We have a winner! As reported in class tonight,
Midnight in Paris edged out
Walter Mitty in a close race. We'll watch Woody Allen's film in the first half of class next week, building on our discussion of Hemingway, travel, and expatriation. I've posted to the course website an excerpt from Caren Kaplan's excellent book
Questions of Travel, as well as short pieces from Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson about traveling to Paris in the same era as the "expats." All three of these will help us better engage with the film on questions of travel. Feel free to post questions about any of the readings in the comments below, or even about Woody Allen or his film, if you're so inclined.
Until next week,
Kevin
I am of the idea that tourism is not the real travel experience. It is a show of what the country is like in its best light. Moreover, it is not the reality of a place. So I suppose that I believe there is an escape from the tourism trap, but it seemed that the readings were arguing the exact opposite. Kaplan argued that the “fantasy of escape” moved towards tourism becoming a trap and a move to the business picture. The idea that tourism has become the method of escape and then there is no way to escape being the tourist once that path has occurred. Interestingly enough, Johnson and Hughes seemed to be arguing that this escape is possible. Both had “escaped” to Paris to find a new life and were greeted with new possibilities and opportunities. The controversy of whether tourism becomes the inescapable end to a person’s desire of escape seems to have no clear answer.
ReplyDeleteKaplan’s piece has a great discussion on the ‘tourist’ and what that means in theorizing travel. So far in our class we’ve described the tourist as something in opposition to the true traveler, in terms of authenticity and how meaningful the resultant experience. But in this day and age, it seems impossible to travel without in some way being at least a little touristy and feeling the “tourist angst” as we try to escape tourist traps. As Fussell suggests (page 56), are we all tourists now?
ReplyDeleteI think this question relates back to another topic Kaplan brought up . . . “Imperialist nostalgia revolves around a paradox . . . somebody deliberately alters a form of life, and then regrets that things have not remained as they were prior to the intervention” (34). Our societies have changed the world through connections, economics, globalization, etc, and while this feels like progress in many ways - we still long for untouched places and true non-tourist experiences, which we will never get. The film and our readings for this week are about artists traveling with the intention of pursuing or enhancing their art - is that more dignified than traveling for leisure? Isn’t it kind of arrogant to think one’s travels are more noble than another’s, especially when we never know what meaning they might be drawing from it? Because of this, I think it’s impossible to try and categorize travel as more or less authentic, and so I guess we really are all tourists...
The readings for this week took me a bit of time to get through, but it’s useful to have an article about theory every once in a while to help make sense of all the stories. The difference between the traveler and the tourist is one we have been discussing quite often in class, and I think it’s explored in Americans in Paris. Johnson’s main character in “Along This Way” talks about how glad he is to not be visiting as a tourist; “(w)hat I wanted most, and what cannot be gotten vicariously, was impressions from the life eddying round me and streaming by. I wanted to see people, people at every level…”
ReplyDeleteThe differences between these two – the traveler and the tourist – takes on another dimension in Kaplan’s “Questions of Travel” with the “exile.” Kaplan describes the tourist and the exile as opposites, yet concedes that they also share similarities. Since one of the topics I was thinking about for my final paper in this class is stories from transnational labor migrants, Kaplan’s descriptions of the exile caught my attention. In particular, Kaplan’s descriptions of the ways in which the exile’s works are highly romanticized with “‘sorrow’ and ‘grandeur,’” and even as rites of passage, were unsettling (36). The most insidious idea is when, as Kaplan describes, “(i)mperialist nostalgia erases collective and personal responsibility, replacing accountability with powerful discursive practices; the vanquished or vanished ones are eulogiezed (thereby represented) by the victor” (34). Altogether, the readings for this week make me wonder most about the differences between travelers and exiles. And what are the differences between migrants and exiles? How can we move away from the place where the writing of an “exile” is romanticized in a problematic way, and how are these writings so different from all the other types of travel writing we’ve been discussing? Can such a huge variety of writings even be under the same category?
There is certainly a lot going on here with the selected readings and the movie as well. However, as I am watching the movie again, now, it's becoming evident that we have a few re-occurring themes. In the readings, these words kept appearing over and over: nostalgia, the tourist, and the role of imperialism in regards to travel. Given these themes, we can look into our movie a bit more in-depth and attempt to tease out some deeper meaning, without stealing the thunder of the discussion group of which I am a part.
