Death, tourism and balconies in Magaluf Ghost Town (Blanca 2021)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Miguel Ángel Blanca’s eccentric docufiction film, Magaluf Ghost Town, follows three residents of the Mallorcan resort area during the 2019 tourist season. By offering locals’ perspectives on lives tied to the excesses of low-cost tourism, the film traces their respective desires to withstand, break and transform the Faustian pact through which this part of Calvià municipality has made its living. Tourism infrastructure visually organizes the picture, with one space in particular – the hotel balcony – playing an important aesthetic and thematic role. Yet, while the overt references to balconing – the often-fatal tourist practice of jumping into a pool from one’s room – seem to parrot media-driven coverage, I argue that Blanca’s picture instead offers a counternarrative that challenges stereotypes by destabilizing the traditional tourist gaze through the mise-en-scène. By further cloaking his critique in the supernatural, the director plays with documentary tropes in a way that spurs the viewer to think about tourism beyond the news. In giving space to individual local voices and experiences, he lets us explore the deep affect that the tourist landscapes evoke in a constituency that is all too often left outside the frame.