Conspiracy Tourism."
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Dallas, Roswell, Area 51: A Social History of American "Conspiracy Tourism." Shelley E. McGinnis A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication Studies. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Dr. Ken Hillis Dr. Robert Allen Dr. Rich Cante Dr. Patricia Sawin Dr. Sarah Sharma © 2010 Shelley E. McGinnis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT SHELLEY E. MCGINNIS: Dallas, Roswell, Area 51: A Social History of American "Conspiracy Tourism." (Under the direction of Ken Hillis) This dissertation focuses on conspiracy narratives that play out in particular settings, the role of mainstream media in circulating these narratives amidst local and national publics, and how these narratives become part of the cultural life of a location part of the experience of residents of and visitors to that location. Conspiracy theory is examined as an interaction between texts and cultural practices that has shaped the physical and cultural landscapes of three locations – Dallas, Texas; Roswell, New Mexico; and Rachel, Nevada ( a small town adjacent to a research facility popularly known as "Area 51") – which have developed tourist industries that market, as attractions, historical associations with conspiracy theory. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…………………………………………………………….……….……..v Chapter 1: "Everybody Sees Something That They Want to See:" Narrative, Conspiracy Theory, and Tourism…………………….…………………...1 Questions of Narrative………………………………………………………….5 Conspiracy Theory: A Critical Approach……………………………………14 Questions of Tourism....……………………………………….………………23 Project Overview……………………………………………………………….30 Chapter 2: "A Sad Corner of Dallas, a Small Part of America That Belongs to Everyone:" JFK Assassination Tourism in Dealey Plaza…….…34 Chapter 3: "A Great Thing for the UFOs and the Community:" UFO Tourism in Roswell, New Mexico………...……..………………......……….100 Chapter 4: "Spying for the American People:" Area 51 Tourism in Nevada…....147 Chapter 5: Civil Pilgrims and the "Powers That Be"……………………….……...187 Works Cited…………………………………………..……………………………….206 iv LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1: The Conspiracy Tree…………………………………………………………..19 Fig. 2: The Depository as seen from Dealey Plaza…………………………………35 Fig. 3: The grassy knoll in 2003………………………………………………………39 Fig. 4: In 2003, a visitor takes pictures from the "Zapruder spot," where Abraham Zapruder filmed a 16 mm movie of the assassination…….……41 Fig. 5: An anonymous flyer distributed in Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s visit in 1963………………………………………………….…………….52 Fig. 6: the lobby of The Sixth Floor Museum………………………………………..64 Fig. 7: Outside the Depository, a vendor displays a souvenir newspaper to a party of tourists………………………………………...……………72 Fig. 8: Assassination researchers investigate a manhole on Elm Street from which they speculate shots might have been fired……….…………..89 Fig. 9: Page one of a 2003 assassination conference handout……….……………..91 Fig. 10: Page two of a 2003 assassination conference handout….…………………92 Fig. 11: November 22, 2003. A crowd gathers at the Triple Underpass to observe the 40 th anniversary of the assassination…….…………….97 Fig. 12: A sign on Highway 285 north of Roswell alerts travelers to the opportunity to visit one of several local UFO crash sites……………..…..101 Fig. 13: Downtown Roswell store window…………………...……………………103 Fig. 14: International UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell……….……121 Fig. 15: Downtown Roswell: Boutique Kitchen Gourmet and Alien Resistance HQ…………………………………………………….……………128 Fig. 16: UFO Encounter ’97: wide involvement from the community……….….135 v Fig. 17: UFO festival as town fair: pony rides and crafts vendors……………….136 Fig. 18: Inside the IUFOMRC, visitors await an appearance by ufologist Don Schmitt………………………………………………………..……….143 Fig. 19: Donald Schmitt talks with families of young costumers onstage at the IUFOMRC…………………………………………………………….145 Fig. 20: The only public accommodations for miles………………………………154 Fig. 21: Photos of George Knapp and Bob Lazar displayed on the wall of the Little A'Le'Inn……………………………………………………..……..161 Fig. 22: Inside the Little A’Le’Inn: UFO displays and a rack of T-shirts for sale………………………………………………………………….…….166 Fig. 23: The Area 51 Research Center in 1996……………………..……………….167 Fig. 24: The original Black Mailbox…………………………………………………170 Fig. 25: The white "Black Mailbox"………………………………………………….171 Fig. 26: UFO photos adorn the walls of the Little A’Le’Inn…………………...….178 Fig. 27: "Extraterrestrial Highway" sign decorated by visitors…………………..182 Fig. 28: Photography is prohibited………………………………………………….184 Fig. 29: The parting ritual………………………………….