John Urry’s, The Tourist Gaze (1990), interpolates the discussion of tourism in pleasure sought in environments outside the “normal”. The intersectionality of cultural discourse and the interoperability of socioeconomic tourism act, in part, of “consuming goods and services which are in some sense unnecessary” (1). There is a corollary between “supposedly” generated forms of “pleasure experiences” which are desired for their atypical “set of different scenes” (1). “landscapes or townscapes [which] out of the ordinary” produce interest and curiosity (1).
The ‘untravelled geography, or person, carries heterogenous baggage, or preconceived notions, in anticipation of what will be an “encounter” (1). These set value of experiences, practices, and activities linked to a geometric power grid, “socially organise” and “systematise” ways of observing, or to “gaze” at what we encounter (1). That is, in terms of producing “unnecessary pleasure” endorsed by “professional experts” in “construct[ing] and develop[ing] our gaze as tourists” (1). How the gaze is ‘relayed’ is through a complex network of ethnographies.
The by-product, or reproduction of compounding interplay of signs, signifying culturally “constructed” dichotomies and “reinforced” binary systems (1). Precisely, the gaze is “constructed in relationship to its opposite, to non-tourist forms of social experience and consciousness;” wherein, ‘places’ lose agency in becoming an object for the “tourists’ gaze” (1). The tourists’ desire for the other “encounter” extends a periscopic vision in the ‘distant’ horizon observing the culture from ‘microsites’ of tourist space.
The cultural matrix of the tourists’ gaze weaves a binaristic web, coded by social indexes of “non-tourist” practices(1)—”this mode of gazing shows how tourists are in a way semioticians, reading the landscape for signifiers of certain pre-established notions of signs derived from various discourses of travel and tourism” (12-13). (provide picture of buidling) Cuba. Peering up from the busy streets of Havana was a “notion of departure,” (2) when I gazed at Che Guevara’s face imposed on a building in great scale.
I had not known at the time that I stood in Plaza de la Revolution. At certain times of the day the sun pronounced his figure and the bare backwash of the building seemed to be the appropriate backdrop. It was as if the whole structure was instantaneously alive. Beyond the stare of Guevara, my gaze traveled his outline to the foundation of the building. I observed what I thought was barren; unaware of the apartment buildings situated behind Guevara, the residents staring out from their balconies. I had but only recently seen them, but they perhaps, had already witnessed me.
I wondered what the view must have been like. A different horizon “contrast” to which I had observed previously lying on the resort beach (2). An “out of the ordinary experience,” certainly, it was a distinct pleasure, separate from the leisure the resort provided (2). Yet, there was an eerie ambience in seeing the apartment building without a single light seemingly more alive than the downtown condominiums that never shut off. I felt adrift. I was sprung from my senses by the Tour Guide beckoning us to continue, others were ready to experience more.
The sensation of gazing at Guevara’s image and the apartment buildings, at that moment, returned to thoughts of “home’ within a relatively short period of time” (3). The smile of the Tour Guide directed us, it projected a strong sense of duty as he enthusiastically engaged with us. The Guide was distinctly fond of his work, as a host who caters to guests a variety of rich cultural splendor. In contrast, I could not share the dignity in which my work offered—his liaison with his culture was a laissez faire relation to my own.
Touring implies a specific set of practices orientating the discourse of the tourist’s subject position. Before one ‘tours’ they are taught the semantics and language of a “circumscribed world by surrogate parents [who] relieve the tourist of responsibility and protect him/her from harsh reality” (7). However, children also rebel against authority, fixated by potential objects that are not “certain approved objects” (7). I had viewed Cuba through a set of “particular signs that indicate[d]” to me that the Guevara rendering was indeed “extraordinary, even though it does not seem to be so” (13).
Cuba was my “moon rock” (13). The “attraction” was not to the ministry building with Guevara’s stylised portrait, but a “sign referring to it that mark[ed] it out as distinctive[:] a similar seeing in art galleries when part of what is being gazed at is the name of the artist” (13). It is the “character of the gaze” which converts “day-dreaming and anticipation” into the pleasureseeking consumption of experiments ‘in reality’ that has already been “experience in their imagination” (13). Therein, the “dialect of novelty and insatiability at the heart of contemporary consumerism” (13).
The essence of Urry’s claim is the practice of tourism “necessarily involves day-dreaming and anticipation of new or different experience [but] which sub daydreams are not autonomous; they involve working over advertising and other media-generated sets of signs, many of which relate very clearly to complex processes of social emulation” (14). A “substantial proportion” (3) of us wandered our gaze, ‘bubbled together as the social gust of our Host’s voice ushered us through the turbulence of Havana. The turbulence seemed minimised however, similar to when the pilot navigates his/her course to avoid any ‘offset to our promenade.
The “socialised forms of provision” (3) led us unto a linear trajectory, objective pathways, from museum to distillery, heritage and diplomacy, a catalogue of staple sites of Cuban persona drawing in the “mass character of our gaze” (3). Aside from the group, we daydreamed something else: the fantasy of urban life on Cuban avenues were not monolithic crowds but chromatic parades of engaged people. My anticipation precede me, the “literature” (3) Hemingway wrote was situated ‘here’, but I had only read about it over ‘there’.
We wanted out ‘there’. During our lunch break, we declined, and slipped into the patterned silk of the social ictures in or stream, into the flux of the crowd. We felt a much “greater sensitivity to the visual elements” (3) than we ‘normally’ encounter at ‘home’. The Cuban architecture was kaleidoscopic. Restoration and building-work are done frequently–albeit without machinery–what is dismantled is replaced by artisanship. Homes are brushed with the hue of colourful pastels, donning the outside with laurels of flowers, vienna windows which arches outwards in whimsical embrace, roads which seemed built more for people now, than the ’50 Chevrolets which hummed with decorum down cobbled streets.
We noticed we were outside tourist perimeters wandering the residential. Our vision was then objective: to take as many pictures in order to “reproduce” and “recapture” the sensation we felt (3). It was impossible to fully express in one picture, our delight, thus we sought many different angles, lighting, spaces, and places; a “collection of signs” in search of signalling the exemplary ‘otherness’ of Cuban community-life (3). She gazed at an open bay-window etched out of stone.
She stopped, looked through her lens, and snapped the picture. We were startled when we noticed an elderly individual seated just inside the window. She was embarrassed, an invasion of privacy for sure; || shirked as he slowly raised himself from the chair expecting him to express his discontent. The man lifted his hand to delicately wave at our passing then sat back down to continue his sightseeing. I had thought in our experimental mode of’touring’ that we were travellers.
We were mainly couriers searching for the ‘inauthentic’ that would contrast with the realities of homelife. I was seeing Cuba through the eyes of home, and not as home itself. The elder, he was a sight-seer; we were sight-searchers. Questions: How do media mediums (advertising, social media, popular culture) influence or mediate our decisions to travel? What the are similarities, or differences, between a sightseer and a sight-‘searcher’? The selfie-stick: Is it the ‘neo’-walking stick for travellers, or another accessory for backpacking?
