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Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World - Book Review

Folklore, Dec, 2003 by Teri Brewer

By Jane C. Desmond. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 336 pp. Illus. 14.00 [pounds sterling] (pbk). ISBN 0-226-14376-7

In Staging Tourism Jane Desmond takes a close look at "educational" interactive tourist activities, such as animal shows or wildlife viewing trips. She explores the implicit cognitive and affective aspects of such activities, then reconsiders them in relation to another form of cultural spectacle: commercial Hawaiian hula dance performances.

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Desmond keeps her eye on subtle transactions between operators, performers, and audiences and concludes that there is a form of erotic encounter at the heart of the educational experience in all these shows. You might find this gloss on tourist performances and the particular juxtaposition of hula dancers and killer whales eccentric or silly at first, but be patient. The argument and some of the ideas show an interest in how attention is grabbed and learning reinforced. Desmond at her best is a subtle, sardonic and perceptive commentator. Occasionally jargon obscures her ideas, but they are worth pursuing and her material is intriguing.

There are challenges in the unusual juxtaposition at the heart of this book, and one of them is to keep from getting distracted by the idea that killer whale shows might be inherently erotic. The idea is a hook to pull the curious reader in, but I think the more important aspect of the argument is actually about attention and the use of techniques that engage an audience actively on several levels. This could be discussed more clearly in places, but the ideas are there. The exploration of hula revival does sometimes sit a little awkwardly with her other material. Thinking about human and animal bodies as spectacle and how controlled interaction is used is developed most fully in the chapters on animal shows.

In tourist luau and dance exhibitions common in Hawaii, one of the main draws for the audience is the chance to watch and even join in. Hula is a traditional Polynesian dance form. It was originally the gesture and dance underlining a high-status form of chanted poetry and music. The hula was misunderstood by nineteenth-century Christian missionaries who discouraged it, although they did not eradicate it completely. In fact, eventually two forms existed side by side--one traditional, where hula is still an accompaniment; the other where it becomes a costumed focal point performed to an accompaniment by Americanised music and songs. The cultural dynamics between performers and audiences are quite different. Desmond's discussion extends earlier work done on the subject by Elizabeth Buck. She intuits underlying affective aspects for the largely passive tourist audience. These are the hidden chemistries of "gaze."

In sea life parks the animals perform in complex and intimate physical collaborations with highly visible human co-stars who are in fact their trainers and handlers, a charged power relationship of a different kind.

In wildlife tourism the visitor is promised proximity to animals in their natural habitat--a form of framed voyeurism which in Desmond's eyes bears similarities to more overtly staged tourist performances. Surely the filmed wildlife special actually pushes this further?

In the end this is clearly a performer's book as well as one grounded in performance theory. As a dancer herself, Desmond notices a common element in many of these shows. Performances often end in activities which carefully encourage audience transgression of ordinary social or species boundaries. This is not just access to performers, but particular and progressing forms of controlled (and potentially adrenaline charged) public intimacy.

Killer whale shows encourage trust and physical interaction with a species normally seen as potentially dangerous and threatening, even ending with a whale/human kiss. She uses the term "economy of pleasure" to describe the transactions taking place. Is it? Or is it an adrenaline economy playing on an elaborate joking behaviour rooted in fear?

Much has been written about the relationship between charismatic performers and their audience in filmed, televised or large-scale popular culture events where the charged effects of gaze manipulation are more fully and frankly acknowledged by performers, producers and participants, but the attempt to explore this phenomenon and how it operates when ostensibly there is something else involving intercultural or interspecies face-to-face teaching and learning taking place is really very thought-provoking.

For folklorists the dance aspects of the book will be of particular interest whether or not you are interested in the animal shows or respond to the arguments about transactions and transgressions on the tourist stage. Desmond also adds to our knowledge about the cultural politics of Hawaiian identity, both the performance of identity by indigenous Hawaiians and the adoption and transformation of selected Hawaiian cultural motifs by incomers.

Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World - Book Review

Folklore, Dec, 2003 by Teri Brewer

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