DARK TOURISM: FROM AUSCHWITZ TO

TUOMAS HOVI – T U R U N MATKAILUAKATEMIAN 10 - VUOTISSEMINAARI 2 5 . 1 0 . 2 0 1 3 ”DARK TOURISM” Hello? I can’t really speak right now, I’m on a trip and… …I’m in a pretty bad place right now (= in a tight spot)

FINGERPORI, ©PERTTI JARLA 2007 DARK TOURISM

• Travel to sites of death, disaster or the seemingly macabre (bad places) • Dark tourism, thanatourism • grief tourism, fright tourism, morbid tourism, black spot tourism, horror tourism, hardship tourism, tragedy tourism, warfare tourism, genocide tourism and extreme thanatourism, disaster tourism, “dark heritage”… • Dark tourism (synkkä turismi) mostly used • Research phenomenon older (1980s-1990s), but the term new, introduced in 1996 by Malcolm Foley and John Lennon • As a phenomenon Dark tourism can however be seen as much older • Pilgrimages, Pompeii, the battlefield of Waterloo (a tourist site since 1816), Roman gladiator games (?), public executions (?) DARK TOURISM RESEARCH

• ”Dark Tourism. The Attraction of Death and Disaster”, John Lennon & Malcolm Foley (2000) • ”The Darker Side of Travel. The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism”, Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone (eds. 2009) • Robert S. Bristow, A.V. Seaton, Carolyn Strange, Michael Kempa

DARK TOURISM RESEARCH

• “Dark tourism as an academic field of study is where death education and tourism studies collide and, as such, can offer potentially fruitful research avenues within the broad realms of thanatology.” • “Dark tourism offers a multi-disciplinary academic lens through which to scrutinise a broad range of social, cultural, geographical, anthropological, political, managerial, and historical concerns.” • Philip Stone (2013, 307–309) • Thanatology (scientific study of death), thanatoptic tradition (the contemplation of death) DARK TOURISM RESEARCH

• Issues for investigation and understanding:

• Ethical issues • Tsunami Memorial project 2006 • Marketing/promoting issues

• Interpretation issues

• Site management issues

DARK TOURISM RESEARCH

• The Institute for Dark Tourism Research (iDTR), based at the University of Central Lancashire (UK). Promotes ethical research into the social scientific understanding of tourist sites of death, disaster, and atrocities, and the tourist experience at these places. Dark tourism is not simply a fascination with death or the macabre, but a multi- disciplinary academic lens in which to scrutinise fundamental interrelationships of the contemporary commodification of death with the cultural condition of society. • http://dark-tourism.org.uk/

DARK TOURISM RESEARCH DARK TOURISM PLACES

• Auschwitz-Birkenau (concentration camps) • Killing Fields of Cambodia • Ground Zero (WTC attacks) • Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall • Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park • Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre (Rwandan genocide) • Alcatraz (prisons) • Battlefield sites (American Civil War, I&II World War) • Dracula tourism (Whitby & ), themed attractions (London Dungeon, Jack the Ripper walks, Ghost walks) • Cemeteries, places of famous deaths (Diana, JFK)

TEMPORARY PLACES

• the wreck of the Costa Concordia • the wreck of SS Morro Castle (1930) • ruins of New Orleans (after Hurricane Katrina) • Ground Zero (WTC attacks) DARK TOURISM SPECTRUMS

• A typology of dark tourist attractions presented in a darkest to lightest framework • Philip R. Stone (2006, 152–157) • Depend on both the degree of interest or fascination in death on the part of the tourist, and on the extent to which an attraction or exhibition is developed in order to exploit that interest or fascination,different sites / experiences may be either ‘paler’or ‘darker’. • Richard Sharpley (2005) • Seven dark suppliers – The dark tourism product • Philip R. Stone (2006, 152-157)

A DARK TOURISM SPECTRUM: PERCEIVED PRODUCT FEATURES OF DARK TOURISM WITHIN A ‘DARKEST- LIGHTEST’ FRAMEWORK OF SUPPLY, Stone (2006, 151) ‘SEVEN DARK SUPPLIERS’

• 1. Dark Fun Factories

• 2. Dark Exhibitions

• 3. Dark Dungeons

• 4. Dark Resting Places

• 5. Dark Shrines

• 6. Dark Conflict Sites

• 7. Dark Camps of Genocide 1. DARK FUN FACTORIES

• Sites, attractions and tours which predominately have an entertainment focus and commercial ethic, and which present real or fictional death and macabre events • Dungeon attractions,(the London Dungeon) • Dracula tourism (planned Dracula Park) http://www.thedungeons.com/london/en/

2. DARK EXHIBITIONS

• Exhibitions and sites which revolve around death, suffering or the macabre with an often commemorative, educational and reflective message • Body Worlds’ exhibitions (Heureka) • ‘Catacombe dei Cappucini’ in Palermo 3. DARK DUNGEONS

