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554 staged authenticity
cities made to resemble theme parks, such as Las
Vegas. Classically, tourists were concerned about
the truth of their experiences: this is the exact place
where the Magna Carta was signed, this is the true
Crown of Thorns, this is unspoiled nature, and so
on. The issue of authenticity inhabits the tourist
experience. One finds melancholic or joyful
denials of the possibility of authentic experience
on the part of postmodernists, or a continued
striving for the authentic on the part of ecotourists
and others who refuses to give up the quest for the
real, the true, the authentic.
Researchers abandon all efforts to provide
expert philosophical or other judgement based on
external criteria regarding what is or is not
authentic. In the place of absolute and external
criteria of authenticity, a social constructivist
approach is proposed. Since almost every place
that tourists visit provides a local answer to the
question of authenticity, an anthropology of
actual practices of staging authenticity can be
substituted for absolutist determination of what is
authentic and what is not.
Even those attractions that might qualify as
authentic according to an external criterion �like
Leonardo's Last Supper or the Grand Canyon)
depend upon stagecraft for their presentation: they
are marked off from their surroundings, protectively
separated from their viewers, framed,
provided with special lighting and landscaping,
and explained by guides. The presentation apparatus
of tourism always intervenes between the
tourist and the attraction. The apparent authenticity
of any attraction is socially constructed,
whether or not it is real. Even those tourists who
seek authentic or real experiences mainly witness
the staging apparatus. The industry that grew
around the desire for direct experience of real
other peoples, places and things blocks the
possibility of an authentic experience in its drive
to supply such experiences: in the place of an
authentic native ritual is found a performance of an
`authentic native ritual' for tourists. What the
tourists see, even under conditions where the
greatest care has been taken to preserve the
authenticity of an attraction, is still the touristic
version of the natural, historical or ethnological
original.
Thus artificially constructed postmodern tour-
ism environments �such as the New York, New
York and Paris Experience hotels in Las Vegas)
are a logical outgrowth of the original tourist
desire for authenticity and the staging of authentic
experiences that occurred in the classical phase of
the development of global tourism until about
1975. Most of the original attractions are now
entirely superseded by their staging apparatus
and/or their artificial reconstructions and simulations.
Actually, there is a progression of increasing
apparent authenticity in the presentation, or
staging of attractions. The first stage is simply
setting up a distinction between ordinary everyday
occurrences and something that is worthy of a
touristic visit, the marking of an attraction that
separates it from its context. Already, the
experience is framed as much by the institutions
of tourism as by the desire of the tourist. On site,
the tourist will find aesthetic cues suggesting what
kind of experience one is supposed to be having:
solemn and uplifting, or fun, or edifying. In its
most developed forms, attractions are designed to
totalise the tourists' experience, such as to
immerse them in the everyday life of a reconstructed
sixteenth-century village where they can
engage in dialogue with living enactors. Alternatively,
attractions may provide the tourists with
privileged but highly controlled access `behind the
scenes', to the rooms where actual executions took
place, or a famous person was born.
A prevalent form of staged authenticity is the
`work display', which includes factory tours,
historical enactments of the everyday work
activities of pilgrims or museum reconstructions
of outmoded manufacturing techniques, to
name only a few. There is a common trajectory to
the development of former sites of work into
destinations. First, a place of work becomes a
display for tourists, like a beach where small
fishing boats were hauled out, nets repaired,
today's successes and failures discussed and
tomorrow's activities planned. The entire scene
is susceptible to becoming an object of touristic
consumption, to be taken in as an example of the
`picturesque'. As soon as development for tourism
begins, it is no longer necessary for fishing or
related activities to continue, so long as some of
the boats, nets and fishermen remain photogenically
arrayed as a reminder of their former