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Book Review
Sue Beetona
a
La Trobe University, Australia

To cite this Article Beeton, Sue(2008) 'Book Review', Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 6: 2, 155 — 158
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14766820802140471
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 Book Review
Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel
Jeffrey Ruoff, (ed). Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Pp. 298. ISBN
0 8223 3713 4: £14.99.

Tourism is truly the most cross-disciplinary field of its kind, and many of those
working in the field find the need to engage with other disciplines. As a
researcher in the area of film-induced tourism, this has meant attempting to
understand aspects of media studies, particularly film, so I was thrilled to be
given the opportunity to review a book on the place of travelogues in film/
cinema studies. Due to a personal grounding in tourism, this review comes
unashamedly from that perspective – I am not in a position to critically
analyse the veracity of the authors’ cinematic arguments. However, I can
consider the travel perspective of this most interesting compilation.
The book itself is an extension of a special edition on ‘Travelogues and Travel
Films’ in the journal, Visual Anthropology, which provides another indication of
its grounding in not only cinema studies, but also anthropology. In stating the
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aim of the publication, the editor, Ruoff (an Assistant Professor in Film and
Television), refers to its multi-disciplinary nature: ‘The goal of this volume is
to understand representations of travel in the history of cinema . . . in a
variety of disciplines, including film studies, cultural studies, anthropology,
sociology, geography and history’ (p. 2). While such cross-disciplinary work
is commendable, it is disappointing that ‘tourism’ was not included in this
list and, in actual fact, the tourism literature is scantily referred to, yet is a
constant element in many of the chapters.
The work represented in the publication focuses on the travel film genre,
from its pre-cinematic origins of the travel lecture slide show and virtual
voyages through to Hollywood and IMAX productions. It does not follow a
strict chronological order, rather Ruoff has themed the chapters into three
sections: Travelling Machines: Space, Time, Difference; Travelogues and
Silent Cinema; Travelogues in the Sound Era. This is a somewhat arbitrary
grouping and reflects an attempt to bring together what is a diverse range of
work from a journal into a more coherent book format. Ruoff has succeeded
to some extent, with his introductory chapter providing context and linkages
between the subsequent works. This can be problematic with such an
edition, however the chapters do present some linkages and thematic pro-
gression, and it is unlikely that others will read it from cover to cover as I
have in the reviewing process. However, after doing this, I now have a broad
grounding in the fascinating lineage of travelogues and their place in
tourism, which is what I was hoping to achieve. As Ruoff notes in his intro-
duction, ‘Neither a genre or a mode, the travelogue surfaces in all forms of

1476-6825/08/02 155-004 $20.00/0 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

JOURNAL OF TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE Vol. 6, No. 2, 2008

155
 156 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change

cinema – avant-garde, popular fiction, home movies, art cinema, documentaries,

IMAX’ (p. 17).
While it would be excellent to have the space to write an essay for each
chapter, that is not possible, nor is a broad essay on the entire publication; so
in order to provide some indication of what is included the chapters are intro-
duced briefly in order. As noted earlier, this is being reviewed from the perspec-
tive of a tourism academic – so some of the chapters that are of limited interest
here may be pertinent to readers from other disciplines, who may well take
very different meanings from the work.
The first section, ‘Travelling Machines’ begins with a chapter by Tom
Gunning, ‘The Whole World Within Reach’: Travel Images without Borders’.
Gunning’s aim is to explore the ‘tourist viewpoint as embodied in early
travel films’ (p. 25). He moves through a concise history of travel represen-
tations from the travel lecture illustrated by lantern slides through to the
early ‘phantom rides’ of American sights and the influence of the railways
on filming and presenting them as a form of self-promotion - ‘encouraging
tourism along their routes’ (p. 31). He goes on to look at the development of
panoramic films and the so-called ‘ethnographic’ films of exotic tribes and
the images they portray. This is a good first chapter as many of these elements
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are discussed by other authors from various perspectives throughout the book.
Unfortunately, while he discusses travel and tourism, he fails to refer to any of
the tourism literature.
This is followed by ‘From Hale’s Tours to Star Tours: Virtual Voyages, Travel
Ride Films, and the Delirium of the Hyper-Real’ by Lauren Rabonivitz which
further investigates the nature of ‘ride films’ and simulations. The descriptions
of the early Hales Tours is absolutely fascinating, yet once again there is no refer-
ence to tourism literature. In the final chapter in this section, ‘From Lecturer’s
Prop to Industrial Product: The Early History of Travel Films’, Rick Altman pro-
poses that the early travel films were more about performance than the film
itself, where the live lecture used film as a supporting prop. To illustrate his
points, Altman begins with the catalogue of the famous Burton Holmes
Lectures, moving on to look at the films and lectures produced and presented
by McDowell, finishing his paper at the time the travel film has become a
product in its own right, not simply a lecturer’s prop. This theme of the
travel film lecture as introduced in this section recurs in many of the chapters.
The second section (Travelogues and the Silent Cinema) contains the bulk of
the papers, starting with Jennifer Lynn Peterson, ‘“The Nation’s First
Playground”: Travel Films and the American West, 1895– 1920’ which considers
the way that the west is promoted as a tourism destination through the nostal-
gia of the past seen in travelogues and fictional western movies. Linking ‘place’
with tourism and reflecting some of the current thinking on film-induced
tourism, Peterson notes that ‘the fictional western . . . is perhaps the only film
genre that is semantically dependent on place’ (p. 84), moving on to discuss
the promotion through films of other places such as national parks as tourist
playgrounds. She concludes by suggesting that, instead of film encouraging
people to visit the west that they could ‘play [in it] without ever leaving their
theatre seats’ (p. 96). This notion of travelogues as the early roots of virtual
travel recurs in many of the chapters.
 Book Review 157

