Dark Tourism: Bearing Witness or Crass Spectacle?

Eric said, “Much of modern-day travel revolves around scripted experiences. Package deals. Group tours.”

I think this is one of the prime points that draws people to the “dark” aspects of tourism. People are searching for a more authentic opportunity to see a place. It’s an opportunity to learn and see and be impacted on your vacation, not just to get a sun-tan and have a drink.

I do think that most people who would do a tour of a devestated places like New Orleans ninth ward couldn’t help but come away being impacted emotionally, even if they just went originally for the “entertainment value.”

I do know that I was surprised how impacted I was seeing the World Trade Center site in New York City, especially in visiting the church across the street, which had a series of pictures from the September 11th attacks. I hadn’t expected to get much out of seeing the World Trade Center site, and actually came away feeling both incredibly sad at the loss of life and also incredibly bouyed by the heroic efforts of everyone on that day.

Interesting post. I think it is important to question our motives if we’re seeking to be responsible travllers.
From my experience, visiting the Toul Sleng museum in Cambodia (the site of the Khmer Rogue’s main prison and place of torture) was a life changing experience. I went with a friend who is a humanitarian worker in the country and some young Khmer high school students. They feel it is important that visitors to their country visit the museum to gain greater understanding of what happened to their aunties, grandfathers etc.
For me, it resulted in joining a group of friends in forming a foundation to help fund the tertiary education of disadvantaged high school students.
I don’t think I would have been so moved to take action if I had not really grasped the atrocity of what happened by visiting Toul Sleng.
In saying that, Toul Sleng has managed to avoid the ‘souveneir gift shop’ style of dark tourism that does exist.

If it makes you feel any better, every local New Orleanian I’ve spoken to digs the dark tours, because they bring eyes to the scenes of still devastated areas and they bring money to the neighborhoods that are trying to rebuild.
They are not to be confused with ghosts tours and the like.

Hmm… Jeela mentioned war memorials, cemeteries, etc, and it’s funny – for some reason I’ve never categorized them as “dark tourism” the way I do for the concentration camp tours, the sites in Cambodia, the growing number of genocide-related sites in Rwanda, etc. I’ve been trying to figure out why that is, and I think it’s because – in the case of WW1 and WW2 monuments anyway – I see it as part of my own history, so there’s no fear of feeling like a voyeur into someone else’s troubles, or any concern that suffering is being exploited. Visiting the Normandy beaches or the Somme monument, I wouldn’t think twice about whether I was going in with the right attitude or capturing it appropriately – all of that would be assumed.

Does it make sense to draw a distinction like that? And if I’m so confident that I can approach those war monuments respectfully, do I need to worry so much about how I go about seeing the rest?

(Of course, as far as I know WW1 and WW2 memorials are generally free of charge, which helps to make it feel less like “entertainment”.

Jim, I don’t think anyone was comparing Katrina to the Holocaust in terms of scale of suffering or numbers killed – just comparing the experience of visiting the sites of so much death. But the fact that fewer people were killed does not lessen the horror for those involved – calling it “just a storm” is pretty callous.

I think the ideal that most of these “dark tourism” sites strive for, or at least should strive for, is for the visitor to gain some greater understanding or knowledge of suffering, so that in future they are more likely to react with empathy – instead of, say, using tragedy as an opportunity to take political cheapshots at the people they disagree with.

Interesting article which raises the unsurprising notion of ethics within dark tourism, and general questions of motivation behind ‘consumption’. Of course, the term ‘dark tourism’ is multi-dimensional and exists in various ‘shades’. Equally, the motivations (and consequences) for ‘consuming’ the so-called dark tourism product will rest on many factors. As dark tourism provides a socially acceptable environment upon which contemporary visitors gaze upon ‘Other’ death, perhaps we need to consider how we, ourselves in modern (Western)
society, confront death and dying. With increasing medicalization and secularlization, have our experiences of death and dying been largely relocated to a ‘back region’ where media image of the macabre now dominates? Perhaps, dark tourism is simply a contemporary mechanism to ‘contemplate’ mortality (and morality), either explicity or implicity?

