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'Tropical environment' + girl's ass - any real context = another formula for travel porn. Image by Justin Ornellas
LAST WEEK we examined rhetoric in travel writing, the way it’s often used unwittingly, and how this can result in an unintended “packaging” of cultures, people, and place. This week we look at two specific forms this “packaging” takes: travel “porn” and plight writing.
[DISCLAIMER: I feel compelled to state that I don't really look at writing (title of this piece aside) as a spectrum of value judgments. My intention in these "lessons" isn't to judge one kind of writing as "good" and another "bad," but to identify common patterns I see as an editor receiving submissions. The goal is simply to deconstruct causal relationships between certain elements of language.]
Travel “porn”
As travelers, many of us experience an initial sense of “charm” when arriving at a new, unfamiliar place. If we only stay a few days, oftentimes this sense of the “charm of the unfamiliar” can define our experience there.
If, however, we remain in a place for a while, the little details that at first seemed unfamiliar — customs, food, clothing, language — will, little by little, begin to normalize. In this way, we realize that ultimately there is nothing “exotic” or “foreign” in the world but that — to quote Robert Louis Stevenson — it is only the traveler who is foreign.
Nevertheless, travel writers — and, in particular, travel industry marketing — have for decades used abstractions of the “foreign” or the “exotic” as a kind of rhetoric to “sum up” a place, culture, and / or people:
- The “sunny” Mediterranean
- The “friendly” Costa Ricans
- “Romantic” Italy
While these kinds of descriptions may be effective in advertising or marketing, when they appear in travel narrative, they have the (often unintended) effect of turning a piece into “travel porn.”
As in traditional pornography — when sex acts are shown explicitly, usually without any “story” or context — travel “porn” occurs when details are either taken out of context or used without sufficient context in order to produce a certain effect. Example:
A bit dizzy and with a face crusted with sea-salt, I walked over sand that had the consistency and appearance of powdered sugar to the nearest palm tree, under which a small Thai man was standing. He held a tray of ice cold washcloths rolled up into neat pinwheels.
“Welcome to Phi-Phi and the Zeavola Resort,” he exclaimed, with a broad smile typical of the Thai people.
It’s the very last part, the “broad smile typical,” that turns this into porn. The point isn’t whether “broad smiles” are “typical” of Thai people or not. The point is that the author either fails to recognize the context of the scene or is deliberately leaving out a key element of the context: As a point person for the resort, the “small Thai man” has a material interest in giving a “broad smile.” But because this isn’t recognized transparently, we as readers are basically “fed” this behavior as “typical” for all Thai people, similar to an advertisement for “romantic” Italy or “friendly” Canada.
Here are a couple different ways you could rewrite that same paragraph so instead of coming off as porn, it’s narrated transparently:
A bit dizzy and with a face crusted with sea-salt, I walked over sand that had the consistency and appearance of powdered sugar to the nearest palm tree, under which stood a Thai man whose name I later learned was Kamol.
“Welcome to Phi-Phi and the Zeavola Resort,” he told our group, with a smile that seemed genuine beyond just his role as a greeter for the Zeavola. Later, as he told me a little about growing up on Phi-Phi, I realized Kamol was always smiling, and I couldn’t help but feel good around him.
Or:
A bit dizzy and with a face crusted with sea-salt, I walked over sand that had the consistency and appearance of powdered sugar to the nearest palm tree, under which a small Thai man was standing. He held a tray of ice cold washcloths rolled up into neat pinwheels.
“Welcome to Phi-Phi and the Zeavola Resort,” he exclaimed, with a smile that seemed forced to the point of deliberately mocking itself, the resort, and the uniform he was wearing, making me like him instantly.
Note how in both of these variations the man is treated as a character, whereas in the original he is more of a caricature, a stand-in for “Thai people.”
Poverty porn, or “plight” writing
The irony of rhetorical devices such as the generalization above (“small Thai man” w/ “broad smile”) is that they typically have the opposite effect of what the author intended. In the original example, the author likely meant for the “broad smile” to convey her good feelings / experience in Thailand. She probably didn’t realize she was creating a stereotype / caricature out of the man.
