Tourist Film Souvenirs and Post-Postmodern Authentication

Abstract

Identified and analyzed in this article are tourist film souvenirs. Associated with the Rickshaw Run adventure tourism experience, these travel artifacts are crafted from video fragments gathered on the road, combined into an organized overall, and shared online. Films are found to structure tourists’ self-imaginings during and post-travel. Filmmaking enables protagonists to roleplay as extraordinary travelers, to selectively assemble clips representing themselves as such, and to solicit external attention thereupon. Agglomerating and asserting tourist fantasies as reality, films prop, produce, and publicize authenticity claims relating to protagonists as extraordinary. Contributing to recent discussions of post-postmodern authenticity, illustrated is how this reconstructive orientation manifests in tourism authentication practices-priorities. Noted are infusions of fantasy into tourism experience, as facilitated by film souvenirs. Considered are practitioner implications of authentication processes that are highly self-centric. Rearrangements of tourists and toured, as captured in films reviewed, highlight opportunities and challenges around enabling tourists’ fantastical self-imaginings.