Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 24

Popular Culture Review

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Jonathan Culler, “The Semiotics of Tourism,” Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its
Institutions (Norman: Oklahoma UP, 1988) 153-67.
As a macabre and sad, but not surprising, turn of events, a Parisian Hotel, the Hotel
Odeon at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, is offering private tours that retrace Diana’s last
minutes, according to the Associated Press. The tour goes from the Ritz Hotel to the
crash site at the Pont de I’Alma tunnel, then to the hospital where she was pronounced
dead. The price, as of August 1998, is free to hotel guests and twenty-five dollars for
non-guests. For sixty-seven dollars, tourists can ride in a dark Mercedes similar to the
model in which the accident occurred. See “Hotel offers Di’s last ride in Mercedesfor $67,” The Orlando Sentinel (14 August 1998) A-11.
3. “Modem Tourism,” Blackwoods Magazine, 64.394 (August 1848) 185-89.
4. “Americans Abroad,” The Nation 27.692 (3 October 1878) 208-209.
5. See Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York:
Atheneum, 1985). Boorstin’s comments are in a chapter titled “From Traveler to Tour
ist,” which argues that tourism threatens to undermine our ability to distinguish be
tween reality and image, and we increasingly crave shallow experiences. See also
Maxine Feifer, Tourism in History (New York: Stein & Day, 1986).
6 . For especially helpful discussions of tourist experience, see Paul Fussell, “Travel, Tour
ism, and International Understanding,” Thank Godfor the Atom Bomb and Other Es
says (New York: Summit, 1988) 151-76; Denison Nash, “Tourism as a Form of Impe
rialism,” Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology o f Tourism, Ed. Valene L. Smith (Phila
delphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1977) 33-47; Jost Krippendort, The Holiday-Makers
(Oxford: Heinemann, 1987); and Erik Cohen, “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experi
ences,” Sociology 13.2 (1979) 179-201.
7. For the definitive treatment of leisure, see Thorstein Veblen, The Theory o f the Leisure
Class (1899, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1973).
See As You Like It, Act II, scene vii, line 138.
8.
9. See MacCannell, The Tourist for an extended discussion of authenticity, especially
page 105.
10. For helpful discussions of authenticity, see Dean MacCannell, The Tourist, especially
14-15; Daniel Boorstin, The Image, especially 252; Erik Cohen, “Authenticity and
Commoditization in Tourism” Annals o f Tourism Research 15.3 (1988) 371-86; and
Chris Ryan, “The Tourist Experience,” Recreational Tourism (London and New York:
Routledge, 1991) 35-49.
11. For a valuable discussion of multiple tourist interests see Chris Ryan, “The Tourist
Experience,” Recreational Tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 1991) 35-49,
especially 45-7.

Works Cited
Boorstin, Daniel. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York:
Atheneum, 1985.
Cohen, E[rik]. “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences.” Sociology 13.2 (1979):
179-201.