Last weekend I posted about Anzac Day, sacred moments, and the revival of nationalism and Anzac Day imagery and 'young Australia': national identity and the need for heroes. The extensive media coverage here in Australia showing young flag-wearing and flag-waving Australians on Anzac Day was what had motivated my series of posts reflecting on the growth in grief tourism and dark tourism. I felt that for these young Aussie 'dark tourists', travelling to Gallipoli or other battle sites or war memorials for Anzac Day was partly motivated by a desire to commemorate wars their ancestors fought in, but was also for the entertainment value and the desire to participate in something that's now considered to be a cool thing to do. For me, it's almost as if Gallipoli is the new Bali - a rite of passage for young Aussie travellers. But I also think their presence is to do with a need to reinforce their identity and their national identity in particular, and a desire to strengthen their sense of belonging to an idealised notion of their nation. And it's this that I'm uncomfortable with, partly because I think it takes away from the true purpose of the day (rememberance), but mostly because it excludes all others who don't identify.Much of the media coverage and analysis related to dark tourism dwells on the dilemma of the dark tourist. On the one hand, their visit to a site, whether it's a war memorial or concentration camp or battlefield, and their participation in a 'dark tour' is motivated by a desire for self-education and self-awareness, for developing empathy and for personal enrichment. Alexander Schwabe writes about a visit to Auschwitz (pictured) from this perspective in his comprehensive account in Der Speigel, Visiting Auschwitz, the Factory of Death (Jan, 2005). On the other hand, rightly or wrongly, the same kind of participation can be perceived as morbid curiosity or overt voyeurism. Simon Reeve touches on this in When it's right to roam (The Observer, Oct 2005) as he considers his impact and value of a trip to Uzbekistan, while James Marrison reflects upon similar issues in Wise to the streets, when he joins tours to see transvestites and shanty towns in Buenos Aires. In Humour and Hospitality go with the Territories (Oct 2005) Andrew Mueller believes the positives outweigh the negatives, convinced that the rewards for tourists and locals alike are immense. Likewise, the motives of a "genocide tourist" addict in Steve Silva's Genocide Tourism: Tragedy Becomes a Destination (Chicago Tribune, Aug 2007) make for a compelling case for this form of tourism.
But rarely do writers touch upon issues of identity that might be at play, and yet those have very much been a part of my experience of dark tourism. I did the tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau that Scwabe describes and our experience was similar. For me, it was transformational. I developed an understanding and an empathy that I never truly had before. We went in winter and it was snowing and I'll never forget the bitter cold I experienced although cocooned in my layers of thermals, stockings, sweaters, scarf, boots, and coat. How on earth did these people survive the cold, let alone everything else, I constantly wondered? However, what had been a sobering and poignant experience was almost marred by the behaviour of a large group of Israeli students who came (like the Aussies at Gallipoli) wearing and waving enormous Israeli flags. They appeared to pay little attention to their guide, they spent little time at exhibits, they rushed through as if visiting a dull natural history museum, and they seemed to be more consumed with each other than their surroundings. Instead, they giggled and joked and waved their flags with an attitude that I perceived as arrogance, as if celebrating their team's victory at a football match. What was going on there do you think? My sense is that they shared someone with those young Australian travellers at Gallipoli on Anzac Day...
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Motives for dark tourism: enrichment, education and empathy? Or just plain voyeurism and morbid curiosity?
Posted by BEST TRAVEL GUIDE on Sunday, May 3, 2009
The best depository of dark tourism resources must be the the University of Central Lancashire's Dark Tourism Forum which has a long list of links to books, scholarly essays and media articles on the subject. Their definition of dark tourism also takes in a prison tourism and the specialised area of Holocaust tourism and genocide tourism. The body of articles on the site testifies both to an increase in interest in researching and writing about dark tourism in recent years as well as to an actual increase in the popularity of dark tourism. For instance, take a look at Post 9/11 Dark tourism booms, which states that 2.2 million people visited Ground Zero in 2002, and Visiting sites of tragedy to touch history, ease grief (CNN.com, 2008) which claims that 5.6 million visited the Ground Zero site in 2006. The Guardian and The Observer are another great source of articles; they've given dark tourism extensive coverage in recent years, with a number of first-hand accounts of dark touristic experience from Sarah Johnstone's Strange and unsettling: my day trip to Chernobyl (Oct, 2005) to James Hopkirk's visits with prisoners in Checking in to the Bangkok Hilton (also Oct, 2005).naruto wallpaper 1:06 AM New Google SEO Bandung, Indonesia
Dark tourism resources, references and first-hand accounts
Posted by BEST TRAVEL GUIDE on Saturday, May 2, 2009
