Gawk and Learn?

Theme parks of the most unique kind are springing up everywhere! Leisure is taking a new turn. Recently Kunming, an area of 13,000 acres in southern China’s Yunnan Province is being converted into a Disney land of the little people. Tourists can come by to immerse in the spectacle of dwarfs performing and living at the same time; it’s a veritable live reality show.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/world/asia/04dwarfs.html?em

Are these frozen realities that we choose not to see? Will we wake up and feel more inclined to think about disability more deeply or have we made disability exotic here? And even if it has been made exotic, can we argue that perhaps it is still better to be visible than invisible?

Or take for instance the efforts of harnessing the ready-made reality of slums in Mumbai, India, as a tourist attraction to educate and entertain. Packaged tours of poverty sold for the common good? Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum covers an area of 530 acres and sweeps you with experiences of a 100,000 people performing being poor. 50 tours a month take place through these slums, giving you the Kodak moments of exotic markets of incense sticks, mangoes, recycling of garbage and pottery. http://www.realitytoursandtravel.com/



Given that poverty is a pressing reality amongst the majority of the world, it is still not acknowledged as mainstream reality in the media. After all, media often serves us what we would like reality to be than being a mirror of reality. So one can argue that it is time to capitalize on alternative realities and compel people to roll down their windows for a change and in fact, actually charge them for it!

Sure this shocks. It is meant to shock. But shock with good intent to make money for the poor, the disadvantaged…people on the margins of society is what the battle here is about isn’t it? Is this a fair trade-off basically is the question.

And then there are theme parks of frozen fantasies, captured nostalgia, pigeon holed into our memory boxes of what the good ole days used to be. Primitivism is another performance that is starting to mint money through adventure tourism. Ever wondered what it would be like to meet cannibals, spears n all, feathers and dancing around the fire?
https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/wash/www/cannibaltours.htm

A little thrill, a little more fear, a lot more exoticism than your run of the mill day job in your office cubicle for sure. Such is the targeting of cannibal tours, a growing niche of adventure tourism where it is promised that you can feel like you’re stepping into a time machine to glimpse at a past that is disappearing fast from social memory.

Of course the discomfort that you feel is partly guilt for gawking, partly a moral outrage to commodify people and capitalize on their desperation, and partly the fear that these people will be frozen with their lifestyles just for us to continue to gawk at them. However, it is worth keeping in mind that applications from 'dwarfs' are skyrocketing at the little people kingdom in China, that the poor in the slums and the 'primitives' in cannibal villages are surviving and sustaining themselves from such tourism. Is morality the prerogative of those who can get on the tour bus and have the CHOICE on whether or not to gawk?

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