved both in tourist attractions and among tourists themselves. The collection examines many different practices, ranging from the energetic pursuit of adventure holidays to the reading of holiday brochures. It illustrates different techniques of seeing the landscape and a variety of ways of creating and performing the local. Chapters thus demonstrate the mutual entanglement of practices, images, conventions, and creativity. They chart these global flows of people, texts, images, and artefacts. Case studies are drawn from diverse types of tourism and destination focused around North America, Europe, and Australasia.

BACK TO THE CITY

Acting Local

Two Performances In Northern Italy

Paola Filippucci

Introduction

So we said ‘Come on, let's do Carnevale as they used to do it once’ – and we went out in the square and jumped, laughed, and entertained all those who watched us. (Luisa, born 1950, about going to Carnevale with friends in 1988)

Old ladies, grandmothers come to us and say ‘I remember this, it was called such- and-such; I remember that, it was done in such- and-such a way’. (Gina, b. 1948, a member of the Arti per Via folklore group, speaking of her audiences)

Gina and Luisa live in Bassano, a small town in North-East Italy.¹ Both, in recent years, have periodically gone ‘out in the square’ wearing unusual clothes, acting in unusual ways in front of audiences. Gina has done so as a member of a folklore group called ‘Arti per Via’ (ApV) (‘Trades on the Road’), performing traditional street-trades for audiences in Bassano and elsewhere. Gina has also, like Luisa, taken part in Carnevale (Carnival), a yearly festival when people go out wearing unusual costumes and masks and, ideally, behave outrageously.

In Bassano, both the ApV and Carnevale are presented as reenactments of past practices and as moments in which something essentially ‘local’ is displayed. I will focus on these performances in trying to understand what ‘local’ means in the early twenty-first century, in an industrialised, affluent, well-connected place within one of Italy's, and indeed Europe's, most prosperous regions. I will suggest that in these performances, people celebrate space and time as bodily, sensuous experiences. They imagine and enact an intersubjective field that they identify with locality, in turn cast as an absolute, self-contained and authentic, immediately experienced reality. This way of characterising the ‘local’ ostensibly isolates it from the ‘global’ context in which local lives now unfold. However, I will link this way of producing locality with the area's involvement in ‘global’ relations (Wilk 1995: 118; cf. Ekholm-Friedman and Friedman 1995).

Bassano

Bassano is a town of some 40,000 inhabitants at the Northern edge of the Po plain, in the Veneto region of North-East Italy. Since its tenth century origin, Bassano has been an urban centre, seat of local government bodies, of religious authorities, of a landed aristocracy, and of wealthy traders, entrepreneurs and artisans engaged, from the sixteenth century, in protoindustrial production (see StdB 1980; Berti 1993 for this section). Economic decline in the nineteenth century was followed by the appearance of modern industry in the early twentieth century. Neither industry nor farming could support the population, so emigration was great throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Berengo 1963; Berti 1993; Franzina 1984). The flow was reversed from the late 1950s, when Bassano and its hinterland began to expand with the proliferation of light industry (ceramics, shoes, mechanical parts), in small-scale, kin-based productive units. The area is now one of the most prosperous in Europe, and Bassano is the service centre of a populated, busy hinterland (see e.g. Bagnasco and Trigilia 1984).

Conservation and revival

The physical form of Bassano reflects its history. Until the 1950s, the town was largely contained within the circle of its fifteenth-century walls, beyond which was largely open countryside. It was during the postwar economic boom that ‘houses and factories covered the countryside’, as one local put it. A haphazard spread of low-rise housing, factories, warehouses, large-scale service infrastructure, fields and busy roads surrounds the oldest urban nucleus that is now the centre of town, a dense fabric of pre-twentieth century buildings. Its narrow streets open onto three interconnected squares, graced by churches and palaces, the Civic Museum and the Town Hall, cafés and elegant shops. The squares (collectively known as la piazza) are considered to be the ‘heart’ of Bassano, where people come to see and be seen, to stroll and window-shop, to gossip and hang out. The piazza is also the location of the weekly market and the stage of civic ceremonies, and of open-air shows and festivals such as those I consider below.