Nowhere are such “good intentions” undermined more frequently than when writers address subjects with serious social issues such as injustice, poverty, or genocide, or in which the characters are engaged in an ongoing struggle or plight that is far outside the author’s realm of experience. Although the subject matter couldn’t be more different from the “travel porn” described above, the mechanism is the same: By failing to narrate events transparently, the narrator reduces characters into caricatures or “advertisements” to illustrate a certain emotion, typically a “breathless outrage.” Example:
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico City working at an orphanage. The kids there were so loving and disciplined, yet they were no strangers to the darkness of this world. Their little eyes had witnessed the murder of parents and siblings. Prostitution and drug wars. The orphanage did everything in their power to care for and protect these children, but the realities of life in Mexico City still pervaded their existence. By day two of my trip, gunshots and screams sliced through the air as a result of increasing youth gang activity. By day three our area was declared a State of Emergency by the president, all government entities shut down, media outlets blocked, and the streets deemed too dangerous for even daily commutes. By day four the list of those murdered grew significantly, sparking citizen protests in the city center just opposite our walls. Yet amidst the violence, days at the orphanage were filled with the warmth of joy and laughter.
The point here, of course, isn’t faulting the author’s intention. The issue is that the outrage (and other emotions, such as the admiration for children’s resilience) is expressed rhetorically (similar to being “fed” as in other examples above), essentially forcing or assuming the reader’s agreement. The author has failed to transparently narrate exactly what she saw and heard, instead packaging it up (“Their little eyes had witnessed the murder of parents and siblings,”) and thus “flattening out” a complex set of characters, issues, and stories into a single plane of outrage.
Appropriating the subject’s struggle as your own
A common occurrence with “plight” writing is that the author becomes so emotional that he or she begins to confuse or appropriate the subject’s “plight” as part of his or her own personal struggle. In general, the higher the emotional “stakes” of a piece — particularly pieces dealing with genocide, violence, poverty, and other dire social issues — the more transparent and explicit the narrator must make his or her relationships to other characters in the story. A narrator must never forget that he / she will go home after a trip, while his / her subject will remain there.
Here’s an example. In a piece about volunteering as a doula in Africa, a narrator describes a horrifying scene:
Working quickly, he opens the uterus and pulls out a baby girl whose head appears normal despite hydrocephalus. There is a terrible hair lip and cleft palate. She is whisked off to be resuscitated. It has all happened in half an hour. By morning the baby is dead.
But only a few paragraphs away, she describes her own travels in a similar style:
The plane has four propellers, bald tires, and an interior in shocking disrepair. On this flight, there is no cabin crew. As we are taxiing in the Rent-A-Wreck plane, I smile bravely.
Herein the writer effectively juxtaposes her own “struggle” of travel in Africa with the terrible ordeals faced by local women, seeming to include or conflate her difficulties with the overall sense of “hardship.”
We’ll follow up next week with another new excerpted lesson that further illustrates these points with the concepts of pathos and the self-aware vs self-absorbed vs self-effacing / self-deprecating narrator. In the meantime, you can learn more at our travel writing program at MatadorU. 
*MatadorU’s curriculum goes beyond the typical travel writing class to help you progress in every aspect of your career as a travel journalist.
David Miller
David Miller is Senior Editor of Matador (winner of 2010 and 2011 Lowell Thomas awards for travel journalism) and Director of Curricula at MatadorU. Follow him @dahveed_miller.
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Makes me think of pornomisería (pornomisery), the voyeuristic treatment of abjection (also one of my favorite words).
Much as I love reading these articles on how to improve writing, I can’t help but notice a double-standard at Matador. On the one hand, we’re encouraged to stay away from these techniques, but on the other hand, we read Nat Geo Storyteller finalist entries that use these exact techniques. In “Traveling the West Bank on an empty water bottle” Miss Arent appropriates the water struggles between the Palestinians and Israelis with her own empty water bottle, as if being thirsty that one day equals those living there.
thx for commenting ellyn.
i didn’t read emily’s piece as appropriating struggles, but illustrating how they’re ubiquitous and always right under the surface in nearly every situation.