• Sites and attractions which present bygone penal and justice codes to the present day consumer, and revolve around (former) prisons and courthouses • Alcatraz • the Old Melbourne Gaol • Bodmin Jail • Robben Island 4. DARK RESTING PLACES

• Cemetery or grave markers as potential products for dark tourism • St Mary's, Whitby • Père Lachaise, Paris

Patrick Frilet/Rex Features 5. DARK SHRINES

• Often semi–permanent sites which essentially ‘trade’ on the act of remembrance and respect for the recently deceased • The gates of Kensington Palace/Althorp House (Princess Diana’s death) • Ground Zero 6. DARK CONFLICT SITES

• War and battlefields and their commodification as potential tourism products • Battle sites • American Civil War • First & Second World War 9,000 Fallen Soldiers Etched into the Sand on Normandy Beach to Commemorate Peace Day http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2 013/09/the-fallen-9000/ 7. DARK CAMPS OF GENOCIDE

• Sites and places which have genocide, atrocity and catastrophe as the main thanatological theme, and thus occupy the darkest edges of the ‘dark tourism spectrum’ • Auschwitz-Birkenau (& other Holocaust sites) • Rwanda, Cambodia OTHER CATEGORISATIONS

• Travel to witness public enactments of death or tourism to disaster sites • Travel to see sites of individual or mass deaths after they have occurred • Travel to memorials or internment sites • Travel to see evidence or symbolic representations of death at unconnected sites • Travel to re-enactments or simulation of death • A.V. Seaton in Richard Sharpley and Philip R. Stone (eds. 2009, 15–16) Ria Dunkley, 2005 http://pages.123-reg.co.uk/pstone1- 995478/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfil es/riadunkleypresentationTSeventlondo noct2006.pdf OTHER FACTORS

• Time is a factor when defining the ”darkness” of a location • Dark events which possess a shorter time frame to the present, and therefore can be validated by the living and which evokes a greater sense of empathy, are perhaps products which may be described as ‘darker’ • According to John Lennon & Malcolm Foley in order for something to be dark tourism the events must be recent and it must introduce anxiety and doubt about modernity and its consequences (Lennon & Foley 2000, 11-12) • Media • News, films, books • Holocaust, WTC, JFK, Diana (Western media) • Culture • Ethnocentric

REASONS FOR DARK TOURISM?

• Allows death to be brought back into the public realm and discourse • May aid the social neutralisation of death for the individual tourist • Gives an opportunity to contemplate death and mortality • Tourists can experience horror and be scared in a safe environment

Reasons for Dark tourism, Ria Dunkley 2005: http://pages.1 23- reg.co.uk/psto ne1- 995478/sitebuil dercontent/site builderfiles/ria dunkleypresent ationTSeventlo ndonoct2006.p df Disaster Tourism, http://www.disastertourism.co.uk/ CRITICISM

• Offensive? • Disrespectful? • Unethical?

• Commercialization

• History as entertainment

• Ethnocentric (Western) • Auschwitz and Ground Zero worse than The Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Rwandan Genocide or Hiroshima?

CRITICISM

• “Auschwitz-Land”, the prime location of “Holocaust tourism” • Tim Cole argues that the true message of remembrance is obscured by the masses of tourists who pass through Auschwitz to simply consume the holocaust. Guillaume Herbaut/Institute pour Télérama

CRITICISM

• “Not everyone agrees with the idea of the viewing platforms, though. Some New Yorkers say viewing the ruins of the World Trade Centre is ghoulish, while others who live close to the site say it is disruptive while they are trying to get their lives together.“ • – BBC News CRITICISM

• Dark tourist or just a tourist? • Dark tourism, cultural tourism, history tourism or tourism?

• Is every trip to a place that has connections to death or disaster dark tourism?

• Depending on the motivations of the tourists? EXAMPLES FROM DARK TO LIGHTER DARK TOURSIM

• Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Dracula tourism (in Romania) AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU AUSCHWITZ

• Auschwitz-Birkenau • Concentration and Extermination Camp 1940-1945 (Nazi Germany) • 1.1 million victims • 70-75 000 Poles • 21 000 Romani • 15 000 Soviet POWs Das Bundesarchiv / Stanislaw Mucha • 10-15 000 others

AUSCHWITZ

• Museum since 1947, UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 • UNESCO name was changed in 2007 from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp” to ”Auschwitz Birkenau - German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)” • 1.43 million people visited the site in 2012 (25 million have visited it since 1947)

AUSCHWITZ

http://en.auschwitz.org/z/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=8 Numbers of people visiting yearly: 1960: c. 380 000 1970: c. 610 000 1980: c. 650 000 1990: c. 440 000 2000: c. 410 000 2010: c. 1 400 000

http://en.auschwitz.org/z/index.php?option=com_con tent&task=view&id=56&Itemid=24 AUSCHWITZ

Report 2012. http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=620&Itemid=49 AUSCHWITZ AND MEDIA

