Voyeurism of the Macabre - Research Paper Example

This study aimed at exploring this phenomenon (of dark tourism) by way of case studies and focused on explaining, understanding and analyzing the psyche/motive of individuals who engage in different types of dark tourism. The outcome revealed that none of the tourists /individuals studied, were interested in engaging with brutality, but they were all interested in either learning experiences or engaging their own sense of mortality, The study concluded that dark tourism was perceived and used by individuals as a way to express their fears and experience thrills by challenging themselves to withstand the horrors that are provided to them in the name of entertainment.

The term “Dark Tourism” was first used by Lennon and Foley in 1996 to describe the relationship between an interest in concepts of death and violence, and the tourist industry. This includes everything from a tour of a defunct insane asylum to a haunted house. Places of massacre or murder as well as the graves of the famous and infamous are also often included within the purview of “dark tourism” (Robinson, Heltmann, and Dieke 2011, p. 205). Understanding dark places entail understanding the concept of ‘dark’ as it applies to experience.

The concept of ‘dark’ is an intersection of history and place, the development of an association to the more macabre parts of human experience with a location in which some type of experience can be created into a tourist attraction (White and Frew 2013, p. 1).The Tower of London and the Bastille in Paris are two such attractions that combine a sad history with the interest in the dark. The story of the two princes of the York lineage is one that has always fascinated tourists who visit the Tower (Jones 2012, p. 52). The true story behind the Man in the Iron Mask is one of the fascinating stories that keep interested in the dark side of the Bastille alive (Duncan and Glass 2006, p. 116).