I understand your point, and felt that about most of the piece (don’t get me wrong- I love her writing!) Maybe it’s the last line that bothers me- her wanting to steal water, just like the Palestinians stealing water from the pipes.
Also, with the examples- I don’t have a problem with the narrator in the example describing a flight as terrifying- I’d be scared in that plane, too! Maybe I just don’t see the connection between a scary flight and a scary birth. Does she explicitly compare the flight to the birth? Or is the whole piece “scary” to her? Perhaps it’s just that the examples are out of context, and seeing the entire example would clarify things. Thanks for responding! I appreciate it
Yeah, that was my initial reaction to the plane flight bit as well: what’s wrong with that? Looking at it more, maybe axing the last sentence would help, and removing the narrator entirely from that particular scene, letting readers make their own reactions? Any pointers appreciated.
In any case, keep them coming, David; I’ve been impressed with your writing workshop-type articles.
I can definitely understand your perspective on this Ellyn. I think there’s a very thin line we try to balance on in plight writing, and the key is to keep your writing as transparent as possible. Go back and have another read. The piece is made up purely of objective observations…I’m only writing what I directly saw and heard. The reference to my water bottle isn’t an outright comparison between my “plight” and the Palestinians’, but rather a tool to demonstrate the fucked up irony of the settlers’ concern for my thirst and their simultaneous dismissal of the Palestinian’s thirst. It’s an illustration of how the conflict has blinded people to the basic humanity in one another.
Thanks for the insightful comment. You’ve forced me to go back and reassess my reasons for writing the article, and while I came to the same conclusion in the end, that process is valuable for any writer. I hope to read some of your writing on Matador in the future.
Thanks for responding, Emily. I agree that there is a fine line, and you did a great job keeping it as transparent as possible for the majority of the article. I also agree that the irony of offering you a drink was messed up, and noticed it in the first reading. However, it’s the last line of the article that gets to me: “If they hadn’t offered, I’d have stolen one when no one was watching.” I’ve re-read it many times before each post (to be sure of my feelings and not to come across as a simple-minded troll), and to my perception, it still feels a bit like an appropriation. But I have no suggestions, and realize there is a eloquence to using “steal” a few lines earlier, and “stolen” right then.. We may just have to agree to disagree!
And not to pick on your article- I’ve been reading Matador for over 2 years now, and there are always bits and pieces that seem to contradict these tips- I try to chalk it up to there being exceptions to every rule, or the old “needing to know the rules before breaking them” phrase. It’s just that this time, these two articles were read in succession, causing me to question the techniques.
Glad I could at least be of some help to your writing, and I’m appreciative of being able to have this discussion with you and Mr. Miller.
Thanks Ellyn…it should be said that over the course of the past 2 years the editorial vision at Matador has shifted/evolved considerably, especially over the past 6 months or so. It’s a continuous journey and process.
I noticed that! The big upheaval in the editing staff back around the new year.
Travel porn and “plight” writing – purely fascinating. Not only for writing, but an excellent reminder of how we travelers view the “exotic” scenes around us.
Then again… LOL – yup, the nutsoness of Ho Chi Minh City surely amazed me when I first arrived. But… I’ve now lived here 8 months and… this zany-lovable place still astounds me!
This article gets me excited about writing. Thanks David!
This article challenges me to be more careful in what I write and the comparisons I draw. Whilst I try hard not to be judgemental and to let readers drawn their own conclusions, it is difficult not to view places and people through the lens of your own experience.
Writing is such a subjective thing, what one person finds appealing, another finds irritating. Whilst I find these articles interesting, and hope to learn from them, I’m also trying to develop my own style. The last thing I want to be is a clone!
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Equally egregious and much more widespread are sentences like ”I walked over sand that had the consistency and appearance of powdered sugar to the nearest palm tree” Please just use “look and feel” or some other quick adjectives rather than slowing momentum with eight syllables of unrewarding language describing a somewhat trite beach travel phenomenon. Also, “as he told me a little about growing up on Phi-Phi, I realized Kamol was always smiling, and I couldn’t help but feel good around him” Do we really connect on a personal level with every employee of a resort? The point here is not to spend any time describing an interaction with this man unless something extraordinary or interesting happens, not to replace the meaningless “smiling Thai” moment with an insufferable attempt to show how culturally sensitive you are. In neither case is he treated as an equal.
