Touring the screen: New Zealand film geographies and the textual tourist

Abstract

This study examines the relation between cinematic representations of New Zealand and the tourist imagery of the country. In particular, this thesis will focus on the textual analysis of four films shot in New Zealand: The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, 1993), Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002) , The Last Samurai (dir. Edward Zwick, 2003), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001-2003). These primary texts are particularly relevant as they have all been used as marketing tools to attract tourists to New Zealand or specific locations within the country. This work draws upon an approach based on the theoretical premises of structuralist semiotics to investigate the way in which the selected films construct their viewers as potential tourists. The representation of space and characters in these texts can, in fact, generate an imaginative and cognitive activity that may, in turn, interpellate the physical and simulated mobility typical of tourist practice. The textual and semiotic analysis of selected film features is complemented by a historiographical overview of New Zealand cinema, which emphasizes the cultural, social and historical specificity of Aotearoa/New Zealand in the development of a 'national' film landscape. This perspective foregrounds the significance that the colonial past of the country has for New Zealand contemporary society. Thus, I argue that the conflation of a tourist gaze with a filmic one is rooted in the colonial history of New Zealand cinema. In turn, the affinity between the modes of vision of both the tourist and the settler is determined by their common need to make sense of an unfamiliar land by framing it within familiar conventions. The thesis also investigates the strategies adopted by local tourist authorities in order to promote each film and its film locations. This is supported by the analysis of selected tourist products, tourist circuits, guidebooks, brochures and sites, related to the four case studies. More broadly, the examination of these texts is linked to a discussion of the relationship between film and tourist discourses.