While the piazza has never ceased to be the the town's spatial, social and functional core, during the years of economic expansion the centre became depopulated and run down as people moved out to modern housing in the outskirts (see Petoello and Rigon 1980). The ‘valorisation’ (valorizzazione) of the centre began in the 1980s, when private capital was invested in restoring historic buildings and converting them into luxury housing. This development was in line with a contemporary national, and indeed Europe-wide, trend of identifying ‘historic’ artefacts as marketable signs of social distinction (see e.g. Bourdieu 1984). This was followed by a programme of conservation of historic public buildings and urban features sponsored by the local administration. In the 1990s, this has come to include the partial banning of cars, and total pedestrianisation is under discussion (see Filippucci 1997). The stated aim of such ‘valorisation’ is to attract visitors by a blend of history, culture and high-quality shopping. The tourist promotion of Bassano's ‘historic centre’ includes the staging of open-air events, some of which (like fashion displays and concerts) bring to Bassano extra-local images, figures and personalities, and are aimed at lending the town a cosmopolitan aura. Other events, by contrast, stage images and activities described as ‘local’, celebrating what is purportedly unique and ‘traditional’ about Bassano. The most elaborate of these are a yearly festival, Carnevale, and a folklore performance, the Arti per Via. Both are associated with, and celebrate, ‘the streets and squares’ of ‘old Bassano’. These are the focus of this paper.

Carnevale is the local version of an old yearly festival widespread in Catholic countries of Southern Europe that includes masquerading, dancing, excess in food and drink, sexual and social license (see Counihan 1985; Galt 1973; Poppi 1983; Caro Baroja 1979; Gilmore 1975, 1987). The festival climaxes in the week before Ash Wednesday, when costumes and face masks are worn to disguise one's identity and mock accepted social roles (e.g. by reversal), to mix sacred and profane and to indulge in transgressive behaviour (see e.g. Bakhtin 1968; Burke 1978; Ginzburg 1972). In Bassano, Carnevale is said to have been introduced in the seventeenth century by nobility from Venice, seat of a world-famous version of the festival (see Burke 1987; Muir 1980). Local sources² from the nineteenth century document indoor dancing for the wealthy and outdoor dancing for the lower classes (see Filippucci 1992). The current form, with parades of floats, masque groups and ‘folklore’ displays, emerged in the interwar period, in the context of a nationwide campaign of ‘return to traditions’ by the Fascist regime.³ Carnevale continued in this form until 1950, when it declined into a low-key affair, mostly involving children. In 1979, in the wake of the recent revival of Carnevale in Venice,⁴ Bassano's tourist bureau reintroduced a floats’ parade, outdoor dancing and competitions for the best costumes in the two weeks preceding Ash Wednesday. This has been the pattern since.

At one Carnevale in the early 1980s, some some fifteen members of a local amateur drama group specialising in dialect plays formed a masque of ‘old street trades’. The masque won the first prize and, when a ‘Festival of Folklore’ was held in Bassano,⁵ it was reformed as a permanent folklore group to represent the town and ‘carry its name’ to other places. The group was named Arti per Via and performed ‘traditional’ craft activities and trades. By 1994, the group had performed locally, all over Italy and in Europe and Latin America. It counted some sixty members, men, women and children impersonating thirty-two kinds of ‘artisans and peddlers of the beginning of the century’ (ApV promotional leaflet, 1994).

Both Carnevale and the ApV claim to represent and to bring back to life something authentically local. The ApV is presented as a serious, near-scholarly enterprise: the ‘perfect reconstruction of an epoch’, ‘a museum that comes alive’ (promotional leaflet, 1994). Present-day Carnevale is cast as the continuation of an ‘old tradition of the town’, partly by characterising the contemporary version as a pale reflection of the past, when Bassano's was ‘the second most famous Carnevale in Italy'⁶ as older Bassanesi, some of whom are organisers of the contemporary festival, are fond of saying. In both cases, ‘revival’ means rein-scribing with ‘old’ gestures, motions and sounds the space of the ‘historic centre’ town. The ApV reenact ‘street trades’ so that ‘the road becomes a museum and the museum becomes a performance’ (promotional leaflet, 1994); while the organizers and participants of Carnevale aim at recreating the ‘real’ Carnevale that used to take place in ‘the streets and squares’ of town, thronged by ‘the people’ who could not afford to attend the sumptuous indoor balls of the rich (cf. Filippucci 1992). By thus referring to the physical space of the town, both performances command a space that is quite literally ‘local’ (cf. Tuan 1990: 238).