Is it bad that I am not a fan of over-flowery descriptive travel writing. The example:
“A bit dizzy and with a face crusted with sea-salt, I walked over sand that had the consistency and appearance of powdered sugar to the nearest palm tree, under which a small Thai man was standing. He held a tray of ice cold washcloths rolled up into neat pinwheels.”
To me it sounds like a fiction writer. I know I am not comfortable writing like this myself (I feel like I sound like an over-achieving college applicant with a thesaurus). I understand the benefits of it, and the reasoning behind such flourishy writing styles, but there is something about it I don’t trust as a reader. I don’t mind this style when reading fiction; but when reading non-fiction for some reason, it seems forced and boring to me.I see many, many published travel articles, in highly reputed magazines, written like this. My main question is, is this considered a better, or more proper way, to write about travel that I should learn/practice doing more? P.S. I am by no means a writer. I am a photographer. But I would like to improve my writing skills.
hey dani,
thx for the comment and the questions.
i do not think of someone’s reading or writing preferences in terms of value judgments. to me it’s neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ but just your preference at the present moment.
my intention wasn’t for that example to be used as a model for a ‘better’ or ‘more proper way to write about travel’ but to show how the narrator moves from these descriptions of the ‘tray of ice cold washcloths’ to the man, almost as if he were another kind of ‘object’ as opposed to a human being.
i don’t really look at ‘style’ or ‘form’ as having any innate value. to me form is function. some forms are very dense and layered such as david foster wallace’s writing, because the function of his writing is (at least partly) an expression of densely layered thoughts and observations and emotions even on the most minute object. by contrast, tom gates’ writing style tends to be very people-centered and ‘readable’ or ‘familiar’as it looks at place in terms of who you find there.
they are very different, but i love each one for what it does.
Thank you, David, always. Writing, for me, is nothing more and nothing less than awareness: both of the subject and the object (the writer/the written).
I remember (over ten years ago now) sitting with a group of eight writers who had signed up, as I had, for a class designed to help us “Finish Your Book.” A month later I did finish my first book, and ten years later, my second. As we all went around the table and told of our reasons for being there, I said it was because I’d read all the ‘how-to-write-books’ I could find, and now it was (finally) time to write mine.
Regardless of what I said in and to that group, I still find much in articles such as this. You have, as you do so well, made me aware, more aware. Whether I “agree” or not, is not the point. The point is to be more aware, and I am.
There is a Buddhist saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Meaning (metaphorically, for me) that if you meet someone who “has the answer” that is not the true Buddha. And so it goes with words. There are no capital-R rules (that’s the freakin’ FUN of all this:) but there are things that work, things that don’t . . . and – hold on! – those things can change (though some – Thank Buddha – are the literary equivalent of bellbottoms) . . .
To all those who put pen to paper, fingers to the keyboard, whatever, I want to share something one of my writing heroes (Barry Lopez) wrote at the end of his introduction to “About This Life”: ” . . . it can take a lifetime to say what you mean . . . you watch, you set it down. Then you try again.”
felt a sense of something like ‘travel’ when i read you comment, stoke.
these posts are not meant as ‘answers’ and i’m glad you didn’t interpret them in that way.
i feel like all i’m ever doing is identifying certain patterns.
the patterns themselves aren’t rules and can’t be thought of as right or wrong.
they’re almost like waves.
As a beginning writer, this was a great article. I’m autistic and I hope to write about autism from the POV of someone who actually has it, and I think the section on “plight writing” could be applied well to a lot of the non-autistic/”normal” writing out there about disability, including autism. As a genre, “plight writing” seems similar to what’s sometimes called “inspiration porn” or “cripple porn,” which uses stories of disabled individuals both to cast those individuals as one-dimensionally courageous or innocent (similar to the smiling Thai man in the “travel porn” section), and to cast their lives as simply fodder for the emotional uplifting of the non-disabled. anyway, that’s what I saw. great piece.