Page 54 - The Disneyization of Society

THEMING

takes the form of embroidering the essential and taken-for-granted features. It is
rarely obvious that a place is worthy of being visited. 115 While some places have
a self-evident ‘must-see’ quality, the majority do not. For the latter their signi- 45
ficance and the case for visiting them must be impressed upon potential tourists.
At the same time, the visitor is being given a short course in how such places
should be gazed upon.

Cultural narratives of place
As a starting point, we can take Urry’s observation that

there is an increasingly pervasive tendency to divide up countries in terms of new spatial divisions
with new place names. In the north of England there is ‘Last of the Summer Wine Country’,
‘Emmerdale Farm Country’, ‘James Herriot Country’, ‘Robin Hood Country’, ‘Catherine Cookson
Country’, ‘Brontë Country’ and so on. Space is divided up in terms of signs that signify particular
themes… 116

In these cases, regions are being themed in terms of well-known totems of popular
culture: much-loved British television programmes (Last of the Summer Wine and
Emmerdale Farm); popular novelists (Herriot, Cookson, and Brontë); and a legen-
dary character (Robin Hood). Such theming triggers an appreciation of the kind
of terrain that one is likely to encounter (rolling hills, forest, rural life) and its
cultural associations. It helps to bestow a ‘specific character’ on the region con-
cerned. 117 It is essentially a marketing device that helps to differentiate a region at
the same time as conveying some information about the forms of tourism with
which it is associated. In addition to Urry’s examples, there are further illustra-
tions of this process. Edensor notes that in the wake of the Hollywood movie,
Braveheart, the Loch Lomond, Trossachs and Stirling Tourist Board produced
an advertisement which read, ‘Where the Highlands met the Lowlands, step into
the echoes of Rob Roy, Robert the Bruce and William Wallace – Braveheart
Country’. 118 Similarly, Beatrix Potter has been appropriated as a theme for the
village of Sawrey in England’s Lake District. Such an association, which revolved
around Potter’s farm (Hill Top) acted as a magnet for adults suffused with a nos-
talgia for English country life and the notion of a rural idyll. 119 Pretes shows how
in 1984, the Finnish Tourist Board along with regional authorities and commer-
cial interests started to brand Lapland as ‘Santa Claus Land’. The area became
Santa’s home and workplace and is used as a sign of the area’s cultural distinc-
tiveness. To underscore this theming exercise, close to Rovaniemi, Lapland’s
capital, a Santa Claus Village and Workshop was built complete with ‘Santa
Claus’s Post Office … a reindeer enclosure, several restaurants, and many gift and
souvenir shops’. 120
However, this theming of place through cultural narratives is sometimes con-
troversial. The village of Goathland in England’s North Yorkshire moors and the
surrounding countryside are marketed by the Yorkshire Tourist Board as Heartbeat