Othering through representations of the ‘tourist self’ vis-à-vis the ‘local other’.

Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.

Bruce Chatwin

Bal Krishna Sharma has published a study based on the travelogue Himalaya with Michael Palin broadcast by the BBC in 2004.

Discursive representations of difference and multilingualism in Himalaya with Michael Palin

ABSTRACT 

In this article, I discuss how mediatised tourism constructs various discourses of othering through representations of the ‘tourist self’ vis-à-vis the ‘local other’. In order to do so, I analyze a six-hour travelogue Himalaya with Michael Palin broadcast by the BBC in 2004. The analysis shows that despite the forces of globalisation that have made national and cultural boundaries more porous than ever before, common stereotypes about otherness continue to shape the experience of travel narratives at present. While the liberal discourses used in the travelogue appear to celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of the world, they simultaneously reproduce the moral superiority of the West when the traveller is presented as an authority to give the judgmental accounts of otherness under the guise of equality and tolerance. Himalaya with Michael Palin as a form of mediatised tourism does in fact invoke cultural stereotypes to commodify local authenticities, languages, and identities in order to make the travelogue a ‘good’ TV programme.

Coupland (2010) discusses five discursive strategies that are deployed to represent the other: homogenisation, pejoration, suppression and silencing, displaying liberalism, and subverting tolerance. Homogenisation is a form of social stereotyping that entails a selective focus on salient cultural traits, giving them an iconic status – colour, gender, socio-economic background, religion or speech style. The representation of Black people, Asians or Muslims as ‘being and doing alike’ is an example of homogenisation. Pejoration takes a more serious and negative consequence of othering in which case others are discursively represented as incompetent, deviant or instable. Suppression and silencing is a discursive tool where social exclusion or minoritization is achieved with limited representation or no representation at all. Similarly, a display of liberalism is a way of monitoring and mitigating representations that speakers consider non-liberal (racist, sexist, ageist). Finally, subverting tolerance is a way of simultaneously undermining and legitimising othering discourses. For example, the use of humour often allows people to claim, if challenged, that they are ‘only kidding’. 

One noticeable characteristic in the Himalaya with Palin Palin is its discursive production of difference between the self and the other. The discourses of difference portray Palin as a contemporary traveller with the characteristics of a liberal subject who celebrates diversity and humanity. Hidden in those liberal discourses are new tropes of colonialism that create the stereotypical essentialization of difference against the other. The travelogue both constructs and reproduces inequalities in power between the tourist and host identities, as presented in Excerpt 1.

There are several examples of othering presented.

In Excerpt 1, Palin, the tourist-presenter, constructs identities of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, highlighting the already privileged status of the six production crew members who are there to travel and consume the ‘wonderful country’ (line 06). ‘People’ and ‘horses’ are lumped together into the category of ‘helpers’, and they are there to serve the crew (line 05). Coupland (2010) argues that this is an indirect way of othering people through discursive suppression where others have a very limited voice in representation. Whenever they are shown, representations may erase the diversity that a group has. Palin acknowledges his privileged status mentioning he does not even have to fill his water bottle. The Bhutanese porters do for him; all he has to do is to drink it (lines 06, 07). Palin here is preserving and reproducing the dominant social order while appearing to celebrate diversity and difference. While Palin is not building a colonialist empire by creating the Victorian type of binary text, his discourses nevertheless are a marker of what Gilroy (2004) recognises as ‘post-imperial melancholia’ (p. 98) that is reminiscent of the imperial tropes.

The interaction in Excerpt 13, which takes places in northern Tibet, shows a more covert way of constructing and representing multilingualism in the travelogue. Palin’s narrative constructs English as a common language between him and his audience, but functions as a tool to exclude the Tibetan family (Migma, his wife and two children who do not speak English) from conversation.

Palin is interacting in multiple footings here. Seemingly, he is interacting with Migma (see the use of ‘you’ and gazes to Migma). However, the interactional goal seems to create exoticness of Tibet to Western audience by presenting a ‘typical’ Tibetan family life (lines 01– 08). Here, it is important to highlight how the tourist-presenter is represented as a cosmopolitan self who appears to celebrate and respect diversity and cultural differences. By narrating his experience of yak milking on the way (line 01) and by showing his embodied taste of drinking butter tea (10), Palin highlights his openness to cross-cultural encounters. Palin’s effort to appear liberal and cosmopolitan for his English-speaking audience is quite successfully achieved here. 