ReplyDelete"Nostalgia is denial” is a quote from the movie. The pseudointellectual continues to say that it is a flaw within the romantic imagination in that it represents a lack of being able to cope with the realities of ones own time. This exchange in the movie takes place when our group is traveling to the palace of Versailles where we find them touring the gardens (relatively alone) and discussing how they could use a home like this. We can turn to Kaplan on page 31 to reveal an explanation of Wilson's nostalgia "It is difficult to read against the grain of Euro-American modernist romanticization of the metropolitan experience because the myth of the mixing of the peoples and mingling of influences is so powerfully linked to Western ideologies of democracy and nationhood." Wilson had been to Paris before and the nostalgia takes on another level. Wilson's fiancée even says to him that "he is living in a fantasy." and letting the audience in on the fact it's not just a place he's fantasizing about, it's a place in a time. Further more, it's not just Paris in the 20's but we learn that it's the idea that certain people have to be there and not Parisians or even Frenchmen/women, its more Americans.
Jessika (Bambi) Caudy
ReplyDeleteOctober 13, 2015
This week’s readings addressed a lot of topics that we have already been discussing in class. The one I grappled with the most when reading was the question of experience of travel dependent upon traveler status (i.e. exile or adventurer). This relates back to my newly found favorite topic of the authenticity of travel. In Questions of Travel, Kaplan discussed the idea that western literature on travel portrays the exiled traveler as being ripped away from their home and forced into a new culture in which they are doomed to struggle. It is an unfavorable picture of travel. This is juxtaposed to Americans in Paris where a black gentleman who was a near exile in his own country found solace in traveling. I supposed my question then is a matter less of authenticity of travel and more of, what are the issues regarding how we as define traveler status?
An exile is defined as someone cast out of their own home and forced into a rarely favorable situation in which they must learn to thrive or die in a new place. A tourist is someone with the privilege and means to experience another culture with the knowledge of being able to return home. I find issue with both of these common found definitions.
We have discussed in class that many people travel in order to gain a sense of self and a more worldly knowledge. One travels in order to escape the monotony of his own life and experience something joyous and adventurous. An exile of war would be experiencing the same sensations while traveling, would he not? In order to be exiled, one’s situation at home would have to be less than favorable. Therefore the new life in a place that is more welcoming, however strange, I believe would be treated with the same wide eyed mindset as a tourist. The only difference here is the knowledge that where you have traveled will become your new home.
We saw this joy of exile in Americans in Paris when Johnson claimed that while in Pairs he “recaptured for the first time since childhood the sense of being just a human being”. For this scenario, the common ideology of an exile or refugee being downtrodden, depressed, and scared does not fit. The travel situation turned out to be better than the life at home. We must address then this idea of exile vs tourist.
Questions of Travel raised the issue that travel literature is saturated with romantic western ideals in which travel is only happy when it is taken voluntarily through privilege. But I believe that being an “exile” or “expatriate” has more depth and complexity than we as westerns tend to believe.
In Johnson and Hughes’ work we see an idea of Europe and how there will be better opportunity there. We see the same escapism that we talked about last week for Hemingway and his expat group of friends, but to in a more tourist view. Leesha proposed the idea that the two authors escaped through it, but is that true? When did their tourism become their life in Paris? Slowly but surely the two find themselves making lives in Paris without meaning to, because they find themselves without a way out. Their stay becomes extended the longer they are unable to get away, though they keep the tourist mindset with themselves the entire time. Is it still tourism for Hughes when he no longer can find a way back?
ReplyDelete“When we notice a critical insistence upon exile as the trope that best signifies all modes of displacement in modernity, along with an accompanying ambivalence toward redemption and return as well as a celebration of distance and alienation, we have to as more pointed questions: Whose distance from what? What perspective of whom,” (Kaplan 35).
They aren’t exiled necessarily, but they become so once they lose a means of returning. They become displaced by unprepared means.
For this week's reading, I was particularly interested in the Johnson and Hughes selections. One quote from the readings struck me as being particularly relevant to our class: "However, we didn't make a business of seeing Paris; we made a pleasure of it. We looked with something like pity on tourist groups working on a schedule, being hustled from point to point, pausing only while their guide repeated his trite and hasty lecture on this building or that painting or the other monument. I was glad that on my first visit I was able to seee what I did see leisurely; not forced to gulp it down but able to take the time to note the taste of it" (Johnson, 201). I found this interesting to contrast with Hughes's narrative and perspective of a poor black American stranded in Paris vs. Johnson's elitist wealthy white visitor perspective. Johnson's attitude of being kind of smarmy towards tourists is also something that I would want to put down to his upbringing and social advantages as a white male in the early 20th century - except that nowadays, people still have that kind of attitude. Which really just makes me wonder: why?
