Introduction to Travel Media

Introduction to Travel Media

o Charles Baudelaire - "The Painter of Modern Life"File

o Walter Benjamin - The FlaneurFile

From the bookCharles Baudleaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism

o George Van Den Abbee - Travel as MetaphorFile

Van Den Abbee, George. (1992). "Introduction"Travel as Metaphor. Minneapolis; U. Minnesota Press.

o Film Term SurveyFile

A slideshow I found on the internet that will give you an overview of terms from film studies to allow you to write about camera techniques and what effects they have.

The Flaneur Abroad – Producing travel media as and for the wandering soul

o White - States of DesireFile

White, Edmond. (1991).States of Desire: Travels in Gay America. New York: Plume.

o Edward Gorey - "The Remembered Visit"File

From the "goodreads.com" website:

"The remembered visit is a story of neglect, how we neglect ourselves and promises made to those around us.
Drusilla is taken on a trip abroad by her parents and coerced into activities she doesn't particularly enjoy such as dining on curious dishes that make her ill and and gazing a vast dark paintings in museums.
One day Drusilla's parents mysteriously fail to return from an outing without her and she is left in the care of a family friend Miss Skrim Pshaw.
She takes her on an outing to a neglected Inn with shabby topiary and Inn keeper with no socks. They share their love of fancy paper and promise to keep in touch. On her way home Drusilla begins to feel a hunger for life again.
As the days, weeks and years pass Drusilla realise that she has forgotten he promise and that her friend had passed away."

o Journal 1Assignment

Post your 500 word (min) journal entry here.

Make sure to critically engage the texts, either individually or collectively. Raise issues if interest and practice lines of argument you may attempt in your essay. Discussion questions to follow soon.

o Journal 2Assignment

Post your 500 word (min) journal entry here.

o Questions on The Flaneur Abroad (White, Gorey, and Van Saint)

How do we get to know places in these texts? What do we learn about the authors? How do we know what we know about them? How would your characterize the intended audience of each text? To whom are they addressing the work? How do you know this? In White’s text, why is Portland described in detailed character sketches of a few men, while Seattle is portrayed in terms of fragmentary impressions of activities and places? What effect does this structural difference make? How does Gorey use half-viewed images in his story? What affect does this conceal/reveal create? Is there an analogue in the language he uses? How does repetition of structure create meaning? What powerful images do each author use to convey their messages (stoic cowboys waltzing, scraps of paper, running salmon, etc.)? Can you find connections between them?

In what ways do the characters embody aspects of the flaneur or dandy (or in White's words: "sissy")? What is the difference between a flaneur and a dandy? What euphemisms are used to identify them across the three texts? Which term best describes Scott? What differences can you identify between the ways these texts construct gender vs. more heteronormative texts? What are we to make of White’s indictment of the metaphors of heterosexual marriage into gay life as a kind of Saturnalia, or Carnival? How does he use this discussion to portray Texas from a gay perspective? How does Gorey compare the “straight” characters (Druscilla’s parents) from the queer (Mr. Crague and Miss Skrim-Pshaw) in both image and word? What are we to make of both White and Van Saint’s complex interweaving of family and sex?

What is the role of travel and movement in these texts? If, as Van Den Abbeele suggests, travel is always determined by and determining of the arbitrary point of “home,” what do these texts to do signify that home? What place does it have? Where is White “from?” and how do his travels draw out that sense of home from him? How can we infer Drusilla’s home what do we deduce about it. What places strike the authors as more “authentic” than others? What differentiates those places from the inauthentic ones? Is authenticity possible in these texts? How is home represented in My own private Idaho? what does Van Saint think of Mike's theory that if he only had a "normal" family that he'd be well-adjusted? What are we to make of Mike's confession of love, considering his willingness to lie about his affections to get money?

What role do intermediaries play in creating a sense of movement and transition? Why does White spend more time telling us about the people he meets than the places he visits? Why do we need Miss Skrim-Pshaw in theRemembered Visit? What role does Hans play? Discuss the role family dynamics play in these texts, particularly as it relates to the creation of dualities. How are we to evaluate the family units presented to us? What strategies do each author use to create the potential for evaluation and judgment?

The Colonial Subject – Travel media as and about the Other

o Jennings - "From Indochine to Indochic"File

To date, however, much of this work on the trappings of colonialism has, by its very focus on artifacts and discourses over practices,5 tended to elide everyday manifestations of colonial life, home-sickness, rivalry, competition etc.—thereby leading to an overly monolithic portrayal of colonial forms and norms—typified at its paroxysm by the frustrating use of the singular to refer to the colonial project. By bridging this vast field of studies of colonial urb- anism and architecture with another approach—championed amongst others by Nicholas Thomas and Ann Stoler’s layered and textured analyses of complex, conflicting, fractured, often dysfunc- tional, and certainly pluralized colonialisms6—this article seeks to understand the ‘real life’ of French colonialism in Indochina. To do this, I have deliberately chosen an almost mythical and hence seemingly ‘un-real’ colonial site, which has become a veritable lieu de m ́emoire in its own right, to explore the tensions and dynamics behind the lore of colonial Indochic. Far from being marginal to the ‘cultural politics’ of French colonial Indochina, I contend that this site of luxury lay at its very centre.