The term 'dark tourism' is generally thought to have first been coined by UK academics John Lennon and Malcolm Foley in the mid-1990s. They were the first to publish a book on the subject, 'Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster' in 2000, which explores the rise of this phenomenon in the late 20th century. Lennon claimed in 'Tourists who yield to the lure of the macabre' (The Independent, 2001) that it was actually a Schindler's List tour that inspired their research. For those averse to organized tours, sites such as eHow provide step-by-step do-it-yourself 'dark tour' guides, such as How to Take a JFK Assassination Tour, while wikiHow gives advice on How to Plan a Dark Tour or Halloween Vacation, with links to Find a Grave (so you can locate famous burial sites) and the Dark Destinations database, where you can get more ideas - or add your own.naruto wallpaper 12:21 AM New Google SEO Bandung, Indonesia
Dark tourism is not new, as my readers (whose insightful comments always inspire further reflection) point out: Travel Muse recalls touring German war sites as a teenager, while Sandy suggests that The Crusades, which revolved around a fascination with the macabre, might also have been an early version of dark tourism. Indeed, the thesis of 'Guided by the dark: from thanatopsis to thanatourism', published in 1996 by A V Seaton, is that death is the one heritage that everyone shares and therefore has been an element of tourism longer than any other form of heritage. (Thanatourism is generally described as the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death.) The nobility watched the 1815 Battle of Waterloo from a safe distance, while one of the American Civil War sites (Manassas) was immediately marketed as a tourist attraction after the war ended, according to UK scholar John Lennon in Journeys into Understanding in The Observer (2005). Indeed, the Auschwitz-Birkenaz concentration camp museum and memorial (pictured) was established in 1947, less than two years after the Red Army troops arrived in 1945 and found 7,000 emaciated prisoners there; it now receives nearly a million visitors a year. Debbie Lisle in 'Defending Voyeurism: Dark Tourism and the Problem of Global Security' (in Peter M Burns and Marina Novelli's Tourism and politics: global frameworks and local realities, 2007) argues that historical spectacles such as Roman gladiator matches and public hangings were also forms of dark tourism, and that the phenomenon also takes in sites of celebrity deaths, such as the site of JFK's assassination in Dallas and the site of Diana's death in Paris, as well as tours to modern conflict zones, from Bosnia to Mogadishu. It was just recently that tourists visited Iraq for the first time since 2003, starting with an independent traveller (see Fallujah's Strange Visitor: a Western Tourist in the New York Times) in February 2009, followed by a group of package tourists (see I took a picture to show my dentist in The Guardian, 21 March 2009). It's interesting to note that the group didn't consider themselves to be 'war tourists', claiming they were there for the history and culture, despite visiting places that are still very dangerous, such as Mosul, while the Italian independent traveller simply seemed naive. Neither the Iraqis nor Italian officials nor American marines interviewed for the story thought Iraq was ready for tourists yet.
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The history of dark tourism: from Roman gladiator spectacles to contemporary conflict zone tours
Posted by BEST TRAVEL GUIDE on Friday, May 1, 2009
Is it real, imagined or constructed? Recent years have seen a rise in grief tourism, dark tourism and disaster tourism, according to media reports. But I wonder if this has any actual foundation, whether the increase is real or whether it's a case of more media reporting, arising from more academic analysis on the phenomena? It would be interesting to see a comparative study on how tourist numbers at specific sites have changed in recent years. The media, as much as the travel industry, values novelty - indeed, the industry is in the business of manufacturing and commodifying novelty, of creating new tourist products that inspire people to travel to their destination - so is it simply a case of old practices being renamed so that they appear new?Regardless of whether there has been an actual increase in these touristic practices, or simply an increase in coverage of them, I find the phenomena intriguing. Essentially, grief tourism is travel to a place to remember, commemorate and mourn a significant loss of life, such as visits to cemeteries, war memorials and sites of murders. It's a sub-category of dark tourism, which involves travel to places associated with death, tragedy and atrocities, such as battlefields like Gallipoli (which I've been posting about recently), mass graves such as the Killing Fields, and concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau. But that visit doesn't necessarily involve mourning or grief, but may be more about education - developing an awareness and understanding of the tragedy, and attempting to better empathize with the suffering - and also entertainment. And then there's disaster tourism, which involves visits to sites of mass destruction such as New York's 'Ground Zero', Hiroshima and Chernobyl, and places where natural catastrophes occurred, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the 2004 tsunami in South-East Asia, and Cyclone Tracey in Darwin. The terms have long been in use - the Germans' use 'Gruseltourismus' or shudder tourism, which I like. So while the discussion of these phenomena might have travelled from academia to the media and to the blogosophere (see the Dark Tourism series on Vagabondish for instance), has there actually been a rise in the practices themselves in recent years? What do you think? And if so, what does this say about tourism and about ourselves as travellers?
