Dracula tourism in Romania Cultural identity and the state
Introduction
This paper examines the role of the state in the development of tourism in Romania over the past four decades. There is increasing recognition that government is ever present in the character and organization of this industry (Harrop and McMillan 2002) and such involvement may take a number of forms (Elliot, 1997, Hall, 2000, Hall, 2005, Jeffries, 2001). For example, many states formulate policies and plans to encourage and support the development of particular forms of tourism. They may also introduce legislation and regulation to provide a framework for development. Some go further by providing the facilities and infrastructure upon which the industry depends. The extent of state intervention can vary considerably. In some instances it may go no further than promoting a favorable business environment in which a private sector industry can operate. At the opposite extreme are cases where the entire development and planning are directed by central authorities, as in the formerly socialist states of the Soviet bloc (Hall, 1984, Hall, 1990). Most states adopt an intermediate position that involves a degree of intervention, and many states have established a government ministry responsible for coordinating tourism planning.
However, the engagement of the state goes beyond the technical processes of legislation, planning, and policymaking. There is also a cultural politics of tourism development (Burns 2005). Nation-states make various choices about what forms of development are (and are not) considered appropriate, how they will be promoted, where, and for whom. Through such decisions the state adopts the role of the definer and arbiter of cultural meanings (Cano and Mysyk, 2004, Wood, 1984). Each state will encourage and support forms of tourism that accord with, and affirm, its sense of its own cultural and political identity. Therefore, the representation of local cultures is a political act (Burns 2005) and the choice of which resources and places are developed and celebrated can constitute a statement of national identity (Wood 1984). In this context, it is not surprising that states have long encouraged domestic tourism to promote nation-building and social solidarity. Visits to places of national significance are a means of affirming senses of citizenship and identity (Edensor, 2002, Franklin, 2003, Palmer, 1999).
At the same time, through its policies, a government can make a statement to international tourists about its cultural identity and values. Indeed, tourism can become a significant element of a state’s foreign policy and international relations (Franklin, 2003, Hall, 1994). All countries seek to project a positive image of themselves to the wider world and to ensure that their unique character and cultural identity is appreciated and respected by Others (Lanfant 1995). Thus, nation-states use various means—such as postage stamps, national currency, national stadia, and parliament buildings—to project themselves to Others (Cresswell 2004). States also encourage tourism development that contributes to raising their international profile and prestige (Morgan and Pritchard 1998). For example, many vigorously promote their heritage and culture to international tourists. The intent is to encourage their developing a greater appreciation of, and respect for, a people’s cultural identity through experiencing and understanding their history and way of life.
The potency of tourism in projecting a cultural identity is such that many states undertake considerable investment in external promotion (Hall 2000). This activity is usually undertaken by a dedicated agency (a national tourism office) and, while it is clearly intended to contribute to economic development, it is also underpinned by a political agenda. In particular, the office will seek to project a nation to the rest of the world in a way that flatters and affirms national identity (Lanfant 1995). Promotional materials will be imbued with messages about “who we are” and “how we want you to see us” (Light 2001:1055). As such, official promotional materials can be read as expressions of political and cultural identity.
One of the best contemporary examples may be found in the former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Since the end of Communist Party rule, these states have been reconstructing themselves according to democratic, pluralist, and capitalist models, and they have been eager to project these new political identities to Western Europe. Thus, state-sponsored promotion in this region has stressed historical and cultural ties and shared values with Western Europe in order to project an image of Europeanness appropriate to an aspirant member of the European Union (Hall, 1999, Hall, 2002, Light, 2006, Pritchard, 2000).
However, while states may encourage forms of tourism that enable them to present themselves to the wider world on their own terms, it is only within the most rigidly totalitarian systems that states can exercise complete control over this activity. Whether they like it or not, states are situated within broader historical, political, and cultural discourses that are grounded in, and reinforce, existing relations of power (Echtner and Prasad, 2003, Morgan and Pritchard, 1998, Pritchard, 2000, Pritchard and Morgan, 2001). These structure the ways in which people and places are portrayed, with some groups having greater power to represent than others. Consequently a state may be represented in a way that it would not choose. This, in turn, may give rise to forms of tourism demand that a state would not seek to encourage. Such a situation may be regarded as unwelcome and unacceptable by the host community (Morgan and Pritchard 1998) and may even compromise the political and cultural identity that it wishes to present to the wider world (Burns 2005).
