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Chapter Four - Other Elements and Different Representations.

Japanese and Ethnographic Others.

The Japanese tourist is the medium for the resolution of oppositions. (Graburn 1987:17)

Many Japanese visitors have said that while they don't feel unwelcome they are surprised that Australians rarely talk to them. (McRobbie 1987:6)

Go West Fuzzy Duck and have pumping nice time like fluffy freedom of Baudrialard's [sic] poetry. A "Japlish" t-shirt slogn worn be a younf newly-wed Japanese couple (Broinowski 1993: 16)

The representations of the city as Utopia are constructed for the primary enjoyment of a specific group, ostensibly described as white, Anglo-Celtic, male and heterosexual. The rationale for this group's existence is not unusual in merely being a typification of supposed distinguishing characteristics. This modernist classification, however, serves to construct the boundaries by which Otherness is defined. A boundary which is encountered in the postmodern city. The strange Surfers Paradise requires that this boundary exists, serving as a marker for the tourist's encounters beyond the "ordinary." These encounters are strange, not just for white, heterosexual males, as the overt nature of the spectacle does not allow Others any alternative directions to cast their gaze. The meanings, however, ascribed to this spectacle differs according to one's previous experiences.

The tourist is an extraordinary boundary crosser. Their presence alters the site they have sought out to gaze upon. The extraordinary tourist creates an additional level of complexity upon the already existent need of urban social life to participate, consume and gaze at Otherness. Within the context of Surfers Paradise, the role of extraordinary tourist is fulfilled by, among others, the Japanese. These tourists do not necessarily overtly distinguish themselves through any physical or cultural differences. These differences may have remained unnoticed or, at least, unspoken in a more cosmopolitan and experienced resort city. However, the cultural disrespect that those involved in the hegemonic construction of the Surfers Paradise site display towards these people ensures that their presence is extraordinary.

The concessions made to the Japanese as tourists dramatically impacts upon the various representations of Surfers Paradise. The Japanisation of Surfers is apparently at odds with the rationale for tourism itself - to gaze upon strangeness and spectacle. Part of the spectacle of Surfers Paradise is its Other-worldness expressed through Kanji signs and cultural practice which is supposedly sympathetic to Japanese culture. These material items may confirm that Surfers is different for the non-Japanese but is detrimental to the Japanese constructions of the city. The Surfers Paradise that is reconstructed by the visitor from Japan may deny existence of a utopic place, portraying it as full of commonplace items and experiences. Those items of difference which are experienced by the Japanese may be seen as breaches of the pre-existent "norms" of their daily lives rather than expressions of Surfers Paradise social life.

The representation of the Japanese within Surfers Paradise is as cultural dupes who are fooled by every tout, eager to participate in profitable foreign exchange (Broinowski 1993:16). The use of the Kanji script is the most persistent sign of this belief. The Japanese tourist, whose education can include more years of English than most Australian tour guides has had of Japanese, is keen to attempt their bilingualism on the hosts (Meade 1993:3). Japanese speaking guides and signs make this ability redundant. This position may simply be a convenient non-Japanese perspective. The Japanese are not a homogeneous group in their attitudes towards the amount of attention a host should provide. Some believe that Japanese is the "correct" language for their experiences. Irrespective of these alternate possibilities, the Japanese tourist, by being overcatered for, is not experiencing an international holiday but rather can consider themselves on an extended and expensive domestic tour. Although Japanese tourists are regarded as groupy - the ultimate modernist mass tourists - this tendency does not imply the need, or their desire, for extra guidance.

The overcatered and protected Japanese tourist contrasts with other international visitors and particularly those from other Asian nations. These people are arbitrarily assigned the category of "Japanese" and considered to be well catered. Some visitors directly question tourist guides as to why all Surfers' signs appear to be in Japanese and why they are not in their own indigenous language, such as Indonesian. This backlash may also be the rationale behind the Gold Coast City Council's moves to limit the size of Kanji signs (Meade 1993:3). Such a vacillating approach to Asian tourists suggests the Japanisation of Surfers was an almost accidental process and ill-considered. Although the Japanese are the numerically dominant Asian visitors, they are not a homogeneous whole that can be considered and catered for en masse. The contrast between the desires of Japanese honeymoon couples, office ladies and retirees is a fair indication of still greater domestic diversity.

