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f rom Trcrueler to Tourist:

out of its native habijatso we can conveniently/gaze iat it, is like an animal in a(zocy Something about it hasdied in the removal.

Of course, there remain sites all over the world—Windsor Castle, the Medici Pałace in Florence, the Hindu rock carv-ings at Elefanta, Japanese Imperial Palaces, and countless churches, shrines and temples—where works of art remain in their original sites. (feut in nearly all Tourist Meccas much of the tourist’s sight-seeing is museuin-seeing. And most mu-seums have this unreal, misrepresentative character.

The museum is only one example of the tourist attraction. All tourist attractions share this factitious, ^seudo-eventf'ql guality. Formerlywhen the'óId-timeTTaveler visTfe<i^-a^-coun-try whatever he saw was apt to be what really went on there. A Titian, a Rubens or a Gobelin tapestry would be seen on a pałace wali as background to a princely party or a public function. Folk song and folk dance were for the natives them-selves. Now, howeyer, the tourist sees less of the country than of its tourist attractions. Today what he~see”s is seldom the 1 iving‘ cilltuYe j fiu t usually specimens collected and embalmed especially for him, or attractions s^eriall^/staged for him: proved specimens of the artificial.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, international exposi-tions have increased in number and grown in prorninence. They usually have some solid purposes—to promote trade, to strengthen world peace, to exchange technological informa-tion. But when expositions become tourist attractions they ac-quire an artificial character. From the London Crystal Pałace Exposition of 1851 and the Exposition on the Champs Ely-sees in 1855 down to Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposi-tion in 1933-34, the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958, and the annual Cinema Festi-vals in Venice, modern expositions have been designed for propaganda, to attract foreign tourists and their currency. An exposition planned for tourists is a self-conscious and con-triyed national image. It is a pseudo-event for foreign~con-sumption.

The rise of tourist traffic has brought the relatively recent phenomenon of the tourist attraction pure and simple. It often has no purpose but to attract in the interest of the owner or of the nation. As we might expect, this use of the— word “ at t r a c t i o n ” a s“afh i n g or feature which ‘draws’ people; especially, any interesting or amusing exhibition” dates only -~ from about 1862^ It is a new species: the most attenuated , 0& ( form of a (nation^culture. All over the world now we find these “attractions”—of little significance for the inward life of a people, but wonderfully salable as tourist commodity. Examples are Madame Tussaud’s exhibition of wax figures in London (she first became known for her modeled heads of the leaders and victims of the French Revolution) and the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong. Disneyland in Califor-nia—the American “attraction” which tourist Khrushchev ^ most wanted to see---is the example to end all examples.

Berę indeed ^lature imitates Ai^ The visitor to Disneyland encounters not the two-dimensional comic strip or movie orig-inals, but only their three-dimensionalHacsimUes. Y~~

Tourist attractions serve their purpose best when they are pseudo-events. To be repeatable at will they must be facti-tious. Emphasis on the artificial comes from the ruthless truthfulness of tourist agents. What they can really guarantee you are not spontaneous cultural products but only those madę especially for tourist consumption, for foreign cash cus-tomers. Not only in Mexico City and Montreal, but also in the remote Guatemalan Tourist Mecca of Chichecastenango and in far-off villages of Japan, eamest honest naliM^em-bellish their ancient rites, change, enlarge, and stfectacuWize their festivals, so that tourists will not be disappoihfed. In order to satisfy the exaggerated expectations of tour agents and tourists, (people everywhere obligingly become dishonest mimics of themselves.,To provide a fuli Schedule of events at

the best seasons and at eonvenient hours, they ^ayeity their most solemn rituals, holidays, and folk celebrations—all for the benefit of tourists.

In Berlin, in the days before the First World War, legend

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