Dark Tourism: manipulating tourists interpretation

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Alvaro Rodriguez Maldonado. TBM 3

Content  page

Introduction..............................................................................................Pages 2 - 4

Dark Tourism: manipulating tourist’s interpretation…………………..Pages 4 - 9

Conclusions…………………………………………………………………..Pages 9 – 10

References……………………………………………………………………Pages 11 - 12

Appendixes

        Appendix 1: Dark tourism Spectrum…………………...……………… Page 13

        Appendix 2: Pictures…………………………………………………… Pages 14 - 15

        

        

Introduction

Most people think that the concept of dark tourism is a recent term that has appeared during the last few decades, however Stone and Sharpley (2009 p.4) states that dark tourism has always been found in human lives since human started to develop new ways of leisure; good examples from the author that illustrate this statement are the gladiatorial games from the Roman era and attendances at medieval public executions.

Appart from the statement seeing below, dark tourism is a relatively new area of tourism research. Tarlow (2005) defines Dark Tourism as:

‘‘Visitations to places where tragedies or historically noteworthy death has occurred and that continue to impact our lives.’’

Foley and Lennon (2000) also define the same concept as:

‘‘The phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites’’

According to Foley and Lennon (2000) the term of dark tourism is categorized in two main different types of sites: primary sites, that are sites associated with recent and historic incidences of death and disaster such as holocaust camps to sites of celebrity deaths, and ‘secondary sites’ commemorating tragedy and death, such as museums and memorials.

Furthermore, according to Dann (1998), dark tourism destinations can also be classified in five different categories described below:

Perilous Places: Dangerous destinations from the past and present such as towns of horror, dangerous destinations. E.g.: Chernobyl or Hiroshima

Houses of horror: Buildings associated with death and horror, either actual or represented such as dungeons of death or heinous hotels. E.g.: The London dungeon or the house of terror in Budapest.

Fields of fatality: Areas/land commemorating death, fear, fame or infamy such as bloody battlegrounds, the hell of the holocaust, or cemeteries for celebrities. E.g.: Places where Elvis Presley, James Dean and JFK died, Auschwitz or the Ground Zero in New York.

Tours of torment: Tours/visits to attractions associated with death, murder and mayhem, such as mayhem and murder or the now notorious. E.g.: The small town of Soham in Cambridgeshire, U.K. where two young school girls were murdered in 2002 or the jack the ripper’s tour.

Themed thanatos: Collections/museums themed around death and suffering such as morbid museums, monuments to morality. E.g.: The body world exhibition, where hundreds of real dead corpses are exposed showing the spectators the anatomy of them.

At this point it is interesting to know the motivational factors for tourists to visit this kind of dark touristic destinations. Authors such as Stone (2006), Wight (2005) and Sharpley (2009) mention five categories of motivations for tourist to visit dark tourism sites:

  • Travel to witness public enactments of death

-         Travel to see sites of mass or individual deaths after they have occurred

-         Travel to internment sites of, and memorials to, the dead

  •  Travel to view material evidence/symbolic representations of particular deaths
  •  Travel for re-enactments or simulation of death.

Over the last decade, the concept of dark tourism has attracted growing academic interest and media attention. Lennon, Foley (2000 p. 3), Sharpley and Stone (2009 p. 5) agree that there has been a rapid growth in the provision of dark tourism attractions and experiences because  of the increasing number of tourists interests in atrocities, recent deaths and disasters during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.  Government and social agendas are taking advantage about this fact.  According to Williams (2007 p.129):

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‘‘The tragedies, disasters or atrocities have a big potential, through their representation and commemoration, to be exploited not only for commercial gain through tourism but also to convey political messages’’

Based on the above, this essay aims to analyse the consequences of manipulating interpretation in the dark tourism, based on political and social agendas in order to provide a visitor experience, by examining two case studies. The author will try to find out who should really tell the story of dark tourist destinations and identify the role of technology in changing interpretation techniques and its consequences.  The essay will also ...

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