Music films and videos as recolonizing media in tourism

There is growing awareness within social science that colonization is neither permanent nor complete, with the forces of colonization, decolonization, and recolonization spatially and temporally overlapping. Selective recolonization is evidenced in cultural appropriations and colonial nostalgia as described by diasporic authors such as V.S. Naipaul. However, examples of oppositional gaze are also evident in music films and videos ranging from Billie Holliday's “Strange Fruit” to Childish Gambino's “This Is America.” Artificial intelligence, streaming technologies, and destination images offer a potent synthesis that can undermine decolonization. We assert that the critical pragmatism of Habermas and Dewey can be used to identify and evaluate manifestations of selective recolonization, the oppositional gaze they engender, and how both infuse contemporary travel and tourism discourses.