ABSTRACT
The familiar sun-sea-and-sand imagery used in Caribbean tourism promotion may seem like an endlessly repeated cliché that hardly requires any further analysis. Used to promote everything from package holidays and cruises to time-shares and villa purchases all over the world, a more generic, global, and empty signifier of ‘the tropical island’ could hardly be imagined. Alongside it a slightly different variation draws on an ecotourism imagery of ‘unspoilt’ primal rainforests, waterfalls, and lush greenery in those parts of the Caribbean that still have some forest cover (e.g. Dominica, Tobago, St. Lucia, or parts of the Greater Antilles and Trinidad). Rather than reading these stereotypes as meaningless clichés that circulate in a global market for tropical island tourism, I want to explore specifically how these iconic images arose, for what purposes, and with what effects. Both kinds of imagery (palm-fringed beach and verdant forest) pick up on longstanding visual and literary themes in Western culture based on the idea of tropical islands as microcosms of earthly Paradise.