Carnevale

In the late 1980s,⁷ Carnevale took place in the town centre. The most popular event was the floats’ parade, followed by evening entertainment during ‘Fat Week’. Among those who attended, mainly only children wore costumes (maschere), except on the day of the parade, when adult masque groups appeared. Maschere led the outdoor dancing, although ‘plain clothes’ bystanders might join in. While not wild, the atmosphere at outdoor venues was informal, the social and bodily boundaries of normal life somewhat relaxed: the maschere in particular would tease friends, acquaintances and strangers, throwing confetti, streamers, shaving foam, flour, and stink bombs. Everyone was noisier than usual, the town centre resonating with laughter, shouting and chanting late into the night.

The maschere

The maschere are the protagonists of Carnevale, a time for ‘putting on a different face and doing what you want for one day’ (Simona, b. 1966). In present-day Bassano, anything goes: people dress as animals, outsize vegetables, exotic, religious and political figures, TV and film stars, mythical creatures and so on.⁸ The effect of some costumes rests on comic reversal (cf. Bakhtin 1968): men dressed as women,⁹ children dressed as old people, adults as children of the same or the opposite sex. The wearer's real identity is sometimes concealed under a face mask, but eccentric make-up is more common. This may be because being recognised and praised for one's ingenuity and creativity in making the costume is a key part of the pleasure of going in maschera. Most are handmade and utilise cheap, everyday materials to simulate precious or striking textures. Mundane objects may be used to comic or grotesque effect (as when silver-coloured plastic funnels are used to make the breasts of a female robot). People also play with colour, juxtaposing bright hues in dramatic contrast; and with size, dressing as a giant pencil or donning an outsize papier-maché’ head (see Babcock 1978; Stewart 1984; cf. Turner 1967). Many invest much care and effort in their costume, especially, but not only, to enter competitions for the maschera, masques and floats to show the greatest ‘imagination, aesthetic value, liveliness, humour, ingenuity’ (from the 1989 Carnevale regulations). By encouraging competitive display, the organisers seek to develop Carnevale as a spectacle and a tourist attraction (cf. Poppi 1983).¹⁰ However, both organisers and participants also emphasise that Carnevale is not primarily about visual display.

Acting local

In the 1980s, Carnevale organisers began to promote floats that carry masque groups, which they contrast with inanimate papier-maché ones typical of other Italian Carnevali, ‘that don't make you laugh nor cry’ as Pino, president of Carnevale committee, put it. The masque groups are meant to ‘enliven’ the atmosphere in piazza, fostering ‘the true spirit of Carnevale, that of drawing in the crowd, not of parading, of showing off’ (a float leader). This is also the perceived function of music: ‘you can't sustain a parade without music, it's useless to do a tour of the square without music – you must mess around some’ (Pino). ‘Messing around in the square’ (‘fare casin in piazza’) is also how the maschere describe what they do at Carnevale. Members of a masque group I joined used this phrase to characterise their performance during the floats’ parade as an entirely spontaneous moment. The same spirit pervaded their rehearsals for a ‘Gypsy’ masque at the 1989 Carnevale, when a dance instructors’ attempts to teach them ‘Gypsy’ dancing were met by ‘once we're there, with music and all, we'll manage something’. The session was spent instead exchanging loud banter, singing, teasing one another and running around. A friend who had introduced me to the group later asked ‘did you enjoy messing around with us?’ This kind of ‘messing around’ is what group members enjoy together, what they recollect after Carnevale outings and what makes time with the group ‘fun’, explicitly identified as their main aim: ‘we do it for fun, not to show off to other people’ (Gina, b. 1948, group member, commenting on the group's string of prizes).

The same idea is found in smaller, informal groups of friends who go out in maschera at Carnevale: ‘the best costumes are simple ones, cheap and cheerful – rather than spending a bomb for a costume and then they all admire you, but that's not the fun of it’ (Simona). For Simona and her friends, who every year prepare elaborate, striking, humorous costumes for Carnevale, ‘the fun of it’ is teasing strangers, dancing, running around, being loud and rude. This affects the nature of maschere. For Luisa (b. 1946), costumes must be ‘jolly, humorous, light’, ‘allowing you to jump, to run and act crazy’. Luisa also drew a contrast with the ‘static, melancholy’ costumes typical of the revived Venetian Carnevale,¹¹ emulated by some Bassanesi. This was a common theme:

Now people go to a shop and spend 200000 Lire [about £100] because it must be the best – no, [costumes should be] home-made, hand-sewn…not perfect – that's what's good about them. The maschera must be something different, it's no use if you go out looking like a mannequin. In Venice, for instance, [you see] beautiful maschere, wonderful to see, but [nothing like] home-made ones…[here] we used to find bits and pieces in the attic and we'd put something together with a bit of inge-nuity (Lino, b. 1928, a newsagent who for nearly thirty years ‘did’ Carnevale dressed as a woman).