One example is sex tourism in South East Asia. Although many countries of this region have pursued policies intended to promote their beach and cultural resources (Wood 1984), some have acquired global notoriety as sex destinations. For these states such a reputation is embarrassing and harmful to their international standing. Another example is the special interest tourism that has developed in Central/Eastern Europe since the fall of state socialism. During the 90s, parts of the material heritage of communism have become popular sights among cultural and heritage tourists from Western Europe (Light 2000). The states concerned have done little to encourage this: instead, Western travel guides and holiday operators have constructed the socialist past as something “exotic” for the Western gaze. This situation is problematic for these countries since it directs attention to a past that is emphatically rejected. This dilemma has been described as “identity versus economy” (Light, 2000, Tunbridge, 1994): such a past can attract foreign tourists and generate revenue, but at the same time it directly collides with post-socialist identity-building.
Many of these themes are also present in the case of what could be termed “Dracula tourism” in Romania. This is something generated by external demand that is problematic in a number of ways. For a start, the association with vampires and the supernatural is at odds with the country’s sense of its cultural and political identity as a modern, developed European state. Furthermore, many Romanians regard this activity as insulting to the reputation of one of their medieval rulers (coincidentally also known as Dracula). This paper will later examine the ways in which the state has responded to, and sought to manage, such tourism. However, first, it is necessary to consider the Western Dracula myth and the dilemma that it poses for Romania.
In 1897, Bram Stoker published Dracula, the story of a vampire from Eastern Europe who travels to Britain intent on colonizing the West. Although most of the novel is set in the Victorian England, it famously begins and ends in Transylvania (one of three regions that make up contemporary Romania). Stoker had no first-hand experience of this particular region and relied on travelers’ accounts for his information (Miller 2000). Nevertheless, he produced a vivid portrayal of it as a fitting home for a monster. Stoker’s Transylvania is a sinister, remote, and backward region where evil and the supernatural run wild. Thus, Jonathan Harker (the novel’s narrator) writes, “I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool”. Later he is told, “It is the eve of St George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?” (Stoker 1997:10,12).
In writing Dracula, Stoker created an enduring “place myth” (Shields 1991) of Transylvania as the social and spatial Other of the West: it is somewhere peripheral, pre-Modern, and untouched by Western progress and rationality. As such, the novel can be situated within a discourse that Todorova (1997) has termed “Balkanism” (Bjelić 2002). Todorova takes, as her starting point, Edward Said’s (1995) analysis of Orientalism, the practice (within colonial contexts) where the West creates myths about other people and places and in so doing constructs them as Others. However, Todorova argues that, while Orientalism is a discourse about the opposition between Europe and an imagined East, Balkanism is a discourse about the ambiguity of Southeast Europe. This region is evoked as a transitional zone between West and East and is often described as a “bridge” or “crossroads” (Todorova 1997:15). It is a region that is European but not “fully” so (Dittmer 2002/2003). To the West it represents the Other “within” (Todorova 1997:188).
Dracula is clearly an early expression of the Balkanist discourse. The novel is insistent on the opposition between “Western progress and Eastern stasis, between Western science and Eastern superstition, between Western reason and Eastern emotion, between Western civilization and Eastern barbarism” (Arata 1990:637). Jonathan Harker writes, “The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East”. Later he complains, “It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains”. Dracula himself states, “We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things” (Stoker 1997:9, 11, 26-7). But while Transylvania is evoked as “one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe” (1997:10), it is nonetheless a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where German is widely spoken. Count Dracula himself is a Hungarian aristocrat who speaks German and English fluently and has little difficulty passing unnoticed in the latter society.
