The Tourist Gaze Analysis

John Urry’s, The Tourist Gaze (1990), interpolates the discussion of tourism in pleasure sought in environments outside the “normal”. The intersectionality of cultural discourse and the interoperability of socioeconomic tourism act, in part, of “consuming goods and services which are in some sense unnecessary” (1). There is a corollary between “supposedly” generated forms of “pleasure experiences” which are desired for their atypical “set of different scenes” (1). “landscapes or townscapes [which] out of the ordinary” produce interest and curiosity (1). The ‘untravelled’ geography, or person, carries heterogenous baggage, or preconceived notions, in anticipation of what will be an “encounter” (1). These set value of experiences, practices,
How the gaze is ‘relayed’ is through a complex network of ethnographies. The by-product, or reproduction of compounding interplay of signs, signifying culturally “constructed” dichotomies and “reinforced” binary systems (1). Precisely, the gaze is “constructed in relationship to its opposite, to non-tourist forms of social experience and consciousness;” wherein, ‘places’ lose agency in becoming an object for the “tourists’ gaze” (1).The tourists’ desire for the other “encounter” extends a periscopic vision in the ‘distant’ horizon observing the culture from ‘microsites’ of tourist space. The cultural matrix of the tourists’ gaze weaves a binaristic web, coded by social indexes of “non-tourist” practices(1)—”this mode of gazing shows how tourists are in a way semioticians, reading the landscape for signifiers of certain pre-established notions of signs derived from various discourses of travel and tourism”
Peering up from the busy streets of Havana was a “notion of departure,” (2) when I gazed at Che Guevara’s face imposed on a building in great scale. I had not known at the time that I stood in Plaza de la Revolution. At certain times of the day the sun pronounced his figure and the bare backwash of the building seemed to be the appropriate backdrop. It was as if the whole structure was instantaneously alive. Beyond the stare of Guevara, my gaze traveled his outline to the foundation of the building. I observed what I thought was barren; unaware of the apartment buildings situated behind Guevara, the residents staring out from their balconies. I had but only recently seen them, but they perhaps, had already witnessed me. I wondered what the view must have been like. A different horizon “contrast” to which I had observed previously lying on the resort beach (2). An “out of the ordinary experience,” certainly, it was a distinct pleasure, separate from the leisure the resort provided (2). Yet, there was an eerie ambience in seeing the apartment building without a single light seemingly more alive than the downtown condominiums that never shut off. I felt adrift. I was sprung from my senses by the Tour Guide beckoning us to continue, others were ready to experience more. The sensation of gazing at Guevara’s image and the apartment buildings, at that moment, returned to thoughts of “‘home’ within a relatively short period of time” (3). The smile