You don’t have to read Neil Postman’s scathing jeremiad Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986) to know that we live in an age of flashing, shallow, and ideologicallyloaded TV images. As the virtual pieces of a fluid, postmodern mosaic, they embody and articulate a breathless public narrative of change, conquest, and consumption that often controls and reinforces – rather than passively reflects – the shape of contemporary society. And you don’t have to open Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist (1976), or such later studies as those of Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) or Young and Riley (2002), among many other works, to understand that the emotional appeal of theme parks, studio tours, and heritage visits is based on a search by work-weary vacationers for “authentic experience.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Addison, L. (2001). Virtual heritage: Technology in the service of culture. In S. N. Spenser (Ed.), VAST 2001: Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (pp. 343–354). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
Barceló, J. A., Forte, M., & Sanders, D. H., (Eds.). (2000). Virtual Reality in Archaeology. Oxford: British Archaeological Report International Series 843.
Corner, J. & Harvey, S. (Eds.). (1991). Enterprise and Heritage. London: Routledge.
DG Education and Culture, European Commission. (2003). Report on the State of Cultural Cooperation in Europe. Brussels: European Commission.
European Commission. (2002). Structural Policies and European Territory: Cooperation Without Frontiers. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
Handler, R., & Gable, E. (1997). The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hodder, I. (1998). The past as passion and play: Çatalhöyük as a site of conflict in the construction of multiple pasts. In Lynn Meskell (Ed.), Archaeology Under Fire (pp. 124–139). London: Routledge.
Killebrew, A. (2004). Archaeology and the public in the 21st century: The view from Israel. In D. Callebaut & A. Killebrew (Eds.), Interpreting the Past (pp. 41–48). Brussels: Institute for Archaeological Patrimony.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998). Destination Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lowenthal, D. (2002). The past as a theme park. In T. Young & R. Riley (Eds.), Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations (pp. 11–23). Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books.
Pletinckx, D., Silberman, N. A., & Callebaut, D. (2002). Why multimedia matter in cultural heritage: The use of new technologies in the Ename 974 Project. In F. Niccolucci & S. Hermon (Eds.), Multimedia Communication for Cultural Heritage (pp. 65–72). Budapest: Archaeolingua.
Postman, N. (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Press.
Walsh, K. (1992). The Representation of the Past. London: Routledge.
Wojciechowski, K., Smolka, B., Palus, H., Kozera, R.S., Skarbek, W., & Noakes, L. (2004). Empathic Avatars in VRML For Cultural Heritage. Computer Vision and Graphics 32, 1049–1055.
World Bank. (2001). Cultural Heritage and Development: A Framework for Action in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington: The World Bank.
Young, T., & Riley, R. (Eds.). (2002). Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Silberman, N.A. (2008). Virtual Viewpoints: Multivocality in the Marketed Past?. In: Habu, J., Fawcett, C., Matsunaga, J.M. (eds) Evaluating Multiple Narratives. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71825-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71825-5_9
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-71824-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-71825-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)