ReplyDeleteI honestly am curious as to why people still sneer at tourists and the tourism culture. Part of me, as someone who has worked in retail before, knows that it's because some tourists are just rude and feel entitled and need to get a figurative grip. But I've been a tourist before, and I like to think that I was relatively unproblematic and behaved myself and respected the cultures and areas I was visiting, which I think is the case with most tourists.
And then there's also the attitude Johnson brings up, that of tourism vs. private exploration of a location. These days, it's obviously a financial choice - not everyone can afford private tours, or to take their time wandering the streets - but it's also, I think, a personal choice. Some people are more introverted and want to take their time and enjoy locations alone, while other people are extroverts who like exploring with lots of people. Still, I think that the former do feel superior in some senses to the latter; and even large tour groups are keenly aware of how annoying they must be. I'm interested to know if anyone else in class has opinions on exactly what is so annoying about tourists. I think it's an innovative way to explore and learn, and yet, I also inherently know that it's bothersome.
I found it really interesting that Kaplan sets up the binary oppositions of exile/tourism and high/low culture and that exile is deemed a "trope of modernism".In what ways is exile privileged in some modernist thought?
ReplyDeleteI thought that the cultural representation of exile as privileged was interesting because we usually think of tourists as those with privilege. While this may be true, perhaps financially, it's the writing of the exiles such as the "Lost Generation" that are seen as higher culture. The "artist in exile" is romanticized and I think that a lot of travel can be viewed as a pursuit of that aesthetic. According to Kaplan, the exile is "shocked by the strain of displacement into significant experimentation and insights"--which was the whole point of the modernist movement anyways, to "make it new", and how else could that be better accomplished by going somewhere new, even if that relationship seems a little cliched by now. Kaplan writes, "modernist exile is practiced by a "wandering, culturally inquisitive group", those who seek metamorphoses in form through the fruitful chaos of displacement". I had to wonder, isn't that what we all aim to be rather than the tourist? We want to be TRAVELLERS, not just tourists! We talked about the trope of having a life-changing experience or the trope of "travel changing you", and it seems derived from that aesthetic of the modernist exile. The exiles aren't grand-tourers, after all: it's supposedly deeper and has a bigger impact on you. I agree that the chaos of displacement can certainly be fruitful and can lead to the experimentation-that's the point. Displacement allows for what Kaplan calls a model of aesthetic gain through exile. I think the romanticized, privileged concept of the exile has a connection in the modernist privileging of art over commerce. I also thought it was a bit ironic that the modernist exiles were "nostalgic", because I can see how we, in the pursuit of authentic travel, can be nostalgic for their experience, too.
Nice little mix of readings for this week. The selection from 'Americans in Paris' struck me as a neat way to think about these things, particularly since they dealt more with perspectives outside of the usual white male trope. For these writers, travel was a process of stepping outside of culture, of breaking free from the societal roles one has been molded to. In a way, too, it's a process of defamiliarization. Like in our "Grand Tour" readings, the traveler isn't exactly roughing it in the same way one would on a trip to Borneo. France is "safe". But it's the role that Paris plays as something uncanny that gives it its appeal. In these travels, the writers experience a more powerful role in Parisian society than they did back home, even if they are living at the cheapest hotel, eating chese and bread every day until they can find a job. There's a sense of agency and mobility in society that I would argue they feel is not available back home. But once again, we can see that the traveler plays a role in creating this sense of freedom, even if it is not necessarily actually there. As Hughes discovers, his fellow black American travellers are almost all working as either jazz musicians or tap dancers. Paris as the great refuge for deracialization may not be as advertised.
ReplyDeleteWould Sonya's (the Russian dancer that Langston Hughes lived with in Paris) travel experience be classified as tourism or exile?
ReplyDeleteSonya ended up in Paris after her dancing group disbanded due to a series of unfortunate events. Like Hughes, she did not have the means of leaving France to go home because she simply did not have the money to do so. It would seem she is in exile, but unlike the expatriates we read about in Hemingway her dislocation from her home country does not seem to trouble her much. Aside from struggling to make ends meet and buy food, she seems rather hopeful that things will turn around and that she will find work eventually. In fact, it seems she is more concerned with finding work than necessarily finding her way home. When she does find a job that takes her away from Paris, she isn't returning to Russia but off to Le Havre to continue her dancing career. I wonder if travel for Sonya is not so much about going into exile (this romantic notion of separation from home that it discussed in Kaplan's writing) as it is simply a part of her career? Hannah brought up labor migration a number of times in this class and I am curious to see how we continue to discuss these necessary forms of travel (those that are different from the optional tourist experience).