Paula Amad uses the work of Albert Khan in the Archives de la Planete to
illustrate the next chapter, ‘Between the “Familiar Text” and the “Book of the
world”: Touring the Ambivalent Contexts of Travel Films’. She considers the
tensions inherent in and between travel and tourism by describing travel as
the ‘understood practice of a privileged subject undertaking a demanding
voyage in search of active experiences’ and tourism as the ‘understood practice
of democratised masses signed up for recreational tours in search of distracting
experiences’ (p. 100). Such a distinction, while not as common in today’s
tourism literature, is an unspoken differentiation inherent in most of the chap-
ters in the book – tourism refers to the recreational masses, whereas travel is an
individual pursuit with loftier goals.
Hamid Naficy’s, ‘Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition Films
about Nomadic Tribes – The Case of Grass’ (1925) is a fascinating study of
the text and context of the classic 1925 ethnographic expedition film, Grass.
The insights into the process, background and personalities of the three
Americans involved in the making of the film makes fascinating reading,
however this and the next chapter have little direct focus on tourism per se.
The following chapter, ‘Trans-Saharan Automotive Cinema: Citroen-,
Renault-, and Peugot-Sponsored Documentary Interwar Crossing Films’ by
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Peter J. Bloom features landscapes and travelling through them, concluding

that they ‘were an invitation to a world of travel accessible through the
medium of the automobile’ (p. 155). Yet his discussion of the relationship
between the motor car and tourism is scant and not the primary focus of his
work.
In contrast to the emphasis in the book on commercial travel films, Alexandra
Schneider looks at the role of the ‘home movie’ in informing and understanding
the ‘formation of the tourist gaze’ (p. 157) in his chapter, ‘Homemade
Travelogues: Autosonntag – A Film Safari in the Swiss Alps’. He argues that
tourists’ image-making activities undertaken when constructing a filmic
record of their experience contribute directly to that experience and structure
the trip. Interestingly, Schnieider criticises tourism research for focusing ‘exclu-
sively on the experience of the other, of that which is strange, and on the ways
in which the tourist gaze misappropriates the other’ (p. 170). Many tourism
researchers may beg to differ with this comment. That said, this is a fascinating
study of the way that the act of filming mediates and alters the tourism experi-
ence, concluding by stating that ‘however much the traveler breaks away from
his ordinary life, the tourist home movie never quite leaves home’ (p. 171).
The third section of the book moves forward in time, considering
‘Travelogues in the Sound Era’, commencing with Dana Bellini’s consideration
of the often overlooked role that the travelogue played in the development of
Hollywood and its feature films (‘Hollywood and the Attraction of the
Travelogue’). Drawing interesting parallels between travelogues and fictional
movies, she outlines the contribution of various documentaries and travelogues
to the development of location-based filming of many of the early Hollywood
fictional movies.
To illustrate the ‘shared practices and discourses of travelers, anthropologist
and tourists’ (p. 196), Amy J. Staples takes the case of the 1956 expeditionary
film by Lewis Cotlow, Jungle Headhunters in her chapter, ‘“The Last of the
 158 Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change

Great (Foot-Slogging) Explorers”: Lewis Cotlow and the Ethnographic

Imaginary in Popular Travel’. This case focuses on an analysis of the images
in the film and the touring of the film on the lecture circuit as well as referring
to Cotlow as ‘helping lay the groundwork for what is now marketed as “adven-
ture tourism”‘(p. 199). In a revealing section on the promotion of the film,
Staples notes what is certainly one of the early examples of movie merchandis-
ing, where audiences were able to purchase simulated shrunken heads.
Following this, Ruoff’s chapter, ‘Show and Tell: The 16 mm Travel Lecture
Film’ provides an excellent overview of the history and place of live travel
lecture films in the cinematic and touristic worlds. Returning to the topic of
many of the previous chapters on travel lectures, he looks at this genre and
their more recent incarnations. Ruoff summarises his perspective by stating
that ‘travelogue lectures are cultural brokers, translators and interpreters for
American audiences’ (p. 220) by outlining the current state of the travel
lecture circuit, which consists of primarily older patrons with an average age
of around sixty.
Alison Griffiths finishes the book with the most modern incarnation of the
travelogue with her chapter on ‘Time Travelling IMAX Style: Tales from the
Giant Screen’. While IMAX was first developed some 30 years ago, its more
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recent global presence and reliance on the travelogue and phantom rides
brings the various themes discussed in the book up to date and successfully
illustrates that genres such as the phantom rides are alive and well.
In his Introduction, Ruoff states that the publication ‘. . . represents a unique
contribution to the literature of film studies, but it should also appeal to a
general educated book-reading audience’ (p. 14). Many of the papers in the
book are well-written and easy to read as well as extremely interesting, provid-
ing a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the genre of travelogues
while at the same time providing sufficient breadth and depth for scholars.
This review scarcely does the book justice, which is rich in knowledge and per-
spectives of the travelogue, and is the sort of publication with which tourism
researchers and students should engage and one that I will refer to many
times as a basic source for my own cinema and travel (film-induced tourism)
research. However, while many of tourism academics recognise that tourism
researchers need to ‘reach out’ to other disciplines; these disciplines also
need to be aware of the wealth of material in the tourism literature and
engage with it.

Sue Beeton
La Trobe University
Australia
(s.beeton@latrobe.edu.au)

doi: 10.80/14766820802140471