The aspects of the ‘Venetian’ costumes criticized locally are their cost and their physical stillness. At Carnevale, the visual is not enough: what is needed is motion and sound:

once you came to Carnevale because you felt like having fun, you felt Carnevale…now they don't feel it…you see those maschere that walk up and down the square, without opening their mouth, without saying anything, statuesque stuff…if I wore a maschera now I would still mess around more than the maschere that there are now. (Giulio, b. 1920)

'Feeling’ or ‘living’ Carnevale requires not only having a visually striking costume, but also acting it out. So Anna (b. 1940), who every year carefully plans and prepares a different costume, maintains that you must invent an appropriate comic routine for it: as ‘Tarzan’, for instance, she would approach men saying ‘I Tarzan, you Jane’ and kiss them. ‘True’ Carnevale is a matter of doing rather than watching:

You have had fun [this year] because you have thrown yourself right in, you have participated – had you stood by watching the floats, you would have got bored…nowadays it's hard even to teach children to participate rather than look on, people are more used to watch than to act, they take Carnevale just as a spectacle. (Eleonora, b. 1927, Carnevale organiser)

As this quote suggests, the impulse to take an active part is seen as a thing of the past. Locals disregard the fact that, in the past, the point of Carnevale was not to be recognised,¹² making it a very different kind of event from that of the present day. Instead, the past is invoked as a blueprint for the present:

then the piazza was thronged, everyone in maschera, everyone jolly, you heard laughing, shouting, and dancing…people jumping around you, taking your arm, telling you secrets…when you went to the piazza you had to jump, to dance – it's impossible to explain that atmosphere [it was] a universal euphoria: you didn't see a maschera who stood still, who was serious…so those of us who have lived the Carnevale must teach the young by drawing them in. (Luisa)

In Luisa's imagery, Carnevale happens between people, it is an urge that is transmitted by example and cannot easily be resisted. This is echoed by people who go in maschera in the present day: ‘I told her I wasn't the right type, and now every year I tell myself that it's the last time I go in maschera, but then Carnevale comes and I can't resist’ (Rosa, b. 1946). Going in maschera is now often described as a matter of nerve: ‘you are blocked’, you feel ‘shy’, so you must learn ‘not to give a toss about anything’. This is partly attributed to individual temperament, but also to other people's influence:

I grew up seeing my father and brothers going [to Carnevale], so of course I too did a lot of Carnevali…but if at home they don't do it, it's likely that you'll dress up with friends, because they tell you ‘Come on, let's go, try it at least once’, you are drawn in, you go…in Carnevale you are never alone – you can decide to go out alone, but soon enough you join up with others, you form a group – it's a thing of friendship. (Lino)

‘A thing of friendship'

If friendship is central to local representations of the ‘old’ Carnevale, in the present too, masque groups define themselves as ‘groups of friends’, even though in order to join larger ones (of up to some ninety people) it is sufficient (but also necessary) to know just one or two members. The group I joined also included kin, especially nuclear families. However, in the group, family ties were played down:¹³ children formed a gang, unsupervised by their parents, and couples mingled separately and even flirted with other group members: one woman complained of her husband that ‘even here he'd like to rule me’. Conversely, while a stranger to most members, I was treated more familiarly and casually than in normal social contexts. In the masque groups, ‘friendship’ means diffuse sociability, mutual ease and playful openness (cf. Simmel 1950).

Friendship is locally considered an optional kind of social relationship, a matter of personal whim and inclination rather than obligation (associated with kinship) (cf. Eisenstadt and Roniger 1984: 18; Papataxiarchis 1991). There is a clear affinity between the whimsical spirit of friendship and that of Carnevale: ‘impr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Grounded Tourists, Travelling Theory
• The Place of Nature
• Back to the City
• Distanciated Places
• Bringing it all Back Home
• References
• Index