Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999

12 Popular Culture Review The tourist identity, in the end, can only suffer in contrast to such a romantic ideal. For tourists, there is little work to be done; it will be easy, and it promises comfort. Though this image may attract our more hedonistic urges, it does, nonetheless, falter aesthetically in comparison to the romantic traveler. It is no wonder that many of us wish to distance ourselves from such a demarcation. But in so doing, we misrepresent what it is we do when we do indeed travel. Moreover, we deny the effects of those travels on ourselves and the world at large. Jonathan Culler notes that, inadvertently, we thus become what we fear. He writes, “Ferocious denigration of tourists is in part an attempt to convince oneself that one is not a tourist. The desire to distinguish between tourists and real travelers is a part of tourism-integral to it rather than outside it or beyond it” (156). Culler makes a provocative connection between travelers and tourists, and reiter ates MacCannell. Any tourist can always find someone with more touristic char acteristics to hate. The back-packer looks down on the man in a rental car who looks down on the crowds in a tour bus, and these people, in turn, may look down on those who stay at home watching The Travel Channel. All of these people are travelers, and all are tourists; the words are synonymous. This need in many tour ists to distance themselves from one another creates an interesting phenomenon: while partaking in a thoroughly communal activity-notions of the lone, romantic wanderer notwithstanding-the individual participants are encouraged to feel hos tility toward their partners in the process and deny their connections wholly or partially. No matter what term we choose to describe ourselves as we travel, all tourists in one form or another seek to escape from their daily lives, but it remains unclear what it is we escape to. The discussion above addresses the nature of the tourist, but a question remains: what is the nature of the tourist experience? How do the back-packing tourist, the automobile tourist, the bus tourist, and even the vicarious tourist at home respond to their travels? Though many critics have en tered this debate and have responded to The Tourist, MacCannelTs study remains invaluable in examining how we define the tourist experience. MacCannell refers to tourists as “sightseers” who spread throughout the world searching for experi ence which they consume voraciously. He notes, as well, that, despite the protes tations from the good-old-days-of-travel camp, all tourists seek “deeper involve ment” with the cultures they visit “to some degree” (10). The phrase “to some degree” is a crucial one, of course. For those who insist on a definitive and abso lute distinction between traveler and tourist, MacCannell allows for some solace. Yes, everyone is a tourist, but there are variations on behavior within that defini tive realm. One tourist’s desire for “deeper involvement” with the Grand Canyon, for example, may be satisfied by a cursory glance over the edge, then a return to the gift shop; another’s degree of interest may only be met by a ten-day hike into

Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 18