ABSTRACT
The so-called ‘Peace Dividend’ in Northern Ireland in the wake of the IRA cease fire(s) has opened the door to the possibility of tourism, but under the shadow of film and television reductions of Northern Ireland. Upon my arrival in Belfast a few years ago, a taxi driver asked me whether I expected to see nothing but burning buses, barricades and petrol bombs. I replied that I never believed what I saw on television or in the cinema. Belfast has been used as a colourful backdrop to international and dramatic concerns in film and television drama. Indeed, a principal attraction of representing Belfast to the makers of films and TV drama is that it seems to offer readymade spatialized political relations. After all, a clear political-cultural division is a guarantee of drama. For tourism as much as for audiovisual drama, expectations are centrally important, and the city location must match them. So tourist destinations are always trying to catch up with their image, be it in holiday brochures or on electronic screens, and most of us have already been to many of these destinations thousands of times, via films and television.
