> On Fri, 23 Sep 1994, Pam Wilson wrote:
>
> > I'm exploring some issues of active audiences and fandom, and am
> > particularly interested in the intersections between fandom and
> > tourism. I thought I would see if some of you might know of
> > tourist sites which owe their popularity to films or TV series.
> >
>
 
The Iowa town which houses the Field of Dreams is Dyersville. The Field is
still up and running, and was the site of a big Labor Day
festival/tourist-junk saleorama, with a baseball game or two.
 
Though it's not primarily tv or film-related, Hannibal MO is an interesting
site for studying tourism/fandom, particularly since the Mark Twain who is
celebrated there is configured as a gruffly loveable old coot who wrote
some cute children's stories. As we looked through the sparse historical
records there (old photos of Twain & his family, etc.) one tourist asked
another, "So, which one was real: Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, or Becky
Thatcher?" And the shops & other tourist apparatus certainly did nothing
to discourage such confusion. The whole area is dedicated to that vacuous
American mythology of the serene and childlike past, so it's no wonder
Mark Twain ends up becoming one of his own characters. It seemed that no
on involved in the town had ever actually read any Twain: we took the
boat tour, about an hour of cruising up and down the Mississippi and
being treated to a running commentary on this (modern) boat's diesel
engines and statistics, the load capacity of the bridge built in 1930,
and barely a word on any of Twain's treatments of the river and its cultures.
 
So is it any surprise that a tourist site misrepresents and even forgets
the original reason for its celebrity? Of course not: "Entertainment and
Education for Young and Old Alike" is always the blandest patriotic
pabulum possible. But it stunned me nevertheless how far the reality could
be mutilated to align properly with the yearnings of the Winnebago set.
The newest attraction there, which I didn't visit, was the "Hannibal Air &
Space Museum," with moon rocks, pieces of aircraft and spaceships, etc.
What could possibly be the connection between Twain and NASA? It only
makes sense if Twain can be enrolled, by virtue of his celebrity (and
hence, in dominant American ideological terms, success, virtue, and
Americanism) in the grand and Providentially ceaseless parade of
"American" triumphs, starting with the Puritans and ending somewhere out
there beyond the stars.
 
All of Twain's severely pessimistic and cynical ideas and writings were
expunged from the myth of Twain: he became simply a "colorful"
yarn-spinner from an idealized (and entirely "whitened") America that
could only exist in a Ronald Reagan speech. And one which was separated by
no discernible whit from modern technological triumphs.
 
Come to think of it, maybe Hannibal is really a tv- and film-related
site. It was clear that the people running the "attractions" had only the
foggiest notion of Twain as a writer, and knew him more as a cardboard
character belonging to the same pantheon of American Greats as
Washington, Paul Bunyan, Jesse James, Ben Franklin, etc., all of whom
become lumped together as "representative" figures of the American
national character. Probably more people have seen tv and movie
versions--or sections of them--of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn than have read
the books. And there was the immensely popular "one-man show" (done by
Hal Somebody...?) of Twain's wit and wisdom, that also ran on tv. Twain
"appeared" in a recent episode of Star Trek The Next Generation as well,
an episode that occassioned a very interesting article in the journal
Postmodern Culture (available on e-mail as well as print: listserv
address:[log in to unmask]) detailing his use as a generic
"intellectual" who validates the neo-colonial agendas of the Enterprise &
Federation.
 
I could go on. Thanks for the prompt: I've been wanting to vent my
frustration at the insidpidness of Hannibal for quite a while! And thanks
for starting a good thread.
 
John Hoppe