I caught myself
gazing upon the magnificent Treasury of Petra, suddenly realizing this gazing is
exactly what tourists do. Urry’s theory of the tourist gaze states that tourists have the desire to gaze upon that
which is different or unusual, and can be distinguished and contrasted from the
ordinary and familiarity.[1]
True: I “gazed”
more intensely inside the mosque than the (more familiar) churches.
When tourists perceive, interpret and reproduce what
they see, they create meanings to the objects gazed upon:
Urry considers that
with our visual perception, its (photographic) reproduction, and our background
knowledge and interpretation, we construct meanings or social characteristics to
the tourist objects: Baguette is equated with Frenchness.[2]
The ruins of Petra and Jerasch belong to the Seven World Wonders. Knowing the
story of the sight, I associate pure amazement over the impressive
constructional skills that the Nabataeans mastered in the 1st
century BC and amazement over the preservation of this ancient archeological discovery.
I see a ‘world wonder’.
Our frames:
We do not look
objectively at tourist sights – we can’t. Our eyes are socio-culturally framed
by our entire background (class, gender, nationality, age, education), our
prior understandings, knowledge and expectations.[3]
How I interpret and assess the things I see depends on this (constantly
developing) frame. For the gaze, this means also: what is ordinary for some, is
extraordinary for others.
A simple example: Pilgrimage
sights are agreed to be “holy places.” Yet, the Baptism side is gazed upon with
Moslem, Christian or archeologist eyes, accordingly its meaning as a holy place
carries different implications.
The gaze is not a
self-exploring endeavor; It is a seeing with one’s own eyes, however, in a
pre-determined frame. On our trip, our gazes were additionally ‘steered’ by our
guide who directed our attention and fed us with information.
& Tim
Edensor, Tourism (Manchester:
Elsevier Ltd., 2009).
[3] John Urry and Jonas
Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Los
Angeles: SAGE, 2011).
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| My fellow tourists gazing upon the "extraordinary | " |
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| The visual and images are an important part of tourism |
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| What does holy water mean to each one of us? – a spiritual experience or mere refreshment? |
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