More on the Traveler/Tourist Debate
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.20.05 | 11:58 AM ET
Rolf Potts weighs in again today in a Vagablogging post, following up on John Flinn’s Sunday column on the subject. Potts, who recently put the magazine ad for Anthony Bourdain’s television show Without Reservations under his critical microscope for using the phrase “Be a traveler not a tourist,” adds another layer to the debate.
The heart of this dichotomy, of course, lies in our own insecurities about travel. In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character, who has been crashing support-group meetings to boost his self-esteem, drops the t-word when another crasher, named Marla, starts showing up at the meetings. “Marla, the big tourist,” he mutters. “Her lie reflected my lie.” Similarly, we all travel with the knowledge that, by definition, a person journeying to a foreign place is an outsider, a dilettante, a superficial presence. Other travelers (i.e. “tourists”) only remind us of that fact.
And that’s why we go to such great pains to make distinctions and split hairs.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
