Places of the Imagination: Media, Tourism, Culture

174 Pages·2011·2.258 MB·English

by  Stijn Reijnders

Places of the Imagination
Media, Tourism, Culture
Stijn Reijnders
Places of the ImagInatIon
For Silvijn
Places of the Imagination
media, tourism, culture
stIjn ReIjndeRs
Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
© stijn Reijnders 2011
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
stijn Reijnders has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the
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or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in
future reprints or editions of this book.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Reijnders, stijn, 1976-
Places of the imagination : media, tourism, culture.
1. culture and tourism. 2. motion picture locations--case
studies. 3. television program locations--case studies.
4. Literary landmarks--Case studies.
I. title
306.4'819-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reijnders, stijn, 1976-
Places of the imagination : media, tourism, culture / by stijn Reijnders.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 145) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-1977-8 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1978-5 (ebk)
1. tourism--social aspects. 2. culture and tourism. I. title.
g155.a1R455 2011
306.4'819--dc22
2011009737
ISBN 9781409419778 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409419785 (ebk) V
Contents
List of Figures vii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
TheoreTical Framework
2 Places of the Imagination 13
ParT i TV DeTecTiVes
3 The Guilty Landscape of the TV Detective 23
4 Doing the TV Detective Tour 37
ParT ii James BonD
5 Media Pilgrimages into the World of James Bond 55
6 On the Track of 007 63
ParT iii Dracula
7 Stalking the Count 81
8 Conclusion: The Magic of Imagining 103
Appendix 115
Filmography 143
References 145
Index 153
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Figures
1.1 Tourists take photographs of the lawn at Exeter College during the
Inspector Morse Tour 1
1.2 Travellers to Wellington Airport were welcomed to ‘Middle-earth’ 3
1.3 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set the house of fictitious detective Sherlock
Holmes at 221b Baker Street 4
1.4 Participants in the Sex and the City Tour enjoying a Cosmopolitan
in the bar from the television series 6
1.5 Various travel guides specialized in media tourism 7
2.1 Media tourism as part of a circular process 17
3.1 On its website Visit Sweden has a digital map of ‘Wallander’s Ystad’ 24
3.2 The stories in Wallander are set on the South Coast of Sweden 27
3.3 Inspector Morse and his assistant Lewis 31
3.4 The café in Ystad where Inspector Wallander enjoys his regular cup
of coffee 32
3.5 Actors Krister Henriksson and Johanna Sällström on the run during
on-location shots for Wallander 33
4.1 Fans of crime author Appie Baantjer congregate on the pavement
outside the central library in Amsterdam on ‘Baantjer Day’ in 2007 38
4.2 The café Fridolfs Konditorei features in Wallander as a trusted
location where the detective could enjoy a cup of coffee 41
4.3 During the Baantjer Tour tourists pose on a bridge over the
Egelantiersgracht 43
4.4 Participants in the Baantjer Tour enjoying a break in the ‘Smalle
Lowietje’, the local pub favoured by Detective De Cock 44
4.5 During the Baantjer Tour a couple of scenes from Baantjer are
acted out with help of a hired extra, the guide is dressed as Detective
De Cock 46
4.6 Tourists wander through the film studios in Ystad where the interiors
for Wallander were shot 49
5.1 Scene from The Man with the Golden Gun, shot on Ko Tapu, now
often known as ‘James Bond Island’ 55
5.2 Various Internet sites offer information about the locations that were
used to film the 22 James Bond films 57
viii Places of the Imagination
5.3 Several scenes from Casino Royale (2006) were shot in The Ocean
Club, an existing hotel in the Bahamas 60
6.1 London has a number of locations for James Bond tourists,
a must-see is one of the doors at the foot of Westminster Bridge 64
6.2 A participant in the James Bond Tour poses in front of James
Bond Island 68
6.3 There are more than a dozen James Bond networks active
on the Internet 72
6.4 The James Bond Museum in Keswick, England 75
6.5 The James Bond Museum in Nybro, Sweden 76
7.1 Bram Stoker set the castle of Count Dracula in the Borgo Pass,
a pass in the Carpathian mountains in Romania 81
7.2 The ‘Dracula Experience’ in Whitby, England 84
7.3 It is not only Dracula locations which are visited during the Dracula
tour, but also other ‘dark’ locations such as graveyards and torture
chambers 86
7.4 Participants in the Dracula literary walking tour through Whitby
pause by a bench that is dedicated to Bram Stoker 87
7.5 Bram Stoker set the castle of Count Dracula in a location where
originally there was no castle 89
7.6 The Dracula Tour consists of a seven-day bus journey through
Romania, visiting various locations which have some connection
with Stoker’s novel, the later film shoots or the life of Vlad Dracula 91
7.7 The highlight of the Dracula Tour is the fancy-dress party 94
7.8 Two party-goers have prepared a sketch in which the remaining
participants in the Dracula tour are likened to characters from
Stoker’s novel, the coach party become, as it were, ‘fictionalised’ 97
7.9 At around midnight the party-goers from the Dracula tour can take
their places one-by-one in the tomb of Count Dracula, hidden in the
catacombs of the Dracula Castle Hotel 99
8.1 The bloodied shirt of James Bond, worn by Daniel Craig during the
filming of Casino Royale 104
Foreword
For a long time the ‘place’ of media was forgotten. Writers even argued that media
erased space, collapsed our sense of place. Yet all the time media was being made
in particular places, sometimes places in full public view, but generally places
which it was hard to access without the right industry-recognised credentials. And
from the beginning of modern media, the physical trajectories of people or things
in the media (celebrities, their clothes, possessions, sites of appearance) were
followed closely. The crowds lining the streets of Manhattan in August 1926 for
Rudolf Valentino’s funeral are only one obvious early example.
It was a while however before the role of media production sites in everyday
imagination became better noticed, first, as an object of tourism and second, as a
topic of academic analysis. The first involved particularly the rise of tourism to
sites of filming, television production and general media coverage, as part of the
wider growth in leisure visits to sites of what Dean MacCannell called ‘staged
authenticity’: media tourism gives ‘authentic access’ to the sites where media
(fictional or factual) ‘really does’ get produced. Second, from the mid to late 1990s
came the broadening of conventional agendas of media studies as a subject beyond
texts, production and audiences, to include the wider processes (such as tourism
and ritual) related to, and formed around, the media process.
I became interested in media tourism in the mid-1990s through this second
route, rather than through a particular passion for media tourism, only to realise
that I had always rather liked celebrity spotting, and ‘being there’ at the physical
places where moments in media narratives were enacted. In fact, the convergence
of an interest in media tourism and wider questions of media power had shaped
my attention to media ever since I stood fascinated in a field in Oxford in 1994
as then US President Bill Clinton’s helicopter landed for a visit to his university
alma mater. That fascination led to my concern with the intersections of media
and place in my first book The Place of Media Power.
Media tourism remains in my view an extremely rich topic for research,
whether anthropological, sociological or more closely textual and historical. Yet
until now it has awaited a writer who can draw together its various strands and
expound its key themes and features. That writer has now emerged in the person
of the young Dutch scholar Stijn Reijnders.
I have followed with pleasure how Stijn’s work has extended and enriched
previous ideas on media tourism, including my own, towards a broader model for
grasping the variety of media tourism and its dynamics. This book is a fascinating
and vivid summation of his work on media tourism so far and, in my view, makes
a decisive contribution towards finally grasping media tourism, and the practices