Bonnie and Clyde’s extrajudicial killing: Gibsland, Louisiana’s dark tourism

ABSTRACT Discussing Gibsland, Louisiana’s Authentic Bonnie and Clyde Festival as dark tourism, this article asks whether the site of two peoples’ extrajudicial killing constitutes a dark tourist destination. Dark tourism is tourism associated with death. Gibsland is where Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed, and extrajudicially killed, by a posse of law enforcement officers on 23 May 1934. Since 1993, there has been a festival in Gibsland commemorating the ambush, culminating in its reenactment. When Bonnie and Clyde’s bodies were displayed after the ambush, this demonstrated Foucault’s concept of punishment as a spectacle demonstrating the sovereign’s power to destroy those breaking the law and was an example of performative violence. When the actors pretending to be the dead Bonnie and Clyde pose after the reenactment, this demonstrates performed violence. When the spectators at the reenactment pose with the actors this demonstrates participation in punishment.