Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 24

Popular Culture Review 18 Jonathan Culler, “The Semiotics of Tourism,” Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Norman: Oklahoma UP, 1988) 153-67. As a macabre and sad, but not surprising, turn of events, a Parisian Hotel, the Hotel Odeon at Saint-Germain-des-Pres, is offering private tours that retrace Diana’s last minutes, according to the Associated Press. The tour goes from the Ritz Hotel to the crash site at the Pont de I’Alma tunnel, then to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. The price, as of August 1998, is free to hotel guests and twenty-five dollars for non-guests. For sixty-seven dollars, tourists can ride in a dark Mercedes similar to the model in which the accident occurred. See “Hotel offers Di’s last ride in Mercedesfor $67,” The Orlando Sentinel (14 August 1998) A-11. 3. “Modem Tourism,” Blackwoods Magazine, 64.394 (August 1848) 185-89. 4. “Americans Abroad,” The Nation 27.692 (3 October 1878) 208-209. 5. See Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum, 1985). Boorstin’s comments are in a chapter titled “From Traveler to Tour ist,” which argues that tourism threatens to undermine our ability to distinguish be tween reality and image, and we increasingly crave shallow experiences. See also Maxine Feifer, Tourism in History (New York: Stein & Day, 1986). 6 . For especially helpful discussions of tourist experience, see Paul Fussell, “Travel, Tour ism, and International Understanding,” Thank Godfor the Atom Bomb and Other Es says (New York: Summit, 1988) 151-76; Denison Nash, “Tourism as a Form of Impe rialism,” Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology o f Tourism, Ed. Valene L. Smith (Phila delphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1977) 33-47; Jost Krippendort, The Holiday-Makers (Oxford: Heinemann, 1987); and Erik Cohen, “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experi ences,” Sociology 13.2 (1979) 179-201. 7. For the definitive treatment of leisure, see Thorstein Veblen, The Theory o f the Leisure Class (1899, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1973). See As You Like It, Act II, scene vii, line 138. 8. 9. See MacCannell, The Tourist for an extended discussion of authenticity, especially page 105. 10. For helpful discussions of authenticity, see Dean MacCannell, The Tourist, especially 14-15; Daniel Boorstin, The Image, especially 252; Erik Cohen, “Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism” Annals o f Tourism Research 15.3 (1988) 371-86; and Chris Ryan, “The Tourist Experience,” Recreational Tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 1991) 35-49. 11. For a valuable discussion of multiple tourist interests see Chris Ryan, “The Tourist Experience,” Recreational Tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 1991) 35-49, especially 45-7. Works Cited Boorstin, Daniel. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Atheneum, 1985. Cohen, E[rik]. “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences.” Sociology 13.2 (1979): 179-201.