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INVERSE CULTURAL SNOBBERY amounts to a Desert Island Deal viewer being mockingly disparaging about Daniel Defoe's SEMINAL NOVEL.
Today while strolling along the Haymarket in the West End, I came across the tourist gift shop Fancy That of London. (Note the SENTRY OF THE QUEEN'S GUARD to the left – he plays a key role in this tale!)
Fancy That sells the typical array of Union Jack-emblazoned TOURIST TAT,
and (obviously) Marilyn Monroe clocks.
But what really piqued my interest was a group of Asian tourists who were having their photo taken with the aforementioned sentry.
Now, the sharper PWEI readers will have already noted that THIS ISN'T A REAL GRENADIER GUARD! It's a man wearing a costume.
If these guys had walked the mile's distance down Piccadilly and across Green Park to Buckingham Palace, they could have taken a picture of the real thing! (and also burnt 75 calories, according to walkit.com)
This got me thinking, why are people so willing to accept FAKE CULTURE?
These tourists were either too lazy to seek out real culture, preferring to stick to the tourist traps of the west end, or they live in a world where they believe (or choose to believe) that, while not guarding the official royal residences of our sovereign, sentries like to hang out outside gift shops posing for photos with tourists.
Either way, it seems they are refusing to engage with British culture as it stands today.
Now, I too have been guilty of this in the past. Anyone who has backpacked around south-east Asia (or read Alex Garland's 1996 novel The Beach) may be familiar with THE BANANA PANCAKE PHENOMENON.
I am referring to the cafes, hotels and restaurants along the well-trodden tourist routes of Thailand, India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia that serve banana pancakes for breakfast in an attempt to cater for western tastes.
Despite being meant to be native to Western countries, these pancakes actually seem exotic to tourists – in this way they are part of a distinct culture of their own – TRAVELLER CULTURE.
These tourist routes have even been re-named The Banana Pancake Trail, in what Wikipedia refers to as an "affectionate nickname" but which to me sounds slightly derogatory!
When I was teaching in Darjeeling, in West Bengal, India, I used to kick back in a place called Joey's Pub. Here's a bad picture of Joey behind the bar (no I don't think that's his real name):
Despite having upholstered wooden stools and benches, Guinness posters on the walls and serving bangers and mash, Joey's Pub failed to re-create the atmosphere of a TRADITIONAL ENGLISH BOOZER, while remaining clearly distinct from other Indian bars.
This distinction seems to come at the point where TOURIST meets SMALL-TIME ENTERPRISING BUSINESSMAN. But what's interesting is that, just as we are attempting to sell Eastern tourists their own pre-conceived ideas about England, they are attempting to sell us exactly the same! I think that says more about us than it does about them.
Where am I going with this? I like banana pancakes – they're DELICIOUS. And Eastern interpretations of Western culture are fascinating in themselves. But flying half way around the world just to experience BEING A TRAVELLER seems kind of absurd.
I am aware that this topic has probably already been done to death – Alex Garland's novel itself was written as a criticism of backpackers who view south-east Asia as a cultural themepark – I'm just trying to relate it to my own experiences.Maybe I'm being unfair to the tourists who visit London's tacky gift shops. I am aware from experience how it can sometimes be difficult to make the distinction between REAL CULTURE and FAKE CULTURE. And anyway, maybe Fancy That of London is more representative of modern capitalist London than Buckingham Palace is.
Anyway, lest anyone accuse PWEI of NOT FULLY ENGAGING, here are some photos from my recent travels to, respectively, Bristol (note the sinister pigs' heads in the background),
and Rochester, Kent.
