ABSTRACT
I was motivated to write this chapter to make sense of a 1998 study trip to Los Angeles, because despite the reasonable assumption that tourists’ anticipation of an enjoyable experience will be fulfilled, on this occasion, the opposite pertained. The purpose of our visit was to contextualize teaching and learning, to consolidate our knowledge of the Hollywood film and television industry. But, the tensions of the converging cultures of tourism and the media effected responses that we found difficult to understand and express. We had not anticipated such culture shock, to feel so foreign in a land which is allegedly Britain’s closest political ally, where English is the official first language, with people whose screen images we see every day. Our national, cultural, and self-identities were tested as we encountered another nation’s understanding of self and Other. In turn, we found ourselves repeatedly relying on flawed information about a country we thought we knew. Our ‘knowledge’ was continually tested, proving ultimately to be based on illusion. Instead of strengthening understanding, this trip resulted in feelings of uncertainty, disappointment and disenchantment. As Crouch and Lübbren (2003: 6) discuss how:
[m]aterially, tourism is visually represented as significantly physical, involving space, visiting particular ‘concrete’ places. Metaphorically, visual culture may construct ideas and desires of the experience of tourism, and of particular imagined places
so our visit to LA foregrounded the tension between the material and the metaphorical. This, therefore, is an attempt to theorize such a tourism experience.I have used the tourism principle here, firstly to ‘revisit’ our tourist destination, setting the scene by recounting our impressions; second, to relate the theoretical journey taken to explain the experience.
