New York's Largest Tourist Trap and Other Sacred Sites
by Sara Tucker
Are we a nation of shallow grievers? "The site of the World Trade Center is currently New York's largest tourist trap," raged a visitor to Ground Zero back in 2004. "The sidewalks are wall-to-wall people, there is nothing left to see except a big, clean hole in the ground, and the commercialization of such an enormous loss of life (the hawkers are awful) is disrespectful enough to turn anyone's stomach."
That comment, posted at Virtual Tourist, sparked a group tirade from visitors displeased with their Ground Zero experience. "I saw some moronic tourist getting her picture taken in front of the site," fumed another blogger, "smiling and all. I thought to myself, 'What are you going to do with this picture when you get it developed?' You might as well blow it up poster size, and frame it with a caption 'I am an idiot.' It's like having a picture of yourself smiling in front of a grandparent's or parent's casket."
The crassness of tourists in places where horrendous suffering has occurred is nothing new, and neither is the ire it provokes. Early tourists of Gettysburg were lured in part by the chance to gamble in a newly built casino and have their pictures taken in a photography studio. Offended by the playland their battlefield had become, veterans finally took action to restore its dignity.
I asked my friend Peter Trachtenberg what to make of our nation's response to places that memorialize tremendous suffering. Peter is the author of The Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning. In it, he asks why so many Americans think of suffering as something that happens to other people--people who (we believe) usually deserve it. If you're tempted to take umbrage at his stance, read the book. It's candid, compassionate, and courageous. To write it, Peter traveled the world to places where suffering was palpable and widespread, and listened to people's stories of genocide (Rwanda) and cataclysm (Sri Lanka) and abject poverty (Calcutta). And yes, stories about the loss of loved ones on September 11. What can Americans learn, he wanted to know, from the people of Rwanda and Sri Lanka?
"The problem with Gettysburg," Peter explained to me, "is that it's been decontaminated." All too often, such sites bear little trace of the events they memorialize. Gettysburg, sans carnage, is a nice place to have a picnic, in other words, especially if they're doing a costumed reenactment of Pickett's charge that day.
I tested on Peter the theory, common among scholars of dark tourism, a.k.a. thanatourism, that we visit places of death and destruction in part to connect with our own mortality. He wasn't convinced. "The kinds of death that are represented at sites of thanatourism--genocide, massacre, natural disaster--are so unlike the kind that most affluent, educated Westerners are likely to experience that they almost belong to another category."
What category that would be, he didn't say.
Rather than identifying with the victims of suffering, Peter argues, most of us want "to be reassured that we won't die the way those anonymous Rwandans or Cambodians or Pompeians did. And since there are no tours of hospitals or nursing homes, which would be real thanatourism, maybe we're reassured that we won't die at all."
Some two million tourists now visit Gettysburg each year. But what do they see? A grassy 6,000-acre park where "children fight imaginary battles wearing Union and Confederate caps and wave tiny flags on Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top," writes Sharon L. Slayton in an article for James Trotta's Grief Tourism Web site. "Adults browse through the bookstore picking up a few of the numerous items for sale including audio-visual recordings, maps, books, games, and collectibles to take back home. A few moments of reflection, perhaps, on the sacrifices and the purpose of Gettysburg, and visitors are happy to return to the comfort of their homes or nearby accommodations at the end of a hot summer day."
How to construct a lasting monument that will resonate with generations hence is, of course, the central problem of Ground Zero. The site will be a work in progress for a long time; meanwhile, visitors continue to pour in. At the Tribute WTC Visitor Center, a project of the September 11th Families' Association, they can now take a guided walking tour led by a survivor, or a recovery worker, or a relative of someone who perished that day. Or they can take a self-guided audio tour as they listen to the voices of families who lost loved ones. The nonprofit center, which is not intended to be permanent, addresses--for the moment--the need to remember.
Further reading:
* Salon review of The Book of Calamities
* "War and Peace"
* Visiting the Dark Side This Summer?
* Dark Tourism: Bearing Witness or Crass Spectacle?
* Dark Tourism: A Fine Line Between Curiosity and Exploitation
* The Dark Tourism Forum Web site
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