Following the success of prominent feature films shot on location, including Tolkien’s wildly popular The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand boasts an impressive film tourism industry. This book examines the relationship between New Zealand’s cinematic representation—as both a vast expanse of natural beauty and a magical world of fantasy on screen—and its tourism imagery, including the ways in which savvy local tourism boards have in recent decades used the country’s film representations to sell New Zealand as a premiere travel destination. Focusing on the films that have had a strong impact on marketing strategies by local tourist boards, Touring the Screen will be of interest to all those working and studying in the fields of cinema, postcolonial history, and tourism studies.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Scope of the study
Film, tourism and postmodernism
Chapter outline
Notes
Early New Zealand Films and Western Voy(ag)eurs
Introduction
New Zealand, or the "world in a nutshell"
New Zealanders: "eternal tourists and proud pioneers"
The Maori: between ethnographic and tourist romance
Empty landscapes and (post)colonial enterprises
1940–1990: New Zealand Film Landscapes for Prospective ’Cinenauts’
Introduction
From the National Film Unit to the Film Commission
Mapping New Zealand landscapes
Place versus space
Escape from the narrative space
Transitional space, porous space: the road
The city, or New Zealand dystopia
Natural places and natural spaces: the mountain and the bush
Journey to the centre of the film: the ’cinenauts’
The Legacy of The Piano: Film-Tourist Geographies and the Aesthetic of the Sublime
Introduction
Methodological premises
Ada McGrath: a Victorian adventure tourist in New Zealand
Nature, space and narrative
Locations and national identity
Framing the beach
Return to the beach: Memory and Desire
Conclusions
From Ngati to Whale Rider: The Filmic Journey of the Indigenous Traveller
Introduction
Fourth Cinema
Whale Rider: indigenous locations and global imaginary
Whangara: between reality and hyper-reality
Ethnographic, neo-colonial and tourist gazes
The indigenous traveller
The hybrid traveller
The Western traveller
Conclusions
From Mt. Fuji to Mt. Taranaki: Dépaysement and Celebrity Worship in The Last Samurai
Introduction
The Last Samurai in Taranaki
The Last Samurai and tourist imagination
From Mt. Taranaki to Mt. Fuji: negotiating the meaning of place
Celebrity worship
The management of film-induced tourism: critical factors
Conclusions
’Welcome to New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth’: Heterotopian Impulse, Western Anxiety and Spatial Identity in The Lord of the Rings
Introduction
The Lord of the Rings: merchandising and film franchise
Style, narrative and space in The Lord of the Rings
9/11 and Western anxiety
New Zealand
Conclusions
Conclusions
Filmography
Bibliography