Last week, we did a thorough two-day seminar regarding dark tourism during which the seminar leaders guided with a totally unique and extraordinarily effective strategy of revolving the questions around a storyline which gave us very much to discuss and debate, and at length the discussion was quite in-depth.
We took Chernobyl as the setting, and two people’s perspective of the event which condensed the debate of whether the disclosure of a dark tourism site that later developed into a viral content is ethical or not? And several other questions extending from it.
At the start of the seminar, I shared my research findings of this topic, the dark tourism spectrum arranging dark tourism sites from darkest (education orientation, directly linking to death and suffering, history centric, pursue authenticity, etc) to lightest (entertainment orientation, associated with death and suffering, heritage centric, pursue inauthenticity, etc), as a reference for later discussion. Students gave excellent answers to why people visit dark tourism sites, is it ethical to visit them, does the orientation of the visit matter, etc,. I summarized it as voyeurism concerns and excuses for them, such as the orientation of visit.
Then the emphasis of the discussion moved on to social media’s moral credibility on dark tourism. While some argued that dark tourism content going viral could better inform people of the history behind it, I refuted that the audience of these viral contents made this informing attempt likely to result in a way which most viewers entertain themselves with the content and not taking it seriously enough. Thus I advanced on my second point which social media could not handle dark topics such as dark tourism responsible enough due to that there is not yet any limitation for people of ignorance and no morality who do not fully deserve the right to publish their opinions on these topics.
Extending from the previous point, Serena gave the great question of is it ethical for dark tourism sites and its history to be made into movies. Students gave thorough analysis on this question and proposed a variety of answers with some claiming its being ethical since movies are the most effective way to inform the general public of the history behind dark tourism sites, which would eventually led to more people respecting them; but counterpoints include that movies might cause alive victims of these trauma recall them once again, developing further damage to them. I put forward a new perspective by challenging Serena’s question: none of us has ever experienced such trauma, and how are we going to judge that? Some victims might feel it ethical because some of their glorious / heroic movements will be available to the world while others might not due to that they don’t want people to comment / judge upon the hardships they have gone through, and some might have a complex feeling towards the whole affair or couldn’t define how they felt about it.
Interesting aspects and questions to think about: why does dark tourism sites with a longer time scale tend to face much less criticism and ethical problems? There were almost none controversy over the colosseum, no one would consider people’s orientation of visiting this site seriously, it would be totally tolerable to take selfies, etc. Second is that who are to define how history (dark tourism sites) are presented to public? One victim would not have authority enough. Who are to represent the general victims?
Some potential aspects to discuss: when I researched the definition of dark tourism, the early one focused on how people in response of these sites interpret them, while that later one changed to tourists’ behavior towards them. Which one do you relate to more? Why? Why did the definition change in time / is it that different people define it differently? How will the change of definition affect the focus of the debates regarding this topic?