{"title":"Simulated authenticity: Storytelling and mythic space on the hyper-frontier in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Westworld","authors":"J. Lovell, S. Hitchmough","doi":"10.1177/1468797620937912","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how the mythic, nineteenth-century American frontier is authenticated by postmodern forms of storytelling. The study examines accounts of William Cody’s extensive 1902–1903 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tours in the United Kingdom and the futuristic television series, HBO’s Westworld (2016–), which is set in an android-hosted theme park. Comparing the semiotics of the two examples indicates how over a century apart, the authentication of the myth involves repeating motifs of setting, action and character central to tourist fantasies. The research illustrates how some elements of the myth seem to remain fixed but are negotiable. It is suggested that both examples are versions of a ‘hyper-frontier’, a nostalgic yet progressive, intertextual retelling of the American West and its archetypal characters, characterised by advanced technology. The implications for tourism are that simulating the authenticity of the frontier myth creates doubts in its veracity paradoxically due to its lifelikeness.","PeriodicalId":47199,"journal":{"name":"Tourist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1468797620937912","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourist Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797620937912","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This article explores how the mythic, nineteenth-century American frontier is authenticated by postmodern forms of storytelling. The study examines accounts of William Cody’s extensive 1902–1903 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West tours in the United Kingdom and the futuristic television series, HBO’s Westworld (2016–), which is set in an android-hosted theme park. Comparing the semiotics of the two examples indicates how over a century apart, the authentication of the myth involves repeating motifs of setting, action and character central to tourist fantasies. The research illustrates how some elements of the myth seem to remain fixed but are negotiable. It is suggested that both examples are versions of a ‘hyper-frontier’, a nostalgic yet progressive, intertextual retelling of the American West and its archetypal characters, characterised by advanced technology. The implications for tourism are that simulating the authenticity of the frontier myth creates doubts in its veracity paradoxically due to its lifelikeness.
期刊介绍:
Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.