What interested me in the two accounts from Johnson and Hughes was the narrator's goal of discovering a different way of living through visiting Paris. They didn't have specific sights to see or bucket list items to cross off. Rather, they wanted to find out what life was really like for people every day in Paris. Perhaps this is one of the significant distinctions (if any can be settled on) between traveler and tourist. As Johnson puts it, he and his friends wanted to see "Paris on the inside." There was no agenda or itinerary; they simply enjoy the quality of the life they experienced for the amount of time that they have.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in Hughes' account, there is less opportunity for enjoyment amid the struggle to survive on very little. It seems that he does find a place of lessened discrimination based on race alone - but discrimination against foreigners as a whole still greets him as he looks for a means of employment.
In the section of Along This Way that we read, Johnson briefly touches on how certain factors can change the way people respond to their environment. I would like to extend his thoughts to talk about how the racism, the culture, and the people in a place affect that place and in turn affect how outsiders view the place. Johnson insinuates that because the people in Paris have different views on skin color than where he comes from, he feels freer and less inclined to act above other Negro men. How can a place transform one’s sensitivity in this way? I think that the cultural environment affects the way a person might see people or symbols. Humans are very social creatures, and because we tend to “follow the crowd” so to speak, it is easier for us to adapt to cultural norms in a specific area. Johnson feels free because he no longer has peer pressure to act superior to blacks. No matter how he feels about racism – he is now free of the pressure to be racist. I believe that if he was racist and began treating the Negros badly in a place where they were considered equal, he would again feel pressure, but it would be pressure to treat them with respect instead of superiority. The pressures that one might face due to culture in an area can change their perspective of that area. Johnson may like Paris more than his home because he feels freer there – in at least one aspect.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this week’s assigned text, I found myself interested most in the Johnson and Hughes sections. There was a whole new aspect to the travel literature that we haven’t really looked at before. Moving away from the traditional white American in a foreign land, we’re taking a look from the black American’s perspective. Johnson notes in his piece that he feels “free from the problem of the many obvious or subtle adjustments to a multitude of bans and taboos; free from special scorn, special tolerance special condescension, special commiseration; free to be merely a man” (Johnson 199). The United States at the time couldn’t have been an easy place for the black American. Hughes travels to Paris to seek new opportunity, finding work in whichever way that he can.
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph of Kaplan’s piece got me thinking more about the conditions for Johnson and Hughes in Paris. Kaplan writes, “The commonsense definition of exile and tourism suggest that they occupy opposite poles in the modern experience of displacement: Exile implies coercion; tourism celebrates choice. Exile connotes the estrangement of the individual from an original community; tourism claims community on a global scale” (Kaplan 27).
My question to pose is: Did Johnson and Hughes feel exiled from the United States, figuratively. They would have probably faced racism and bigotry in the United States, making them want to travel to Paris where they feel more respected. They would enjoy being in a place where they are called gentleman.
I am unable to overlook Woody Allen’s alleged child molestation charges. Dylan Farrow told a detailed story about the allegations and wrote an open letter about it. Woody Allen’s best defense is that it was “planted” by a bitter, “crazy” Mia Farrow. It is privilege and we still watch his movies. Bill Cosby was erased from public consumption and memory— The Cosby Show and other Cosby material is now not played at all on television or anywhere else. Dr. Dre apologizes for the allegations of beating women. Sean Penn files a 10 million dollar lawsuit when the legitimate allegations against him severely beating and abusing Madonna was brought up! There is a double standard. More importantly, Dylan Farrow’s story shouldn’t be dismissed because of flimsy, sexist stereotypes against “unstable” types like Mia Farrow and by extension her daughter. I actually enjoy Woody Allen movies, but I think we should examine the double standards regarding race and sex. We’ve been discussing privilege and I believe that by dismissing the charges against him we are enabling not only privilege but the abuses the privileged are allowed. It’s a tough subject. I understand not wanting to talk about it, and it shouldn’t be the main discussion point of the class, but I think it should be acknowledged.
ReplyDeleteJohnson and Hughes are stories about travel in Paris around the turn of the century. Hughes brought with him nothing except a few dollars and a desire to experience Paris France. He was more of an immigrant than a traveler, and his first goal was to eat. Although he met a companion and was able to survive. They were progressively able to move to better living conditions. The experience is genuine travel in its purest form, heading out to a strange land with a few clothes and a small sum of money. The story leaves me with the feeling that the world is not a perfect place but everything works out in the long run. Johnson’s story had more of an upper class experience about it but which is the most genuine experience and what kind of role does money play in travel quality.
ReplyDelete