• Films • The Last Stage (Ostatni etap) 1947 • Passenger (Pasażerka) 1963 • Playing For Time 1980 • Schindler's List 1993 • The Grey Zone 2001 • Forgiveness/Esther's Diary 2008 • Auschwitz 2011 • Books, documentaries, comics • Imagery quite strong

AUSCHWITZ AS DARK TOURISM

• A site that has genocide, atrocity and catastrophe as the main theme • Travel to see sites of individual or mass deaths after they have occurred • Events are recent and the site introduces anxiety and doubt about modernity and its consequences • Media

• Problematic as a tourist site? • 26 rules for Visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum • Basic cafe and cafeteria, a coffee machine, bookshop DRACULA TOURISM (IN ROMANIA) DRACULA TOURISM

• Tourism which is centred on either the fictional , or the historical Dracula, a fifteenth-century Wallachian (southern part of modern day Romania) ruler called (c.1431-1476) who was also called Dracula • In Dracula tourism these two characters are often conflated, or sometimes even melded together, into one Dracula figure. • This linkage is artificial and vague at best, but still very much the basis or the core of Dracula Tourism in Romania

DRACULA TOURISM

• Started (slowly) already in the late 1960’s • In the 1970’s the demand for Dracula tourism grew • Dracula tourism was tolerated but not encouraged by the government • In the 1980s the number of tourists declined • After the 1989 revolution Dracula tourism started to grow again • the state’s reaction to it remained ambivalent • Plans for Dracula theme park during the late 1990s: Dracula Park (abandoned in 2006) • These days Dracula tourism is operated by different travel companies, both foreign and Romanian DRACULA TOURISM

• There is also some Dracula tourism in Great Britain, but it is solely based on the fictional side of Dracula, whereas the Dracula tourism in Romania combines both fiction and history

• In Great Britain the Dracula tourism is mostly concentrated to the town of Whitby

DRACULA TOURS

• Visit locations connected to the fictitious vampire Count Dracula, to the historical Dracula Vlad the Impaler and also some other sites • Dracula-related tourism stands at about 10,000 – 100,000 visitors a year whereas the whole amount of tourists coming to Romania (2007) was closer to 6 000,000 • “Romania = Dracula”: Internet, travel books, media etc. • In 2005, over 20 Romanian travel companies and also many foreign companies offered packages based on Dracula’s myth THE TWO DRACULAS

Bram Stoker’s Dracula Vlad the Impaler (c.1431- (1879-) 1476) FICTIONAL DRACULA

• Dracula (1897) by • Countless Dracula movies • (1922, 1979) • Dracula (1931), Bela Lugosi • Dracula movies produced by Hammer Films starring Christopher Lee (1958-1973) • Bram Stoker's Dracula (1973), Jack Palance • Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Gary Oldman • Books, comics, films, TV- series, (theater) plays, games DRACULA IN POPULAR CULTURE

Books, Games, Cartoons, Movies, Toys HISTORICAL DRACULA

• Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula (c. 1431-1476) • Wallachian voivode (prince/ruler) • Impalement • Stories • Romanian • Russian • German • Especially the German stories, ’horror stories’

VLAD IN POPULAR CULTURE

Toys, Comics, Madame Tussauds, Books, Games, Movies CONFLATED DRACULA DRACULA TOURISM AS DARK TOURISM

• Entertainment, fun, safe • • Halloween • Tourists can experience horror and be scared in a safe environment DRACULA TOURISM AS DARK TOURISM

• Sites, attractions and tours which predominately have an entertainment focus and commercial ethic, and which presentreal or fictional death and macabre events • Tourists seek a scary opportunity at a destination that may have sinister history or may be promoted to have one (Vlad + Dracula) • Real places of horror and death, but there is enough chronological distance • Problematic as a tourist site? • Local culture, tradition and history? • Stereotypical (outside) image of a country

DARK TOURISM

• Travel/tourism to places and sites which have some connection with death or disaster

• World wide phenomenon

• Whether or not every tourist is a ”dark tourist” as such, there is a clear interest and fascination with death and disaster also within tourism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Fingerpori, ©Pertti Jarla 2007 • Stone, Philip R. (2006). A dark tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions. Tourism 54:2, 145–160. • Stone, Philip R. & Richard Sharpley (2008). Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective. Annals of Tourism Research 35: 2, 574– 595. • Lennon, John & Malcolm Foley (2004). Dark Tourism. Lontoo: Thomson. • Sharpley, Richard & Philip R. Stone (toim.) (2009): The Darker Side of Travel. The Theory and Practise of Dark Tourism. Bristol: Channel View Publications • Sharpley R. (2005) Travels to the edge of darkness: towards a typology of dark tourism. In: Ryan C., Page S. and Aicken M. (eds) Taking Tourism to the Limit, London: Elsevier. Chapter 4. THANK YOU!

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