o Peleggi - "Consuming Colonial Nostalgia"File

This article examines the renovation and commercial re-launch in the 1990s of some of the grand hotels built in South-East Asia during the high colonial era (1880s–1910s) and their social construction as historic monuments. The analysis focuses on architectural enhancement and discur- sive authentication as the key practices whereby the semblance of historic authenticity is bestowed on these hotels and made available as nostalgia to consumers. The article also considers whether renovated colonial hotels should be regarded as sites of consumption or as emerging ‘mnemonic sites’, filling in the vacuum caused by the progressive obliteration of ‘mnemonic environments’ in South-East Asia’s urban landscape.

o Spurr - Rhetoric of EmpireFile

Spurr, David. (1993).Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham: Duke University Press.

o Journal 3Assignment

Post your 500 word (min) journal entry here.

o Journal 4Assignment

Post your 500 word (min) journal entry here.

o Discussion Questions on The Other (Satrapi and Anderson)

Structure
Discus the ways that the unique forms of each of these texts contributes to their distinctive meanings. Could the creators have conveyed the same messages using different modes or media? How would Satrapi’s story be different were she to have written a novel? Is the message of Persepolis inextricably bound to the visual component of the graphic novel or is it portable? Why would she choose to adapt it into an animated film instead of live-action? How would you describe the acting in Anderson’s film? What distinctive features mark his style as different from what you would normally expect of a “realistic” film? Why does he make those choices?
Discuss the episodic nature of both Satrapi’s and Anderson’s works. How does this highly formal structure affect our interpretation? If you were to describe the constituent elements in Persepolis, how would you do so (e.g. chapters, vignettes, episodes, fables, etc)? How is Anderson’s film divided? Can we see connections with what he does and what Van Saint does in Idaho? How can these techniques be seen both as markers of “auteurs” and as powerful tools to shape messages?
What is the role of “the writer” in each story? What position do they take? How does Marji change when she directly addresses the audience? What does this inside/outside position do to the way we see them?
Travel and the Other
How do both Zero Moustafa and Marji represent elements seen by others as both desirable and threatening? Is there something more to Dmitri’s loathing of Gustave than his loss of the painting? What is the cultural source of the threats to Gustave? In what ways are the threats aligned against Satrapi, Gustave, and Moustafa unified? Why is the figure of the dandy such a threat to the fascist? In what ways does cultural chauvinism reveal itself in these texts and what role does this chauvinism play in the process of Othering? What strategies does Satrapi use to reveal the dangers of cultural chauvinism?
How does the process of movement and travel highlight the aspects of Otherness in the main characters? Do we find a resolution to that condition for either of them? How does movement or its lack support your answer? How do their respective friends and lovers make them feel about their movement? Is there a sense of home in either of these stories? On what is it based?

How is class represented? Discuss the presentation of the service industry in these texts. How does the interactions between classes serve to highlight the process of Othering that occurs within cultures?
Liminal Space
How are the titles of these works significant to our understanding of the meaning? Why Persepolis? Why not “Iran?” What are we to make of The Grand Budapest Hotel? What is significant about the location of Budapest and Hungary to an understanding of liminality and otherness? What is significant about the “chronotope” of each of these works? How does the specificity about their place and time determine their action and lend to the themes of displacement and unhomedness? How do these texts present the tension between public and private space?

Why is it important that M. Gustave and Zero Moustafa meet in a grand hotel? What about their relationship is revealed by this space? What is it about hotels that make them stand as distinctly colonial spaces as well as intersections with liminal identities? Why do both parts of Satrapi’s novel end with trips to the airport? Why do we not see her as she arrives in France to take up study there? What role does nostalgia play in the creation of such spaces in real life? How do each of these texts work to create an air of nostalgia (what strategies do they use?) and does this appeal to sentiment undermine their messages?

Identity
Why does Satrapi choose to end her book and her marriage in the same moment? What is it about this pivotal event that punctuates her message? Why does Zero spend so little time discussing his? Why is the death of his wife treated as an afterthought while the dissolution of Satrapi’s is lingered over? Discuss the various identities Marji and Zero inhabit in their journeys
How are Zero’s and Gustave’s identities shaped by their travel? How is Gustave’s identity essential to the evolution of Zero’s? How do secrets and secret societies create both community and isolation in these works? How is resistance represented? How does the pressure of tyranny, or its lack, shape how identities are constructed? How does each artist confound our expectations and turn our assumptions about the distinction between "freedom" and "oppression" against us?
What role does art and artistic expression play in these works? What are the various examples of art across the media? How does one's approach to art define one's identity? How do each character's responses to artistic expressions reveal their character? How is food a central image in each text?

Consider the use of silence and its cultural associations. What do we associate with silence? How does each text use representations of silence - either in terms of literal pauses or personal crisis - to shape character?

The Purposeful Pilgrim – Producing travel media about travel as self-discovery

o Edward Gorey - "The Willowdale Handcar"File

From the goodreads.com:

"In this enigmatic, surreal, wonderfully entertaining tale, three mysterious figures set out from Willowdale, traveling by handcar. On the way to nowhere in particular they pass a number of odd characters and observe a series of baffling phenomena, from a house burning down in a field to a palatial mansion perched precariously on a bluff.
At once deeply vexing and utterly hilarious, darkly mysterious and amusingly absurd,The Willowdale Handcaris vintage Edward Gorey."