The concept of the ‘Tourist Gaze’ is not a new one. We love to travel, and we love to tell other people about it. It would be no exaggeration to say that humans have been writing about their travels for as long as we have been able to put pen to paper. In my own experiences I have almost nothing to speak about, having travelled abroad for the first time in my life at the age of a quarter-century, so it is perhaps not surprising that as a child I soaked up the tales of my father and grandfather, whose work took them across the globe.
As an adult, these stories of far-off lands remain no less enthralling than as a child, but with a much more nuanced eye and ear. This leads back to my opening words. Take, for instance, the documentary Done Bali. Produced in 1992, it is now thirty years old, and yet much of the themes are still no less relevant today than they ever were, or perhaps ever will be. The documentary takes a standard format, with the history of the island narrated and interspersed with a variety of interviews, from residents to hotel owners, anthropologists to tourists, farmers to historians, and so on. One interviewee that stood out to me the most was Manuela Furci, a Bali expat from Australia who owned a clothes business. She stated that her original motivations to travel to Bali for tourism was that it was cheap and a great way to see another culture for less expense than travelling around Australia1. However, later in the program she noted the changes that she had seen over the past 13 years with the growth of tourism. Although she criticises what she deems to be a lack of work ethic in trying to run a business in Bali due to the number of religious ceremonies, she follows by lamenting the fact that it was even then becoming increasingly modernised, with the status quo changing from the simplicity of having hot water to an increasing level of competition for amenities such as a swimming pool or tennis court.
“All the things that I loved about Bali changed…it’s becoming more and more like the west in that sense. And that was the thing I didn’t like about it, the simplicity’s changed. It’s become more complicated and more about the rat race.”2
Furci, for her part, did not seem to acknowledge the inherent contradiction in her view, but in doing so she provides a perfect example of the tourist gaze. Although she had obviously made a home and living in Bali, she still wanted to hold on to the fascination with the idea of Bali as some kind of idyllic paradise which first drew her there. Yet, in order to run a business, she also required access to western amenities and way of life to facilitate this. This same wish for the ‘best of both worlds’ is one of the fundamental aspects of tourism anywhere in the world and is perhaps one of the most difficult things to reconcile. We travel because we want to see something different, but not so different that we feel uncomfortable.
As stated, Done Bali was produced in 1992. Towards the end of the program the various contributors discuss the rise of eco-tourism and criticism of tourism in general, which has obviously grown massively in the last three decades. Yet, for as much progress has been made, I could not help but feel that there is still a long way to go. With the growth of post-colonialism comes a welcome level of critical self-reflection as the western world comes to terms with the history of tourism and the colonial attitudes that this has entailed over the years.
For the prospective traveller wanting to be able to say that they, too, have ‘Done Bali’, perhaps the best advice could be to make sure that they have done their historical research as well.