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Tourism and Cinema: Historical Films and Destination Image
By Warwick Frost
Much of the literature on film and tourism has a narrow focus with the role of films in creating images of destinations which result in sales of holidays to those destinations. This approach is particularly limited by a concentration on the initial decision-to-visit stage. There is a need to extend such analyses further, such as the matching of the tourists' actual experiences of the destination with the image and expectations created by the film. This raises issues not only of basic satisfaction, but also of presentation, heritage interpretation and authenticity. For tourism researchers interested in historic film, there is value in taking a multi-disciplinary approach in considering how writers, historians, geographers and sociologists regard historic films and their impact on viewers. What follows is not intended as a fully survey of this literature, but rather as a sample of perspectives.
The novelist and film screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser in his popular Hollywood history of the world (1988) argued that Hollywood has surprisingly been generally accurate in its representations of history. Most importantly, he argued that film was a powerful medium for shaping tourists' views of history:
For better of for worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our images of the past than the commercial cinema. For example: take a walk through the huge excavation of ruined ancient Rome, and consider that a tourist of two centuries ago could envisage the reality of the city of the Caesars only dimly, by reference to written accounts and a few imaginative paintings. But today all the world knows what it looked like (Fraser 1988: xii).
In his seminal work on history and film, the historian Robert Rosenstone argued that, `historical films trouble and disturb professional historians' (1995: 45). In particular, he discussed two major areas of concern. The first was that a film is generally limited by only being able to give one perspective on an historical story - that is, what is projected on the screen. In contrast, books - which historians are much more comfortable with - are able to include multiple perspectives or interpretations (Rosenstone 1995: 22). The second concern was the rewriting of history through invented, exaggerated or deleted characters and incidents. Because film is visual, he argued that film-makers tend to focus primarily in getting the authentic look of history right, and `as long as you get the look right, you may freely invent characters and incidents and do whatever you want to the past to make it more interesting' (Rosenstone 1995: 60). This concern with invention was repeated by the heritage researcher David Lowenthal (1998: 164-6). However, despite these concerns, Rosenstone argued that well-made historical films can be effective `new ways of visioning the past', increasing the viewers' understanding and appreciation of history (1995: 72 & 241).
The medievalist Haydock provocatively argued that many historic films were pastiches mixing historical background with current references and were generally tailored to the American market. He argued that since Braveheart (1995) there has been a `surge of big-budget, historical epics', which `all share an abiding concern with the construction of national identity in the face of colonialism or imperialism' and in which `remote complicated historical processes become distant but clear approximations of American democratic freedom' (Haydock 2002: 9-10). Similarly, Turner (1994) argued that Australian films (and heritage in general) were often packaged to demonstrate resonances for the larger American market. The folklorist Graham Seal commented that there were over 30 films dealing with Robin Hood. These had created `a tamed and domesticated image' of the outlaw, making him `a familiar figure of adventure, [and] romance … some distance from armed defiance of the forces of law and order' (1996: 30-1). In a study of the Ghost Town of Bodie in California, DeLyser (1999) noted that through its use in a number of films, visitors had come to see it as the archetypal western town and were less interested in its real history as a mining town. Hutton (1992) found that film was a major factor in public acceptance of reinterpretations of General Custer. Up to the 1940s he was presented as a heroic figure, but films of the 1950s and 1960s created a new image of him as arrogant, reckless, self-centred and even insane.
In summary, this selection from the literature emphasises concerns with how and why the film-maker tells historical stories and whether or not what they show is true. The parallel can be drawn with tourism operators at heritage attractions. Like historical film-makers, they are trying to both inform and entertain. To achieve this they aim for interpretation which is both effectively presented and authentic. Like the film-maker, the tourism operator has to juggle the expectations and prior knowledge of the audience, the need to provide an interesting experience and the imperative of remaining faithful to an historic story.
Source: Monash University, http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/2573
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