Naked Tourists

Geeze, I thought this blog was supposed to just be for fun. I didn't realize I had such a heavy responsibility here.

I was out of town all weekend and was very busy all day yesterday (left my house at 8am, returned at 10pm, still had to do laundry and eat). I hate to use work time to do this, especially when I have more than enough to keep me busy here, so this will be short. Maybe later tonight I'll add more substantial thoughts.

One of my favorite Web sites is Arts and Letters Daily. It's a collection of articles, opinion pieces, and book reviews from around the world (but all at least translated into English) and from a wide-range of viewpoints. Best of all, there's no direct news, although many posts relate to the implication or analysis of specific current events, so it removes one from the crushing overabundance of headlines and sound-bytes usually encountered on the Internet.

I recently read an article on A&L called Voyeurismo posted on The Culture Cult and written by Roger Sandall. It’s part book review, but like all decent reviews, it raises questions and makes observations about the society for and about which the book was written.

Sandall reviews Lawrence Osborne’s The Naked Tourist, which describes a particular “ethno-tourism” adventure. What? I didn’t know either, but apparently for a steep fee, “civilized” people from developed countries, bored with their fat and easy existence, can take guided tours into “uncharted” territory and come face-to-face with natives who may or may not have ever seen a white man. A quick Amazon search shows that this book is not necessarily unique.

Now, this adventure is no small task—-it’s not like the tour takes a cruise ship up the Amazon. There’s a lot of hiking and climbing and falling and general discomfort. But clearly, traveling by choice to gawk uninvited at a different culture, especially with the pre-supposition that your own comfortable culture is superior, necessarily raises some morality questions. To be fair, I think this sounds like an exciting opportunity—-to hike into an area where very few people have been, to see things very few people have seen, to have completely unique experiences… then to come back to my apartment, to take a hot shower, to rest in my soft bed, and to bore all my friends with a slideshow and long description of my adventures. But what does this mean to my own sense of cultural superiority? I like to think of myself as accepting and curious about other lifestyles, and I think this is precisely the market (plus a few thousand dollars and a more mature sense of ennui) intended for this type of trip.

But think about it from the other side: you live with your parents in a one-room hut that your father and uncles built, growing up with the same people you’ve known all your life. Occasionally there’s some excitement when people from other tribes visit, but for the most part life is quiet, filled with fishing and making baskets and sometimes eating the game your father brings home. And then one day, people like you’ve never seen before arrive, their bodies covered in all sorts of clothing, speaking in a tongue completely unlike the other tribes. They want to give you items—-necklaces, mirrors, some of that ridiculous clothing—-and walk around your village poking their heads into your house, and pointing at basic things. Maybe, at first, you’re as curious about them as they seem to be about you. But when later the next group arrives, and then the next, it feels more like an intrusion, more like you’re on display, although not by choice.

Of course, a lot can be said about this situation based on the behavior of the tourists. Sandall mentions English tourists to Italy in the 18th and 19th centuries, and I thought of EM Forster’s A Room with a View and Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover, both involving English people immersing themselves in the “different-ness” of Italian life, which of course implies that they were not immersed at all (as long as they thought of it as different-ness). But the Italians catered to this voyeuristic desire by building hotels and entertainment aligned with English tastes. This newer ethno-tourism reminds me more of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with all the overtones of imperialism and the dangers of infiltrating a society that doesn’t really want to be infiltrated. Will these tribal natives begin catering to their new visitors on the riverside, offering fish and chips with the occasional grub worm?

Hm. I started this blog with the intention of following-up closely on last week’s road trip theme but have strayed off the mark I think. And I’m out of time to tie it back up, so I’ll leave it open for you. Is this sort of vacation morally repellent? Does it say something about our own fat and happy culture that we’re willing to pay to have these experiences? Or is it not because of comfortable ennui, but some other compulsion or curiosity? How much do we really learn about another culture in this manner? Should people be allowed to take guided tours without local consent, or just camera crews, or no one at all? And does this have anything to do with a developed society’s imperialist compulsions?