The Japanese and, increasingly, other nation's residents are reversing the representation of cultural dupe. The National Party state government opened the path to foreign investment on the Gold Coast. This has allowed significant proportions of the tourist industry to repatriate its profits back to the visitors' nations. Many of the supposed financial benefits of tourism are illusory when Japanese owned companies employ Japanese tour guides to ferry Japanese tourists to Japanese hotels in Japanese-built vehicles. This argument is, however, too nationalistic and paranoid. The boundaries of social life that are being experienced do not correlate with national borders. The international nature of capital and the low level of respect multinational corporations have for these boundaries suggests the division to be another form of hegemonic construction. Foreign investment is not undertaken by the State but by individual corporations with profit driven motivations. They are new hegemonic players who attempt to legitimate their representations of Surfers. These representations are directed to a specific audience. Australian media images of Surfers stress the bronzed Aussie on either the deserted beach or among other similarly bronzed Aussies. The images constructed for the Japanese include more culturally specific material such as the use of Japanese in brochures and occasionally photos of Japanese tourists. These differing images of the same site confirm that while people may be seeking Utopia at their tourist destination, it is conditioned by a desire to be in the presence of a familiar cultural sameness.

The presence of Kanji writing or a Japanese face on advertising material or acts as a sign which Australian and non-Japanese visitors can consider to be a boundary to their touristic experience. Surfers, however, is not an amalgam of cultural islands which prohibit or admit on the basis of physical appearance. Most of the large attractions, in fact, produce two sets of brochures that share exactly the same information and layout with the exception of the language and sometimes, the nationality of the happy visitor (see Fig.11). The boundaries between the construction of different tourists' gazes are blurred at these physical sites. This indefinite network of boundaries remains unstated as the utopic representations of the city stress the social possibilities in Surfers and not its limitations. For the Japanese, these possibilities reflect the suspension of many social conventions. The availability of sex with ethnographic Others, the full-size golf courses, the shooting ranges (gun ownership is illegal in Japan), the entertainment orientated culture and the chance to experience American popular culture secondhand at the theme parks provides an attractive blend of diverse entertainment and consumption possibilities (Broinowski 1993:18).

The Japanese as a specific group of tourists hold a complex position in the postmodern Surfers pastiche. Their physical presence provides an air of difference for the daytripper. The nature of this presence, however, is sufficiently conditioned and encapsulated so as to not be threatening to the hegemony of the white Anglo-Celtic male. Kanji based signs and groups of Japanese may merely tweak the daytripper's nationalism in allowing them to believe that Surfers is a successful Australian international resort. This narcissistic conceit permits the daytripper to construct a personal vision of Utopia which is actually modelled upon Surfers. This Utopia is modelled upon Surfers in a belief in that the city represents universal attractiveness. The Japanese experience of Surfers requires the obverse argument. The city is a potential Utopia because it provides the opportunity to experience those aspects of Japanese social life which are constrained or prohibited.

The Residents - the unrepresented Others.

...the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. (Morris 1969:8)

The Surfers strip is represented and constructed primarily for tourism . Its location within the confines of a larger municipal entity, the Gold Coast, however, positions it within a more complex set of representations. The tourism role of Surfers Paradise contrasts with the daily functions which the Gold Coast City shares in common with most advanced capitalist cities (Scott 1993:32). Residents of the Gold Coast, however, have the entertainment opportunities of Surfers available to them as adjuncts to their daily lives. This proximity does not preclude these residents from being considered tourists in their own city. Their unique position, however, doubly omits the resident from representations of Surfers.

The representations of Surfers produced for the legitimation of hegemonic groups portrays a utopic beach resort waiting in anticipation of the tourist's arrival. Beyond this brief visit, the city ceases to physically exist and is confined to an ideational construct. The residents are dislocated from their daily lives in these representations to serve as props and servants to the tourist. The resident-as-tourist similarly remains unrepresented. Tourist activities such as bus tours or the purchasing of souvenirs is only available upon the resident's arrival in Surfers itself. The lack of specific representations intended for the resident - in a manner similar to those representations constructed for the Japanese - other than those of the City Council, may be the result of their boundedness as a numerically small set of consumers. When the total population of the advanced capitalist world, and beyond, are the intended recipients of hegemonic representation-making, the residents of the Gold Coast become an insignificant body. Proximity to the physical manifestation of the ideational representation may not, however, automatically necessitate a privileging of the resident. Representations intended for a generalised category - tourists - may subsume all of a Gold Coast resident's conceptions of Utopia. However, proximity to the represented physical site exposes the resident to the dystopic features of the Surfers strip. Negotiating these antithetical positions of the site to its representations is not just part of the transitory tourist's gaze and experience but part of the resident's daily life.

