Disaster Tourism
I was reading this today, from a paper entitled: “Fast Spectacle: Reflections on Hurricane Katrina and the Contradictions of Spectacle.” It is from the academic journal “Fast Capitalism.” Here is an excerpt:
Beginning in January 2006, Gray Line New Orleans Bus began offering its “Hurricane Katrina: America’s Worst Catastrophe!” tour through devastated neighborhoods. The bus tour presents flooded neighborhoods as spectacular and entertaining sites to visit. New Orleans neighborhoods affected by Katrina are remade into consumable spectacles and viewers constituted as consumers who are constrained to pay the tour fee to view devastation. What is important is that the constitution of flooded neighborhoods as tourist sites intimates local culture as a spectacle to the extent that local history, residential life, and neighborhoods are (re)presented in such a way to emphasize the dramatic, spectacular, and the unusual. Disaster tourism is built upon the commodification of leisure and the construction of otherwise ordinary places as exotic attractions that can deliver extraordinary experiences. The rise of disaster tourism in New Orleans reflects the spatialization of time whereby symbols, images, and motifs about the past are frozen in fragments of urban space and manufactured as saleable commodities.
An advertisement featured on local New Orleans tourist information, from FrenchQuarter.com
Another thing related to this topic is this video by a local group called 2 cent, and here is link to their video.
Both of these things really got my “wheels turning,” if you will, about this whole idea of spectacle. On the one hand, the devastation is something that we don’t want to wash over and is important for people, both who live here and outside of New Orleans, to see the devastation and to understand that there are many challenges that residents of the Lower 9th Ward face. If one turns on the television it would be easy to assume that New Orleans is back up and running: the Superdome is home to the beloved New Orleans Saints, and Bourbon Street is back and as full of debauchery as ever. Take a walk in any other direction however, and a different story can be told, and one that should be told more often. If the true nature of ‘recovery’ were revealed to the nation, I believe people would continue to be ashamed at our government for the slow pace of recovery, and more pressure could be placed on the right people to make things happen faster.
This being said, many tours aren’t accountable to the residents. Gray Line Katrina disaster tours assures its riders that it uses the utmost sensitivity, however many residents feel like they are animals in a zoo. Tours don’t speak with residents, they don’t stop, and none of the money that goes to purchasing a ticket is returned to the devastated communities themselves. Also the way the tour is advertised turns the devastation into something to be seen for the sake of entertainment: “An eyewitness account of the events surrounding the most devastating natural - and man-made - disaster on American soil!” Exclamation point!! This is not done with “utmost sensitivity.” Also, the point that the 2 cent video raises is what incentive do these companies have in helping with rebuilding if there is money to be made in showcasing disaster? Also, if you are only focusing on the disaster and you aren’t showing any aspects of recover, then the tour portrays the community as devoid of hope, which is damaging and far from the truth.
To be fair, I personally haven’t taken a Gray Line tour, and I don’t wish to single them out as the only company guilty of unaccountable tours. What is truly needed is a tour that is by residents and that the majority of proceeds goes to help with rebuilding. This would be a way to show the disaster, which is important, but to do so in a way that is fair and accountable to the neighborhood, and those who take the tour as well. The people who go on these tours, many of them might mean well in the hopes of learning and showing some kind (although minimal) solidarity with the pain of the residents of lower 9. Unfortunately, they are being duped and none of their money goes to helping any kind of recovery.
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