…………………………186 Fig. 30: Flowers and flags left by a marker in Dealey Plaza, Nov. 22, 2003…………………………………………………………………………..201 vi Chapter 1: "Everybody Sees Something That They Want to See:" Narrative, Conspiracy Theory, and Tourism Many places have, in their local history, a violent crime that has become a nexus of legend with the passing of years. Dallas, Texas – where I was growing up throughout the 1980s – is no different, except that the most haunting event in our local history, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, became a nexus of legends that were not limited to local interest and circulation, but were circulated across the nation and throughout the world. Throughout my adolescence there, my family’s out-of-town visitors would always want to be taken to see two particular sites. One, the Southfork Ranch, was famous for serving as the home of the fictional Ewing family on the then-current television series Dallas . The other was Dealey Plaza. A visit to the site of the Kennedy assassination was a ritual trip that would spark an exchange of site-specific stories – “That’s the grassy knoll. People say they saw muzzle flash behind the fence there.” The sense of mystery that a mythic name – The Grassy Knoll – could bestow on an ordinary highway embankment is one of the keenest memories I have of those times. In 2000, Peter Knight observed that at “the turn of the millennium in America it seems that conspiracy theories are everywhere” (1). Arguing that conspiracy theory can no longer be dismissed or marginalized as irrelevant paranoia, Knight is one of a number of scholars in fields such as American studies, cultural studies, and political science to make a serious attempt at understanding the social function of conspiracy theory. This work challenges established sociological and psychological schools of thought that marginalize and pathologize “cultural paranoia,” offering instead a far more subtle and productive picture of conspiracy theory as a necessary response to an increasingly complex, interconnected, and threatening world. But Knight's largely text-based approach (deconstructing the novels of Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed and Don DeLillo, for example), while producing fertile readings, leaves some intriguing gaps in his claim that conspiracy theory "has become part of the American vernacular” (2000:25). Or so it seems to me, who first encountered conspiracy theory in the more vernacular context of oral narrative. This project seeks to contribute to the recent body of work on conspiracy theory by both deepening the focus (to explore how conspiracy theory interacts with other practices of daily life, such as tourism) and narrowing it (to look at how conspiracy theory is activated in specific local contexts, rather than the broad, vaguely defined context of “American culture”). In this project, I explore some of the ways in which stories function as part of everyday, lived experience. In particular, I focus on conspiracy narratives that play out in particular settings, the role of mainstream media in circulating these narratives amidst local and national publics, and how these narratives become part of the cultural life of a location and part of the experience of residents of and visitors to that location. Conspiracy theory will be examined as a particular genre of 2 narrative that became particularly omnipresent in the United States in the last decade of the twentieth century. While this ubiquity arguably leveled off around 1997 – the 50 th anniversary of the crash of an unidentified flying object at Roswell, New Mexico, and also the year that the Fox network’s series The X-Files peaked in the Nielsen ratings – popular culture’s use of conspiracy theory as a trope is still a familiar phenomenon. Understanding conspiracy theory as "part of the American vernacular" of the past few decades necessitates understanding conspiracy theory as an interaction between texts and cultural practices, and fishing where these streams merge is an inexact business. The claims I hope to make are necessarily modest ones; it is not my intention to “explain” the phenomenon of conspiracy theory as a whole. But it is my hope that such a reading can enrich a cultural studies approach to analyzing some of the social functions that conspiracy theories are made to serve. I approach this problem through a social history of three sites – Dallas, Texas; Roswell, New Mexico; and Rachel, Nevada (a small town adjacent to a research facility popularly known as “Area 51”) – which have developed tourist industries that market, as attractions, historical associations with conspiracy theory. A second development in the late twentieth century, historically paralleling the growing prevalence of conspiracy theory narratives, is the increasing reliance of many locations on tourism as a way of reviving or reinventing the