Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World

By Jane C. Desmond

Book Overview

From Shamu the dancing whale at Sea World to Hawaiian lu'au shows, Staging Tourism analyzes issues of performance in a wide range of tourist venues. Jane C. Desmond argues that the public display of bodies--how they look, what they do, where they do it, who watches, and under what conditions--is profoundly important in structuring identity categories of race, gender, and cultural affiliation. These fantastic spectacles of corporeality form the basis of hugely profitable tourist industries, which in turn form crucial arenas of public culture where embodied notions of identity are sold, enacted, and debated.

Gathering together written accounts, postcards, photographs, advertisements, films, and oral histories as well as her own interpretations of these displays, Desmond gives us a vibrant account of U.S. tourism in Waikiki from 1900 to the present. She then juxtaposes cultural tourism with "animal tourism" in the United States, which takes place at zoos, aquariums, and animal theme parks. In each case, Desmond argues, the relationship between the viewer and the viewed is ultimately based on concepts of physical difference harking back to the nineteenth century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226143759
• ISBN13: 9780226143750
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 361 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An outstanding survey of tourism and popular culture.

In Staging Tourism: Bodies On Display From Waikiki To Sea World, author Jane Desmond argues that the public display of bodies (how they look, what they do, where they do it, who watches, and under what conditions) is profoundly important in structuring identity categories of race, gender, and cultural affiliation. These displays and showcased activities form the basis of a hugely profitable tourist industry, which in turn forms crucial arenas of public culture where embodied notions of identity are sold, enacted, and debated. Desmond draws from written accounts, postcards, photographs, advertisements, films, and oral histories to make her own interpretations of these displays. She give a vibrant account of American tourism in Waikiki from 1900 to the present, juxtaposes cultural tourism with "animal tourism" (zoos, aquariums, animal theme parks), and argues the relationship between the viewer and the viewed as ultimately based on concepts of physical difference harking back to the 19th Century. Staging Tourism is an informative, riveting, tour-de-force presentation of the tourist industry within its wider social contexts and ideological frameworks in order to delineate the contemporary tourist experience. Staging Tourism is recommended reading for students of American popular culture, the economics of recreation, and the history of tourism in the United States.