Dracula has enjoyed enormous popularity since its publication and has spawned an extraordinary vampire subculture in the second half of the 20th century (Melton 1999). More than 200 films have been made that feature Count Dracula (and several hundred more that have vampires as their subject). More than 1,000 novels have been written about Dracula or vampires along with a plethora of cartoons, comics, and television programs. At the center of this subculture is the place myth of Transylvania, which has become almost synonymous with vampires (Gelder 1994). As one writer has noted, “What other land calls up such mystical visions of shrouded, misty forests; of driverless coaches pounding up treacherous, uncharted trails to hidden castles; of black-cloaked figures stalking across moonlit cemeteries in the chill of night?” (Brokow 1976:12). Thus, well over a century after it was written, Dracula continues to structure the ways in which Transylvania is understood in the Western popular imagination. By extension Romania has become the “land of Dracula”.
Paradoxically, until recently Stoker’s novel was almost unknown in Romania, since a translation was not published until 1990. Thus, for Romanians the name Dracula brings to mind not Stoker’s vampire but instead a medieval Voievode known as Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad the Impaler) who ruled Walachia during the 15th century. He gained notoriety for his exceptionally harsh rule and his practice of impaling both lawbreakers and his Ottoman enemies on wooden stakes. In medieval Romanian Drăculea simply meant “son of Dracul” and was used to distinguish the Impaler from his father (known as Vlad Dracul). For all his cruelty, Vlad Ţepeş has enjoyed an esteemed position in Romanian historiography for his efforts to defend Walachia’s independence and restore internal order during a turbulent era.
Vlad Ţepeş would be almost unknown outside Romania were it not for attempts to link the Draculas of fiction and history. The most influential is a book written by two historians working in America entitled In Search of Dracula (McNally and Florescu 1972). Its authors argued that, when writing the novel, Bram Stoker had undertaken detailed historical research during which he had discovered medieval stories about Vlad Ţepeş. Claiming textual support from the novel, they reasoned that the Impaler had been the model for Stoker’s vampire. McNally and Florescu were relentless in portraying the Voievode as a tyrant and, although not accusing him of vampirism, they were insistent that the vampire (something almost unknown in Romania) was an essential element of Transylvanian folklore.
In Search of Dracula proved to be a bestseller and successfully caught the public mood in America at a moment when popular interest in vampires was on the increase (Auerbach 1995). It brought global recognition to the hitherto obscure Vlad Ţepeş but more significantly McNally and Florescu established a new orthodoxy: Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler were essentially the same character. However, this claim has recently been subject to a vigorous critique (Miller, 1997, Miller, 2000). From an analysis of Stoker’s working notes, Miller argues that Stoker’s historical research was perfunctory at best and that he knew little more about Vlad the Impaler than his nickname of Dracula. Although these arguments are persuasive, they have yet to gain widespread acceptance, and the equation of Stoker’s vampire with Vlad the Impaler is firmly established among many enthusiasts.
In Search of Dracula was not published in Romania, although the country’s historians were familiar with its contents. The reaction was one of dismay and anger that a historical figure regarded as a national hero should be promoted in the West as the prototype for Stoker’s vampire. For more than three decades, Romania’s position has been to deny any association between Vlad Ţepeş and Count Dracula, a stance that underpinned the country’s response to the growing popularity of Dracula tourism in the 70s.
Section snippets
Dracula tourism
This discussion examines the ways in which the Romanian state authorities have responded to, and attempted to manage, Dracula tourism. This is an externally generated phenomenon in which enthusiasts (primarily from Europe and America) have traveled to Romania in search of the literary, historical, and supernatural roots of the Dracula myth. This narrative focuses on both the state socialist era (1947-1989) and the post-socialist period (1989 onwards).
Conclusion
There is increasing recognition that the role of the state in tourism development is not confined to technical and administrative matters such as planning and policymaking. The state is also an important actor in the cultural politics of tourism. States make choices about what to promote and for whom. They will support forms of development that are in accordance with their self-images and which enable them to project their cultural and political identities to both domestic and international
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper was undertaken during a Research Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust. The author thanks the interviewees and Daniela Dumbrăveanu who helped with some of the interviews. Thanks are also due to Anya Chapman, Craig Young, and Janet Speake for comments on an earlier version of this paper and to Jon Delf for producing the map.
Duncan Light is Associate Professor at Liverpool Hope University (Department of Geography, Liverpool L16 9JD, United Kingdom. Email <[email protected]>). He is a cultural geographer with particular interests in postsocialist change in Central and Eastern Europe. His recent research has explored the relationships between tourism and national/cultural identity in postsocialist Romania, along with the restructuring of this industry.