However, the shared identity of Palin and his audience as English speakers renders Migma and his family as linguistic and cultural other. Migma not only possesses less power in this media frame of interaction, he is also linguistically powerless as far as his proficiency in English is concerned. Migma has an innocent look toward Palin and the camera; he is the focus of the camera most of the time. Migma is presented as incompetent in English since he does not and cannot use English. However, Palin keeps talking to him in English. Following Coupland (2010) this is an example of othering through silencing.

Migma is there, happily smiling and nodding for the travelogue audience. The Tibetan language does not have space in tourist presentation; it only functions part of an authentic background noise for the audience. The other whose language is incomprehensible to the tourist-presenter and his audience is excluded from the interaction. Note that the stereotypical construction of differences between the cosmopolitan self and exotic other is strategically mitigated in lines 17, 18 and 20. The tourist-presenter presents similarities between the host country Tibet and his home country Britain highlighting very obvious practices such as people both in England and Tibet eat and share food and there are children both in Britain and Tibet. This accommodation of otherness in relation to fundamental commonality, as Gilroy suggests, can be seen as characteristic feature of postcolonial melancholia (2004). By constructing such commonality, Palin is trying to subvert his stereotypical portrayal of the other in the language that the other does not understand.

Concluding remarks

The article has discussed if and to what extent broadcast travelogues invoke cultural essentialism in their various forms of representations in the context of contemporary global mobility and cross-cultural encounters. The contemporary traveller, as Lisle (2006) also points out in case of travel writing, becomes a site of struggle between an imperial subjectivity (that continues to reproduce colonial tropes) and a liberal, cosmopolitan subjectivity (that celebrates diversity in cultural and linguistic encounters). Under the guise of a liberal subject position, Himalaya with Michael Palin does in fact invoke cultural stereotypes to commodify local authenticities, ideologies and identities, keeping in mind of the interest and expectations of the media audience who are interested in viewing a different other, not a similar self. While the liberal discourses used in the travelogue appear to celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of the world, they simultaneously reproduce the moral superiority of the West when the traveller is presented as an authority to give the judgmental accounts of otherness under the guise of equality and tolerance. The humorous tone adopted in this travelogue plays a key role in presenting the traveller as a liberal subject, helping him to subvert the ideological intent of some covertly pejorative discourses. Although such humour superficially seems to be a non-serious act of performance specifically designed to address the interest of the target audience, it reproduces and constructs a larger social order. Those who make humour build an ingroup identity with audience by sharing a ‘secret code’ (Lisle, 2006, p. 79), and those who are laughed at become the butt of the joke. The discursive representation of tourists and hosts perpetuates power differences between the supposedly cosmopolitan traveller and the relatively static local.

 The analysis has also shown that representation is not a unidirectional act whereby only tourists and media other locals; there are opportunities of identity negotiations. In a few occasions, identities of the local projected by the tourist-presenter were resisted and reinterpreted by those who were being represented. By enacting their agency, the local may repackage their identities as a similar (Excerpt 5) or a different but more ‘advanced’ other (Excerpt 4). Throughout the travelogue, English is represented as the powerful language that mediates destinations with media audience. Other languages as objects of tourist’s performance or part of a touristic scene add authenticity to the representations.

The seemingly liberal forms of discourse in the travelogue continues to carry the characteristics of the colonial tropes and reinforces the unequal power relationship between the traveller (as representatives of the dominant group) and the host (represented as local others). Tourist and host identities are largely performed and the performance of these identities is influenced by tourist-host subject positions. Media producers accomplish various ‘ideologies of tourism’ (Galasiński & Jaworski, 2003), which are socially and politically congruent with the interest of their employers, sponsors and the Western audience. This resonates with Fairclough’s(1989) argument: the ‘power in the discourse’ does not explain the ‘power behind the discourse’. Thus, any analytical explanation of discourses in mass mediated tourism contexts requires connecting the analysis of the micro-politics of tourist-host interaction with the macro-politics of the relationship between media producers and audience, and the objects of media gaze.

Full study here.