ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how as tourists in the global media age our perceptions of the USA are influenced by both the amount of cultural information repeated and circulated and what we do with it. There has been much debate about the nature and scope of Americanisation as a one-way process of cultural imperialism infiltrating the lives, both conscious and subconscious, of individuals and nations, with tourism as one source of this perceived ‘takeover’ (see McKay 1997; Tomlinson 1991; Campbell, Davies and McKay forthcoming). Whether from tourism to the USA itself, or simply by engaging with American-style tourist experiences and practices, some would argue that there is a powerful redefinition taking place, one often paralleled with the impact of fast food or theme park culture in the way that it regulates and manipulates behaviour (see Ritzer and Liska in Rojek and Urry 1997). Thus so-called ‘McDisneyization’ is a specific example of cultural imperialism showing how tourists can be considered part of the Americanisation process imposing its rules, values and ideologies upon a relatively passive consumer. This monologic process is interrogated in this chapter, allowing for the possibilities that these ‘consumers’ are simultaneously ‘producers’ too, working with the mediated ‘America’ they encounter in all manner of subtle ways to construct something different and more multiple than is often considered under the assumptions of Americanisation. Therefore, out of the interplay of debates over tourism, or ‘post-tourism’, and Americanisation one might reassess the nature of travelling in ways that contest many of these assumptions and provide a different, expanded and more productive version of cultural identity in the global media age.