References (73)
Social Identities, Globalisation and the Cultural Politics of Tourism
- et al.
Cultural Tourism, the State and the Day of the Dead
Annals of Tourism Research
(2004) - et al.
The Context of Third World Tourism Marketing
Annals of Tourism Research
(2003) Foreign Tourism under Socialism: The Albanian “Stalinist” model
Annals of Tourism Research
(1984)Stalinism and Tourism: A study of Albania and North Korea
Annals of Tourism Research
(1990)- et al.
Highland and Other Haunts: Ghosts in Scottish Tourism
Annals of Tourism Research
(2003) “Facing the Future”: Tourism and Identity-building in Post-socialist Romania
Political Geography
(2001)Tourism and the Symbols of Identity
Tourism Management
(1999)- et al.
Culture, Identity and Tourism Representation: Marketing Cymru or Wales?
Tourism Management
(2001) - et al.
Hotel Babylon? Exploring Hotels as Liminal Sites of Transition and Transgression
Tourism Management
(2006)
Rumania and the Geography of Tourism
Geoforum
Ethnic Tourism, the State, and Cultural Change in Southeast Asia
Annals of Tourism Research
Our Vampires, Ourselves
The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonisation
Victorian Studies
Introduction: Blowing up the “bridge”
Dan Matei Agathon este Gata să se Întălneasca cu Contestatarii “Dracula Park”
Cotidianul
The Culture of Tourism
Place: A Short Introduction
Tourism: Politics and Public Sector Management
Dracula Park Sighisoara: O Analiza Critica a Proiectului
România Liberă
Tourism: An Introduction
Reading the Vampire
Cited by (111)
Designing and offering legend-based experiences: Perspectives of Santa Claus in the Joulupukin Pajakylä
2023, Annals of Tourism ResearchCitation Excerpt :The quest of people to learn and engage with legends endures, and is currently manifested though visitations to specific places or settings that are linked to legends, a demand for specific tours, activities, and other experiences linking legends (Boz, 2020; Buchmann, 2006; Nagib et al., 2017; Palo et al., 2020). Echoing the importance of the experience economy (Pine & Gilmore, 2011), tourism stakeholders have embraced legends within their experiential visitor offerings (Blake, 2020; Boz, 2020; Light, 2007; Lovell, 2019; Reijnders, 2011) in order to promote their heritage and regions. By doing so, they foster legend-based experiences that incorporate aspects of object and existential authenticity and embodied experiences of place (Buchmann, 2006; Buchmann et al., 2010) linked to a specific legend.
A multilayer network approach to tourism collaboration
2021, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism ManagementCitation Excerpt :During the communist regime, Dracula's name was rather controversial, and it was not exploited for tourism, despite the economic advantages it could have brought (Light, 2007). Only after 2000, the image of Dracula started to be gradually embraced both by government and private tourism stakeholders as an element of attractiveness (Huebner, 2011; Light, 2007), which determined the rather late emergence of Bran among the top Romanian destinations. Vatra Dornei, on the other hand, is a town (14,429 inhabitants in 2011) with a long tourism tradition, declared a spa resort in the XIXth century, due to early discovery of mineral waters, which are one of the main assets of the destination (Cehan et al., 2020).
Neoteny: The paedomorphosis of destinations
2020, Annals of Tourism ResearchA STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE TOURISM PERCEPTION ON THE NATIONAL TOURISM IMAGE AND CULTURAL IDENTITY OF OVERSEAS CHINESE YOUTH
2023, Advances in Hospitality and LeisureIdentifying European and Chinese styles of creating tourist destinations with intangible cultural heritage: A comparative perspective
2023, International Journal of Tourism Research
Duncan Light is Associate Professor at Liverpool Hope University (Department of Geography, Liverpool L16 9JD, United Kingdom. Email <[email protected]>). He is a cultural geographer with particular interests in postsocialist change in Central and Eastern Europe. His recent research has explored the relationships between tourism and national/cultural identity in postsocialist Romania, along with the restructuring of this industry.