The Greatest Stage

I've been thinking a lot about tourism lately, namely around here in the good ole' sunshine state, my home since as long as I can recall. But honestly I am not sure why.

I've never had any fascination with tourism, or even kitsch, though I have certain soft spots for it. Florida simply oozes both of these things, with it's amusement parks, resorts, and seaside boutiques, but I've never paid it too much mind, it was always simply a "thing that is".

Yet lately I HAVE been considering it. It started with a trip to Busch Gardens. I live nearby, and my beau and I bought each other passes for Christmas. We were waiting in an exceptionally long line - a new ride had opened. So I had a lot of time to sit, stare, and - our favorite - people watch. Between comments on the girl in the leopard spandex pants and the lady with hair liberally daubed with glitter, I noticed some slats in the wall, through which I could see large mechanical structures, grey and boring, like air conditioning vents. I wonder, I said then, why they did not cover it up. My companion declared that he liked it, and so it was.

Later we caroused about in the middle of the night on one of the local beaches. Staring through the closed shop windows we encountered an especially buxom mannequin garbed in a bikini. Oh what a delight! I had been to the store before, when it was open and knew it to be also home to a giant stuffed gator and endless amounts of shot glasses that bore the name of anyone at all. It was all awful, cheap, basically junk. But there it was, taking up prime real estate. So strange.

The seeds, I think, were planted then. I recalled some time later an article I'd read about a man who photographs postcards - a Florida icon that is slowly dying in favor of emails and digital photos. One bit in particular led me to look it up again:

"He taught me - and it was a good lesson - that a postcard photographer has to pretend he is standing in the tourist's shoes when he makes that photo."

A postcard has to be a cliche, he learned, though a well-composed one. The sunset has to be golden. There should be a big fish at the end of that line instead of a boot. A postcard has to be an ideal, but it has to look as if the tourist might have taken the picture had he owned the right equipment. (The full article)

And so there it is. We crave this kitsch because that is the way it should be. It is what we want and expect and in some ways need.

We are all playing pretend.

This great big group of people playing make believe with Mickey Mouse and endless sunshine. That is why those grey boxes struck me, they were a tiny chink in this giant carefully staged facade. And that was interesting to me, more so than the display itself which I am at this point immune to.

In fact, when I took pictures yesterday on a grey, rainy "winter" day, I was interested in the strange emptiness, the forlorn landscapes. I was fascinated by the tourists themselves - I was, perhaps, being a tourist of tourists. This strange balance of viewership, voyeurism, expectation, and staging is beginning to wrap itself into constructs in my mind.

I want to explore it more.