The Tourist Gaze in Travel Documentaries: The Case of Cannibal Tours

Abstract

When tourists go sightseeing, they see more than just sights. This study examined the diverse gazes in the context of tourism from two existing frameworks—the Foucauldian and Lacanian notion of the gaze. A qualitative case study on the documentary Cannibal Tours (1988) was conducted to unravel the complexities of the tourist gaze and validate the concept of the gaze within theoretical frameworks. This film provided ample visual evidence of the gaze in tourism settings, illustrating the existence and mechanism of the tourist gaze, the local gaze, and the second gaze. Analysis of this film generated a better understanding of the structure and psychology of the gaze within the dynamic interactions between tourists and locals.

Keywords:

• tourist gaze
• local gaze
• Cannibal Tours

Notes

¹ In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the term “lack” refers to the cause of desire (Evans, 1996). It is the lack of being, which causes desire (i.e., the desire to exist, the desire to be complete) to arise.

² The Symbolic Order is one of the three realms in Lacanian psychoanalysis (i.e., the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real). It refers to the social world of language, law, knowledge, ideology, etc.