From Erewhon to Edoras: Tourism and Myths in New Zealand

Abstract

This article presents the case study of the Upper Rangitata Valley, Canterbury, where literary and film tourists meet in the high country of the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Both the literary myth of "Erewhon" and the film myth of "Edoras" are being used to promote the region and present important case studies for mythical tourism in New Zealand. Samuel Butler published his tale of the Utopian society Erewhon in 1872 after having lived in New Zealand for 5 years. The book became a best-seller and established a new myth that endures until today. Within weeks of publication a specific tourism to the high country of Canterbury begun that brought tourists to locations described by Butler. This early literary tourism was facilitated by the fact that Butler interwove existing geographical and botanical features with purely mythical ideas of a Utopian society hidden in the mountains. And while the tourists sought the farmed high country scenery described in the book, they also visited the property and the homestead of the author. A hundred and thirty years later this early literary tourism faces a challenge by an unlikely rival. The set of "Edoras" of the Lord of the Rings movies used another location in the Upper Rangitata Valley. And even though the set was finally disassembled, the location is now attracting film tourists. What are the characteristics of these special-interest tourism forms? Both support the claim that tourists are seekers of myths and challenge the notion that tourists seek authenticity in their experience. It is interesting to note that both myths incorporated already existing images and used existing physical features to heighten the reality aspects of their telling. And both forms of tourism bring characteristic challenges for the tourism industry and its stakeholders.

The Dimensions of Travel Journalism

“…And while there does exist a reasonably large body of work under the umbrella ''media representations and tourism'', many such studies are concerned not with journalism, but media such as movies, government websites and other promotional material, or even tourists' use of media such as mobile phones and postcards (see, for example, Ateljevic and Doorne, 2002;Buchmann, 2006;Crouch et al, 2005;Dann, 2001;Fü rsich and Robins, 2004;Mellinger, 1994;Selwyn, 1996). Unfortunately, however, as the following section will show, there has been only a small increase in the number of studies which have investigated travel journalism since Fü rsich and Kavoori's (2001) call for action.…”

Tourism and the Moving Image—Incidental Tourism Promotion

“…Over the past 15 to 20 years, we have seen a steady increase in academic research interest into the relationship between film and tourism, from the early work of Riley and others in the early to mid 1990s (see Butler, 1990;Riley and Van Doren 1992;Riley 1994;Tooke and Baker 19% and Riley et al 1998) through to current predominantly western, English speaking oriented research by Beeton (2000Beeton ( , 2001Beeton ( , 2004aBeeton ( , 2004bBeeton ( , 2005Beeton ( , 2008Beeton ( , 2010aBeeton ( , 2010b Croy (2010) and Croy and W aker (2003 ), Buchmann (2006Buchmann ( , 2010, Frost (2006Frost ( , 2010 and Connell (2005aConnell ( , 2005b, among others. Research continues to develop in this field as other cultures add their own perspective, particularly in Asia and Europe, such as Kim (2010), Karpovich (2010), Kim et al (2007) and di Cesare et al (2009).…”

Supporting the Reader in the Wild

“…The 'settings' of influential fiction might also be visited; when the Upper Rangitata Valley in the Southern Alps of New Zealand was identified as the landscape described as the setting for the utopian society of Samuel Butler's Erewhon or Over the Range, it began attracting visitors shortly after the novel's publication in 1872. The valley and the remains of Butler's homestead there continue as tourist destinations to the present day [2].…”