If you visit Auschwitz, would you consider it fun or enjoyable? Would you ever find yourself happy and joyous while visiting a village destroyed during the Spanish Civil War? The answers to both questions might seem obvious – no, of course not. And yet, when you walk around the Tower of London, do you mourn those killed there centuries ago, or do you laugh along at the gruesome tales being told by the Beefeaters? When you walk the grounds and or watch your children playing running around on the playground at Hampton Court Palace, do you let sombre tales of past residents affect your mood? All are dark tourismsites – places associatedmainlywith death, but also with trauma or natural disasters – anywhere something tragic has taken place, either recently or in the past. Yet theway you feel at each of them– indeed, are expected to feel – is far fromuniform. Yes, people were executed and imprisoned at the Tower of London as surely as they were in Nazi concentration camps, if not on the same scale. Yet, the smiles and humour of those touring the former would be out of place at the latter. Each dark tourism site has its own narrative – encouraging you to laugh, to cry, to smile, to ponder, to be shocked or appalled. There is no one way to sell a dark tourism site to visitors – and some would even baulk at being described as selling ‘dark tourism’ at all – but one thing is for certain: the organisations behind each of them have a story they want to tell, and a way they want you to hear it. CHOOSING A NARRATIVE Dark tourism organisations use storytelling and narratives to interpret the past, and to evoke and prescribe emotions they feel are fitting among visitors. Everything is part of the narrative – the site, the artefacts, the people you encounter, even the lighting. By telling particular stories and making visitors feel a certain way, the organisations want them to engage in a specific manner, to take away only certain things. Organisations must carefully plan the ultimate narrative. Broader socio-historical contexts can shape the narrative. Regardless of whether you are visiting a concentration camp in Poland or a Holocaust exhibition in Europe, you will most probably know that you are meant to feel sadness or shame, as this is what society sanctions. In the Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial WarMuseum (IWM) London, sometimes they play with that. They only have guided tours for children, and they prepare the children beforehand for what they are going to see. Apart from that, if you just walk in, there are not a lot of people you can talk to. They prefer to tell you a story in your own time. Everything on display has a story – sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. For instance, they have a huge display cabinet with all the shoes of those who were taken to concentration camps. There is a little sign, but they mainly want the objects to talk for themselves. The ruins of Old Belchite in Zaragoza, Spain, ruined in the Spanish Civil War, were previously open. Anyone could walk into the ruins, touch things. Recently, they enclosed the area, so you can only go in with a guide. They can have more influence over what people can actually take away from the visit. The guide who took me around told me how his family suffered – his grandfather was shot there. Before, people could go and think ‘oh well, this was bombed during the war’, but that was about it. They wouldn’t learn what happened to the people, to families. When you go to the IWMHolocaust exhibition, the entrance guard has a solemn expression, presenting the right emotional experience. Every visit takes a toll. At the same time, you see people going around as if they were looking at Picasso paintings – they don’t seem to take it in. 36 |
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