Brief Reading 23-"The Gaze of Tourists (Third Edition)"

[English] John Urry, Jonas Larsen, translated by Huang Wanyu. The Gaze of Tourists, Gezhi Publishing House, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2016. 286,000 words.

The book was first published in 1989. The original version was revised twice in 2001 and 2012, which is almost every 10 years. The version I have in hand is a translation of the third edition.

Concepts have always been human inventions. The concept of being able to stand often means an insight, an advancement in understanding and thinking. The greatest originality of this book on the sociology of tourism is the introduction of a refreshing concept, which is the title of the book - the Tourist Gaze. New concepts build a new framework. Under the thinking framework of "tourist gaze", many daily phenomena that were originally taken for granted need to be re-examined. The following records and sorts out some words or concepts that have inspired the author. They are condensed expressions of the phenomenon after re-examination. .

Watching// Gazing is the function of the eyes, it is the eyes that can see; and gazing is a way of seeing - who is watching, what is watching, how to watch - seen by "gaze" It is the relationship between things and viewers, and this relationship is not limited to these two, but a social and cultural construction that encompasses the interaction of more factors.

Tourism // Tourists Tourism is a "non-daily" behavior because it is separated from the daily trajectory of life, especially the time and space arrangements regulated by residence and work. Tourism activities turn people into tourists. As tourists, their vision will become more acute and they often feel "dizzy". We often talk about "travel and sightseeing", and "gain" is caused by gaze, which is what this book calls "gaze" (I always feel that gaze is a bit awkward when translated as gaze, but I can't think of a better translation at the moment).

Collective gaze // Romantic gaze? The author proposes (it is more appropriate to say borrowed) two consumption models: Fordist mass consumption and post-Fordist differentiated consumption. The former is typical of "McDonaldization", which emphasizes homogeneity, standardization, and high efficiency, and takes "consistency" and "risk-free" as the standards; the latter is typical of "Disneyization", which emphasizes diversity and difference. Sex, pursuing "personalization" and "experience" as its values. In the field of tourism, to put it simply, group travel is "McDonald's", while independent travel is "Disney". In the words of tourists’ gaze, the counterpart to mass tourism is “collective gaze”, which has “the meaning of carnival or sports”; the counterpart to personalized tourism is “romantic gaze”, which “biases towards the individual” , accompanied by spiritual connotations” (page 22, wording slightly changed).

Mediated Gaze Due to the omnipresence and fueling of media culture, tourists cannot escape the intervention and influence of the media. The relevant texts and images seen by the media will be unconsciously embedded in tourists' gaze. What we often refer to as “checking in at a certain place” is a typical manifestation of the “media gaze”. Take a look at the several categories of "cards" produced by the media for us: 1. Cultural sites; 2. The birthplace of important classics; 3. The place where important events occurred; 4. The deeds of great people; 5. Foreign cultures. As the book says: "Whether it is virtual travel, imaginary travel, or physical travel at the scene, the three overlap and overlap in very complex ways, and the distinctions between them are becoming increasingly blurred." (Page 132). What is in your mind seems to be more real, and what is in front of you becomes a "copy" that needs to be verified.

Landscape is a design for “viewing” and for tourists to gaze at. This is the "highlight" that the tourism industry has racked its brains to explore. Let’s take a look: the ancient villages are landscaped, and the daily life of the aborigines has become the daily life of shops and small businesses; the countryside is landscaped, and the land and crops, busy farming and leisure time are all gone, creating a series of “beautiful countryside” landscape paintings; shopping malls Landscaping, shopping in shopping malls is like traveling around the world; major events and events (such as the World Cup and World Expo) turn a country into a landscape giant. The tourists are immersed in it and highly involved. In such a high-end play house scene, the tourists are actors, the kind of group actors, but they feel like the starring roles.

The host and guest stare at each other. I look at you, and you look at me. The way tourists and locals (especially in foreign tourism) "objectify" each other. There is the tourist gaze, and of course there is the "local gaze". (The original text may be local gaze). Tourists often look at the scenery more than the people, and the locals become "set props" in the eyes of tourists. Regardless of whether tourists notice it or not, the locals also have their own eye response patterns: cooperation, covert resistance, or open resistance. .

The concept of camera (lens) gaze is not clearly stated in the book and is "made up" by the author. A new chapter in the third edition, "Vision and Photography," explains the idea that "photography is at the heart of the modern tourist's gaze." The best place to watch is one that allows you to maintain a distance while still being intoxicating. This is exactly the best place for the camera to take the view.

When taking pictures and looking through the camera lens, you can have a sense of control and gain of "beautiful scenery in hand". No wonder you can see so many tourists "head-down" - checking whether the photos just taken look good. Another type of camera gaze is “gazing into the camera.” Remember the “Kodak Moment” commercial? As soon as the camera appeared, in the viewfinder, no matter whether they were family, friends, colleagues, classmates, acquaintances or not, there was a harmonious "eggplant" face. The face in the camera's gaze is a ritualized "tourist face."

The author said in the preface to the third edition that this edition "thinks more theoretically about the concept of 'tourist gaze', especially its 'dark side'". It can be said that the above concepts are all theoretical reflections member. In this work, you can also see many "shoulders of giants", such as Foucault (medical gaze), Goleman (theatre theory), Campbell (romantic ethics and the spirit of modern consumerism), Baker (risk society), These theories are the author’s tools for analyzing the “tourist gaze”. Are you able to solve the problem of cattle with ease? It depends on the knife, but also on the person.

Knowledge points

2018-12-30