Life changing experiences

Abstract

This article examines how films project the image and attributes of a destination, providing a promise of possible experiences for potential tourists. Its focus is on the Australian Outback. The study analysed 22 fictional-feature films set and filmed in the Outback. It was found that there were strong patterns in these films. Nearly all of the films represented the Outback through the eyes of a person who was making their first trip to the area. The majority of these films showed that person as being profoundly changed by their visit. Accordingly, it is argued that through film, the key promise to Outback tourists is that they will have profound life-changing experiences.

Introduction

Her articles are going to put us on the map … [as a result of her] overseas press coverage we could have thousands of American tourists here and they haven’t got anything like this over there.

The speaker is Walter Riley (played by John Mellion) and the film is Crocodile Dundee (1986). Riley and Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) are partners in a tinpot Outback tour company called Never Never Safaris. A visiting American journalist wants to write a feature story on Dundee and his adventures. Riley is excited because he hopes that such media coverage may be translated into increased tour business, particularly from the lucrative American market. In reality, life imitated art, the success of Crocodile Dundee in the USA stimulated a massive surge in American tourists to Australia (Beeton, 2005, Riley and Van Doren, 1992).

A recent international marketing campaign for tourism in Australia begins in an Outback pub. A young stockman (cowboy) welcomes the viewer by pronouncing the beer is cold and ready. The ad proceeds through ten Australian vignettes, six of which feature the Outback (Tourism Australia, 2006). The pub featured is the Silverton Hotel, near Broken Hill. It has been used for over 130 feature films, music videos and commercials (Broken Hill, 2006). It was chosen for this tourism campaign because of its filmic image and connections. Indeed, rather than a pub filled with authentic stockman, it is a tourist attraction, its walls and verandah festooned with film and celebrity memorabilia. Outside the pub, providing a photo opportunity for tourists, sits a replica of the hero’s V8 Interceptor police car from Mad Max II (1981).

In 2008 Tourism Australia launched a new US$35million international marketing campaign created by the film director Baz Luhrmann. In the lead-up to the release of his film Australia (2008), Tourism Australia had sought his permission to create advertisements utilising clips from the film. Luhrmann had responded that he would like to make completely new advertisements. The result features a stressed workaholic New Yorker, working late at night. Her boyfriend rings and says he wants to break up. That night, she is visited in a dream by a young Aboriginal boy who tells her the solution to her problems is to go ‘Walkabout’ in the Outback. She is then shown happily swimming in a billabong with her boyfriend. For domestic tourists, Tourism Australia published a 68 page full-colour ‘special edition magazine celebrating the movie and the country’ which was inserted into the weekend edition of The Australian newspaper (Tourism Australia, 2008).

These three instances featuring the Australian Outback demonstrate the close relationship between film and tourism. A growing literature examines this intermingling of destination and film images and its influence on the tourist. Of particular interest is what it is about specific films which appeals to tourists and attracts them to a destination. In the popular media the general emphasis is on the appeal of spectacular scenery. For example, a newspaper article considering the tourism potential of the film Australia states:

The cast is star-studded … The real star, however, is the spectacular scenery of the Northern Territory and outback Western Australia. These landscapes are mysterious and wild and will be irresistible on the big screen, with their dusty plains and burnt gorges, theatrical blue skies and mesmerising orange sunsets (Pfeiffer, 2008, p. 12).

However, academic studies of film-induced tourism have identified a wider range of motivational drivers. In considering how Australian films of the 1980s stimulated a surge in American tourists, Riley and Van Doren put this down to a combination of ‘natural environments as a spectacular backdrop to action, a portrayal of uncomplicated indigenous lifestyles and, lastly, the interaction and struggle of man with the environment’ (1992, p. 273). Tooke and Baker argued ‘destinations and experiences are enhanced in the viewer’s memory by special technological effects, an association with famous actors and highly attractive settings (1996, p. 88). Riley, Baker and Van Doren held that ‘if some part of a movie is extraordinary or captivating, it serves as an icon which viewers attach to a location shown in the movie’. This icon could be ‘a single event, a favorite performer, a location’s physical features or a theme’ (1998, p. 924).

Later researchers saw more personal connections between film storylines and tourism. Kim and Richardson stated that ‘it can be inferred that the level of emphatic involvement with film characters can affect the perceptions viewers have of the place depicted in the film’ (2003, p. 222). Beeton argued that ‘we view movies through ourselves in such a way to gain some personal meaning’ and ‘we put ourselves into the story, sights, sounds and emotions of the movie’ (2005, p. 229). Writing of historic movies, Frost noted that ‘tourists are responding to a destination image based on the heritage and historical associations of a place rather than its scenic attributes’ (2006, p. 248). In contrast, other recent researchers have returned to an emphasis on scenery and landscape. Jewell and McKinnon (2008) argued that films foster ‘place-identity’ and have created a new form of associative cultural landscape. In examining the experiences of tourists in New Zealand on Lord of the Rings tours, Carl, Kindon, and Smith (2007) identified a strong desire for tourists to be in the actual places where scenes were shot. An empirical study of tourists by Macionis and Sparks (2009) found that visiting film locations tended to be incidental and that the primary motivator was ‘to see the scenery and landscape in real life’ (2009, p. 97).

The purpose of this article is to extend this discussion of the motivational drivers of film-induced tourism by focussing specifically on films featuring the Outback. One limitation of previous research has been the tendency to just consider individual films. There is value in considering groups of films which represent a destination and collectively work upon the pre-trip expectations of tourists. Accordingly, in this article I examine a group of 22 fictional feature films set and filmed in the Australian Outback. My particular interest is in the messages they convey and the types of experiences they ‘promise’ for tourists to the Outback.