I’m probably too late for any of this to matter but…

If someone is running a “tour” to the 9th, is probably put little–if any–money back into it. I can almost guarantee you that. And as of 2007, New Orleans tourism is doing just fine–the problem is that politicians seem weary about putting that money back into “the bowl”.

http://blog.nola.com/tpmoney/2007/10/number_of_tourists_visiting_lo.html

I think there’s a thick line that separates the Lower 9th from the Gulag/Auschwitz/Toul Sleng. Having toured the lower 9th and Auschwitz, I would say the difference would be between admiring someone’s scar and staring at someone’s gaping wound. Those homes are not abandoned (completely), and the little teddy bears among the debris was probably owned by a living child. I don’t think its quite as macabre to be fascinated by a memorial as it is to be fascinated by–well, the fresh scene of a mass murder.

There was a great term I first heard in New Orleans: Voluntourism. Walking around the Habitat for Humanity sites in Musician’s village, I was startled by the number of people who were literally taking their 2 weeks of holiday to travel to NOLA to work; hard labor, 5 days a week.

Very interesting article. I will definitely add this to my travel and tourism geography course that I’m teaching.

The discussions about dark tourism reminds me of a few things.

Ever since having stumbled upon Michael Moore’s films and their discussions about Flint, MI, I’ve always wanted to go there to see just how bad it is. Same with Detroit, MI. Is this dark tourism?

How about visiting ghost towns or abandoned sections of communities, such as Chernobyl?

During my study abroad program, I went to a number of cemeteries and war sites where there are trenches, bombed bunkers, etc. Are they dark tourism too?

And while studying abroad, I went to a few museums that focused on various aspects of war. The Imperial War Museum in London, England, had a section that provides a multi-sensory (sound, smell, feel, etc) experience of what it was like to be in the trenches and a graphical provoking display related to the Holocaust. Again, is this dark tourism?

I’d be interested in knowing what are your responses to these different examples.

Eric – a fantistic and truly thought provoking article. I think you’re right to draw distinctions of two classes of dark tourism – entertainment & personal growth.

Certainly for me, it’s about getting to understand the place I am in. Often the ‘dark tourist’ locations give an phenomenal insight into what has shaped the area that you are are in, and the world in general. I think it can help you to adopt a more rounded approach to the world and be more understanding.

Another late entrant sorry! I’m actually studding this topic at the moment and have come across some interesting perspectives:

one is the idea that war cemeteries are also classified as dark tourist attractions – they are, however most people agree that such places can be put on a sliding scale from white, through grey to black, in terms of how ‘dark’ the tourist site is. Therefore places like the Taj Mahal (the tomb of a much loved wife) would be towards the lighter end of the scale, while Auschwitz would be closer to the darker end.

Also, there is this idea that in modern day society death is very much hidden from most of us. We only ever experience death if a relative or someone close to us dies. The theory goes that because we are so unfamiliar with our own mortality, a desire exists to explore this; one way to do this is by visiting dark tourist destinations. The theory goes on to say that we conceive this as a much more ‘comfortable’ and socially acceptable way to explore death than contemplating it in the confines of our own room, often leading to feelings of depression and terror.

Another concept I found interesting was the ‘need’ for the memory of certain events to be maintained; the same idea of “lest we forget”. Interesting because most people will agree that some things should not be forgotten, but who then is the best person to choose what should be remembered and what should be preserved? A victim of the atrocity? Or are they too emotionally involved? An outsider, not directly affected by the atrocity? Or are they too removed to understand all dimensions of the event. And then of course – what is the most appropriate way or communicating it to a wider audience, which respects all affected parties, which maintains integrity and addresses financial issues of maintaining the site and/or raising money for affected peoples and areas of the atrocity concerned.

After researching this topic for a while now I get the sense that there is a separation between the academic interpretation of dark tourism, and the human interpretation. Even if we do seek dark tourist site to explore our own mortality in an attempt to confront and understand it – does that make it ok to do so? I think Eric Daams successfully brings the issue back to where it started and where it ultimately finished: To us. To the tourists paying to visit these places and deciding if it is ethical to do so. An answer to which no amount of academia can solve.

I guess it is our responsibility as fellow humans to be informed about a wider range of issues associated with dark tourism, beyond its ‘entertainment’ value (who are the stakeholders, how important are their beliefes, what are our own motives, how do these affect the stakeholders concerned). But ultimately the choice to engage in dark tourism and to what degree solely relies on us – to bear witness, or to make these sites another entertaining spectacle.