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"I reckon grief tourism is a void filled by a lack of religion or interest in religion. It's the thing that you do when you can't be bothered going to a church on your travels. I think it's still all about entertainment. I don't think it's about actual grief," wrote a reader, Sandy, in response to my posts about Australia's Anzac Day last weekend, here and here. I've been reflecting upon Sandy's comments all week. Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance (as you travel around Australia you'll see the words "Lest we forget" on every war memorial) to honour the 11,000 Australians and New Zealanders who died at Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War 1. Over the years it became a day to commemorate those who fought in other wars serving our country. When I was young it was always a day that was for older people, those who'd fought in the first and/or second world wars and their children (my grandparents/parents), and the grandchildren (my parents/my generation) always seemed to be dragged along reluctantly to parades and dawn services. But for a young generation of Australians, the great-grandchildren of the Anzacs (and younger), participating in Anzac Day, and travelling as far as Gallipoli for 25 April, has become a cool thing to do in recent years. So much so that in 2005, 17,000 people, mostly young Australians, were at Anzac Cove at Gallipoli for the dawn service. What was once a solemn ceremony turned into a day of drunken debauchery with the music videos screened to entertain the crowds creating a party atmosphere fueled by alcohol (officially banned). Following negative media coverage, numbers declined with just 10,000 Aussies present in 2008. However, it was clear that Gallipoli had become a magnet for Aussie backpackers and their behavior had become so bad that in Lonely Planet's recent Turkey guidebook, author Virginia Maxwell urged Aussie travellers to consider their impact as tourists and stay away from Gallipoli on 25 April 2009, and instead visit at other times of the year. (See Gemma Pitcher's story on NineMSN's travel: Lonely Planet: Stay Away from Anzac Service.) Behavior was modified and last weekend's ceremony at Gallipoli was considerably more sober, despite numbers remaining high. But how do we explain the popularity of Gallipoli amongst backpackers who once upon a time would rather have been partying on a beach in Bali, or Goa, or Koh Samui... Has Gallipoli become 'the thing that you do'? Are the tours there a form of 'grief tourism', an opportunity to appreciate what it was really like for those who fought and died at Gallipoli - to feel how cold it could get, to understand how hard it was to climb up those hills - or is it just another key sight for travellers to tick off on a long list that includes everything from the Eiffel Tower to St Peter's Basilica? In the absence of religion, and the lack of knowledge about and disinterest in churches that a young generation must have, are those extravagant European cathedrals now passe? Are war memorials the new churches?Update: if this topic interests you, you might also be interested in this story "'Drunk, drugged-up Kiwis' treat Gallipoli' as party", published 6 April 09, which was motivated by comments from NZ Herald readers, including one New Zealand traveller on their way to Gallipoli last week who was embarrassed to be part of a group who had no idea what Anzac Day was all about and were simply going to get "hammered".
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Grief tourism or simply the thing that you do? Are war memorials the new churches?
Posted by BEST TRAVEL GUIDE on Sunday, April 26, 2009
It's the Anzac Day long weekend here in Australia, and as an Australian who has lived overseas since 1998, I'm finding the experience an odd one. While I appreciate the tragedy that was The Battle of Gallipoli and the pointless loss of lives, particularly those of the ANZACs (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) who were sent to slaughter, I feel completely disconnected from the sentiment that an increasing number of Australians, especially young Aussies, are feeling. According to media reports this weekend, there was a Big turnout for Anzac Day marches (ABC) and Thousands of young Aussies pay homage at Gallipoli (Brisbane Times). In Aussies keep the faith on Anzac Day, Sydney Morning Herald reporter Doug Conway writes: "A navy chaplain called it "a sacred moment" - dawn on April 25, when a nation remembers the 1.8 million Australians who have gone off to war and the 102,000 who never came back. On the 94th such sacred moment, Australians showed that as the ranks of veterans dwindles, so the numbers of those honouring them swells. In cities and towns around Australia, at Gallipoli and on the western front, in NZ, PNG, Britain and the US, tens of thousands were urged to keep faith with the Anzac spirit." While I'm open to experiencing "sacred moments", this one passed me by. I spent the day at my desk writing, feeling little duty or desire to attend an Anzac service or parade. I'm not even sure what it means to "keep faith" with the Anzac spirit, nor what that 'spirit' is, because the 'national character' it was meant to capture has eluded us on our recent travels here. I'm not so sure that it exists anymore - if it ever existed at all. Perhaps it's because I've lived 'away' for so long and travelled so much that I feel (as pretentious as this might sound) more a citizen of the globe than of one particular nation. And I like it that way. I like being 'globalized', feeling 'international' in spirit. I know what that means. But I don't understand nor do I like the spirit of nationalism that seems to have swept Australia, the ugliest 'ism' of all. It's one that in Australia I associate with the Cronulla riots and many Australians' unquestioning support of John Howard, George Bush and the Iraq War. So while I appreciate the need in human beings for "sacred moments" and I understand how Anzac Day tourism has developed, in the way that any form of dark tourism or grief tourism develops - although to be honest I'm not even sure that's what's happening when Aussie backpackers visit Gallipoli - I am deeply uncomfortable with the revival in nationalism among young Australians.
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