The resident-as-tourist's minimal financial contribution to the economic institutions of tourism is offset by their permanent availability as "zoo animals" within the Surfers strip (Craik 1993:2). The residents are gazed upon as Utopians who share the tourist's ideational perception. The tourist, who wishes to gaze upon the strange, scrutinises individual residents for aberrations beyond a bounded set of "norms." In a city with the population the size of the Gold Coast, the variety of subcultures of resistance and difference ensures that the tourist is not disappointed for spectacle. These subcultures may have developed as a rejection of tourism and its economic importance within the city. However, hegemonic institutions manipulate this "alternate" culture to their own service subsuming the fashion and ideology into the "mainstream," effectively neutralising its political impetus. Ironically, similar subcultures would also exist within the tourist's own site of settlement but function tangentially to their bounded rationality.

This categorisation of the resident-as-spectacle includes the relatively large number of older residents (Jones 1986:71). These people - who are generally recent arrivals - would demolish the representations of a beach resort populated by young people. Their presence, however, helps to provide an impression of a constantly large throng of tourists seemingly gazing upon what are, in actuality, their younger neighbours. A situation that parallels Eco's observation of the visitor-actor ambiguity in postmodern pseudo-cities such as Disneyland where gunfighters wear costume similar to contemporary streetwear (Eco 1993:201). The inability for older residents to become a tourist spectacle in their own right reflects the broader construction of the aged in advanced capitalist social life.

Another set of residents who have the potential to destroy the utopic representations of Surfers are the low income earners and homeless. The Australian Bureau of Statistics claims that during the 1991 census over forty percent of the population live on incomes of less than $12,000 per annum while only two percent earned more than $50,000 (Carbon 1994:5). This social inequity contrasts with the supposed egalitarian nature of Utopia. However, low income earners are actively encouraged to live in suburban Gold Coast City. Real estate developers have subdivided large areas, of what are now becoming the Coast's outer suburbs, into sub-$100,000 house and land packages (Jones 1986:116, Scott 1993:32). This makes residing in the Gold Coast attractive to many people, permitting the dream of living on the Gold Coast - however remote from the beach that may be - and commuting to work in Brisbane to be realised. This encouragement of commuting culture sees nearly seventy percent of the employed residents of the Gold Coast driving to work (Carbon 1993:5). These denizens, however, do not reside in Surfers Paradise and remain as unvoiced as their neighbours. Similarly, the homeless present a dystopic feature to the Surfers Paradise facade. Their presence remains necessarily unvoiced. Geographic representations do not quantify homeless people and municipal council representations do not promote the existence of this level of civic disorder. Ironically, these people - the homeless and low income earners - are the victims of utopic representation making. Many of the new residents relocate on the premise that the Gold Coast holds social promise commensurate with its touristic promise. The discovery that the Gold Coast is solely Surfers Paradise and that the utopic promise is temporary, is reflected in the high turnover of residents in suburban dwellings (Jones 1986:5). This is also true for the unemployed who pragmatically reason that if you are going to be unemployed it is better to live in the sunshine (Carbon 1993:5). This results in the Gold Coast having one of Australia's highest unemployment rates, a problem further aggravated by the present Department of Social Security policy which prohibits unemployed people from freely changing address without the permission of the Commonwealth Employment Service. In this situation, hegemonic institutions' exercise of social control actively works to impede the perpetuation of utopic representations. However, restricting the Utopia destroying residents to the Gold Coast ensures that a broader propagation of this alternate representation is not feasible.

Utopia for the residents of the Gold Coast can appear to be a very remote place. However, tourists pay little regard for the political or social machinations of their destination which, from their perspective, becomes additional free and unexpected spectacle.

The Researcher - the Theoried Other.

