A NOTE ON TOURISM
For many centuries, tourism has been a source for cultural
enlightenment. In the twentieth-century
it assumed a very positive form within the frameworks of “study abroad” programs
sponsored by American colleges and universities. It should be debated, however,
whether domestic tourism has the same luster. Our sense of American history can
be much improved by tours of such cities as San Francisco, Natchez, Selma, San
Antonio, Charleston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Boston, and Philadelphia. Much can be
learned about the life and death of American cities by visits to Memphis,
Detroit, and Newark. Some of us who are inhabitants of New Orleans do question
whether tourists learn much about history and struggles, architecture and
urban/urbane aesthetics, and how wealth
and poverty demarcate separate and unequal celebrations of life and death ,or whether
tourists merely pleasure themselves in twisted Catholic excesses which are denied them in
their Puritan hometowns. Those who have deep roots in New Orleans often have to
ask if tourism is a financial blessing or a toxic curse. Dispassionate analysis might convince us that
it is nearly impossible to distinguish curses from blessings in the context of
tourism.
Although Paige A. McGinley’s Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2014) gives no attention to the theatricality of the blues in
New Orleans, the special notice the book gives to tourism as performance in
Clarksdale, Mississippi is an eloquent reminder that in a music-based tourist
economy, “it is the tourist who takes center stage, as he or she stands in for
past and passed performers” (179). To be
sure, New Orleans possesses a richer, more complex history than Clarksdale, but
our city is an ideal target for the distortions and abnormality that intensive
tourism can produce. Thus, McGinley’s
impressive discussion of blues tourism can be a valuable guide for studies of
jazz tourism, disaster tourism, and Carnival/Mardi Gras tourism in our city of
Saints, sinners, rampant post-Katrina gentrification, and preoccupations with
corruption, crime, and cuisine. McGinley’s
book reinforces my sense that the city I have come to love is a beautiful mess
that encourages us to become tourists of our own existence.
As New Orleans prepares for its tercentennial, one of its
unique attractions becomes more visible.
It is the only urban area in the United States that manages to have 366 festivals
in 365 days. Our worship of celebration
blackwashes our need to care overmuch about how social and economic problems
reproduce themselves in our version of Paradise. We almost celebrate ourselves
into oblivion.
Do not be surprised if New Orleans initiates Creole Roach
Fest and Cajun Garbage Fest for 2017.
After all, the new New Orleans is in desperate need of tourist
dollars. It must not fail to convince
people that it is one of the most exotic places on Earth. We must not
disappoint the tourists.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. January
20, 2015
