Comments on: Dark Tourism: Bearing Witness or Crass Spectacle?

By: Dennis O'Higgins

Dennis O'Higgins — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:33:56 +0000

Eric – a fantistic and truly thought provoking article. I think you’re right to draw distinctions of two classes of dark tourism – entertainment & personal growth.

Certainly for me, it’s about getting to understand the place I am in. Often the ‘dark tourist’ locations give an phenomenal insight into what has shaped the area that you are are in, and the world in general. I think it can help you to adopt a more rounded approach to the world and be more understanding.

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By: Seth M Baker

Seth M Baker — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:16:32 +0000

Great article, quite thought provoking, but I wonder if ‘dark tourism’ is the correct term. I mean, yes, these things that happened are quite dark, but they are a part of a country’s history.

I think ‘Realist Tourism’ might be more accurate.

If the average visitor travels to Cambodia and goes only to Siam Reap or Sihanoukville, skipping Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, will you come away a balanced sense of Cambodia’s recent, bloody past?

Again, great article. Yes, it’s three years old, but three years ago, all I knew about Cambodia was what I learned from the movie.

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By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:57:16 +0000

Very interesting article. I will definitely add this to my travel and tourism geography course that I’m teaching.

The discussions about dark tourism reminds me of a few things.

Ever since having stumbled upon Michael Moore’s films and their discussions about Flint, MI, I’ve always wanted to go there to see just how bad it is. Same with Detroit, MI. Is this dark tourism?

How about visiting ghost towns or abandoned sections of communities, such as Chernobyl?

During my study abroad program, I went to a number of cemeteries and war sites where there are trenches, bombed bunkers, etc. Are they dark tourism too?

And while studying abroad, I went to a few museums that focused on various aspects of war. The Imperial War Museum in London, England, had a section that provides a multi-sensory (sound, smell, feel, etc) experience of what it was like to be in the trenches and a graphical provoking display related to the Holocaust. Again, is this dark tourism?

I’d be interested in knowing what are your responses to these different examples.

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By: Tim Patterson

Tim Patterson — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 01:33:47 +0000

Thanks for the fresh thoughts Olivebeard – never too late to comment and I appreciate your perspective.

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By: Olivebeard

Olivebeard — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:16:24 +0000

I’m probably too late for any of this to matter but…

If someone is running a “tour” to the 9th, is probably put little–if any–money back into it. I can almost guarantee you that. And as of 2007, New Orleans tourism is doing just fine–the problem is that politicians seem weary about putting that money back into “the bowl”.

http://blog.nola.com/tpmoney/2007/10/number_of_tourists_visiting_lo.html

I think there’s a thick line that separates the Lower 9th from the Gulag/Auschwitz/Toul Sleng. Having toured the lower 9th and Auschwitz, I would say the difference would be between admiring someone’s scar and staring at someone’s gaping wound. Those homes are not abandoned (completely), and the little teddy bears among the debris was probably owned by a living child. I don’t think its quite as macabre to be fascinated by a memorial as it is to be fascinated by–well, the fresh scene of a mass murder.

There was a great term I first heard in New Orleans: Voluntourism. Walking around the Habitat for Humanity sites in Musician’s village, I was startled by the number of people who were literally taking their 2 weeks of holiday to travel to NOLA to work; hard labor, 5 days a week.

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By: Pickled Eel

Pickled Eel — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:08:28 +0000

Nicely put. Any of those places we visit which have a dark past should connect us with the rest of humanity – they are places that should soften us and fuel the compassion we need to have for our fellows, regardless of race, colour or creed. The compassion that stirs us in Iraq, at Ground Zero, in Palestine, at the Arizona Memorial or on a lost Guadacanal memorial to the US Marines should be just that, not a reaction to some sort of morbid fascination that does not compel us to be better neighbours and compassionate citizens of the world.

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By: Philip Stone

Philip Stone — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:03:25 +0000

Interesting article which raises the unsurprising notion of ethics within dark tourism, and general questions of motivation behind ‘consumption’. Of course, the term ‘dark tourism’ is multi-dimensional and exists in various ’shades’. Equally, the motivations (and consequences) for ‘consuming’ the so-called dark tourism product will rest on many factors. As dark tourism provides a socially acceptable environment upon which contemporary visitors gaze upon ‘Other’ death, perhaps we need to consider how we, ourselves in modern (Western)
society, confront death and dying. With increasing medicalization and secularlization, have our experiences of death and dying been largely relocated to a ‘back region’ where media image of the macabre now dominates? Perhaps, dark tourism is simply a contemporary mechanism to ‘contemplate’ mortality (and morality), either explicity or implicity?

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By: Tim Patterson

Tim Patterson — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:28:22 +0000

Well said, Eva.

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By: Eva

Eva — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:46:34 +0000

Jim, I don’t think anyone was comparing Katrina to the Holocaust in terms of scale of suffering or numbers killed – just comparing the experience of visiting the sites of so much death. But the fact that fewer people were killed does not lessen the horror for those involved – calling it “just a storm” is pretty callous.

I think the ideal that most of these “dark tourism” sites strive for, or at least should strive for, is for the visitor to gain some greater understanding or knowledge of suffering, so that in future they are more likely to react with empathy – instead of, say, using tragedy as an opportunity to take political cheapshots at the people they disagree with.

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By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:23:42 +0000

Dark tourism, the killing fields,Hitler’s death camps, add them both, multiply by 4,and you come close to what Hilary’s hero Stalin killed in his Gulogs , only with Stalin they where all starved to death. Now how in the hell do you compare the above to Katrina, it was just a storm, if the dikes wouldn’t have failed (Bill Clinton’s fault for not following the Corps advice)it would have been just another storm. Andrew was actually the worst of the recorded storms

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