The idea of beginning, indeed the act of beginning, necessarily involves an act of delimitation by which something is cut out of a great mass of material, separated from the mass, and made to stand for, as well as be, a starting point, a beginning... (Said 1979:16)

By turning inside out like a glove an overworked complex that has become debased to the point of being part of the vocabulary of statesmen [sic], we might say that the literary critic and the professor of rhetoric, who know-all and judge-all, readily go in for a simplex of superiority. (Bachelard 1964:xxi).

I'm just a parasite in paradise. (Pleasures for the Sixth Sense 1993:passim)

A researcher's concept of Surfers Paradise could be considered tainted by their desire to undertake any form of social research there. The researcher, in approaching and describing the city, models its physical and ideational structure around themselves (Brown, R. 1990:189). The description of the city is constructed from the a priori assumptions of the researcher which in turn have been influenced by pre-existent representations of the city (Hamlyn 1973:251). The research and its resultant text create a new representation of Surfers Paradise. The new representation as a consequence of its debt to prior representations and authorities reflects a political agenda that confirms or denies the legitimacy of the hegemonic institutions which construct representations of the city.

These reflexive methods also extend to the researcher's treatment of their subjects. Approaching the subject is reconstituted as a movement across a boundary. However, this conceptualisation and its resultant awareness of the political and potentially colonial consequences of these actions may only be recognised as such within postmodernist and critical contemplations. In the modernist project, the subjects of the researcher's gaze are reduced to an egalitarian level with the material culture they produced. The blurring of subject and object created quantifiable units which were easily assimilated into theoretical structures and meta-narratives - dehumanising the subject (Lash 1990:93). More reflexive approaches question the basis of the relationship between the researcher and the Other. Ricoeur (1965) takes this consideration of the Other to its ultimate non-hierarchical heterogeneity by suggesting that, "suddenly it becomes possible that there are just Others, that we ourselves are an 'Other' among Others" (278). Others who are considered worthy of study are implied by this worthiness to contain difference to the researcher's Self. It is these differences which present a barrier - of indeterminate scale - to the possibility for inter-subjective communication. The researcher can never know if they are fully interacting with, of understanding the Other. This barrier to understanding may be indiscernible, but nonetheless present, erratically radiating outwards from the Self to a distant periphery of complete incomprehensibility. An aspect of conducting research within a reflexive methodology must be the ability to recognise the loss of understanding as the Self moves towards their periphery of comprehension. This movement, similarly, results in a movement from description to interpretation and the reconciliation to one's own comprehensible social systems. These forms of considering Otherness share the fault of creating a subjugated Other out of the researcher's uncomprehended difference. Reflexive consideration of the Other in terms of the Self can devalue the importance of the subjects of study in favour of an ontologically inspired autobiography (Jacobs 1993:830, Lash 1990:259). This degrades the study of Others into a vehicle for advanced capitalist academic's agony over the relevance of personal career paths. Modernist approaches simply objectify the subject into a quantified obscurity. Modernist perceived Otherness was, and still is, exploited in an attempt to legitimate the superiority of advanced capitalist knowledge and economically inspired colonial ventures.

The consideration of material culture items is similarly selective, epistemologically bound and merely a reflection of the researcher's own interests - "seen" by no-one else in the same manner. The items' continued existence after the researcher's gaze has "touched" them, however, allows for alternative interpretations to be developed in opposition or concurrence. The theoretical and philosophical discussions that reflexive methods of research - such as postmodernism - demand is balanced by this legitimating existence. The non-positivistic consideration of material culture is closely tied to a methodology informed by postmodernism.

These manipulative uses of the subjects of research suggest that a postmodern methodology holds no greater privilege nor is better than any antecedent strategy. It is possible to abuse the tenets of any approach out of ignorance or with motivation. The benefits of a postmodern methodology may be no more than its ability to recognise that the research conducted in its name is always flawed and never "real". This recognition removes many of the legitimating and political agendas bound to the practice of academic research. The academic and postmodern text does not demand attention as the most correct or accurate position, but, rather asks to be considered as a new perspective within the heterogeneity of existent texts. It does not claim to be an apolitical document, it admits a possible role in the shaping of future understanding and representations. The contemporary development of a postmodern methodology, within the context of a postmodern society, could be seen as appropriate and necessary. These postmodern methods provide the researcher with a basic toolkit unavailable in older methods which are historically detached from contemporary social life.

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