ABSTRACT
SUMMARY. Travel and tourist magazines are major sources of information about destinations, events, accommodations, and transportation. The majority of this information is conveyed visually through colorful, stimulating, and seductive photographs of familiar landscapes and destinations. We examine a dozen popular U.S. travel magazines in the five months following the events of September 11, 2001 to discern the extent to which issues of risk, security, and anxiety are addressed or disavowed in editorials, articles, advertisements, and photographs. There is little mention of the tragic events on the magazine covers, in photographs, and articles; however, editors and regular staff writers often discussed security and risk and their impacts on destinations. In evaluating the magazines’ responses, this paper draws on the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to offer the most rigorous utilization of psychoanalytic
theory in tourism studies to date. In so doing, we seek to initiate a belated dialogue between critical tourism research and psychoanalytic approaches deployed in the disciplines of geography and social theory. Psychoanalytic concepts such as “symptom,” “ego,” “defense,” and “fantasy” enable us to critically understand the uncanny disjunctures between the exotic, vulnerable, terrorized, and sunny tourist worlds that traversed the pages of post-September 11 travel magazines. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <https:// www.HaworthPress.com>; © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]
KEYWORDS. Tourism promotion, fantasy, risk, security, psychoanalysis, Freud, travel magazines, September 11
Remember a time not long ago when you could feel that if you took enough precautions before setting off into the unknown, and kept your head after things went seriously awry, you could think your way out of any emergency. When you are a firefighter heading up the stairs of a collapsing World Trade Center tower, well . . . we’re in different times now. In saying that, I don’t mean to trivialize the subjects we cover. When you are willing to live adventurously, take some risks, you can discover amazing things about yourself; if you’re brave enough, maybe you can help to save the world. (John Rasmus, Editor in Chief, National Geographic Adventure, December 2001)
INTRODUCTION
The business of security and excitement has always been the sine qua non of the travel and tourism industries. Threats to the management of their location, intensity, and relationship are likely to pose problems and even result in disaster for the individuals, corporations, and organizations associated with travel and tourism economies. The immediate repercussions of the events following September 11, 2001 were experienced by those in local and international contexts who not only worked in these sectors, but also used them. Suddenly, words including “terror,” “war,” and “fear” resounded in private conversations and public commentaries around the world, particularly among those providing transportation to places of leisure, recreation, and entertainment.
