As a Chinese person, the tourist gaze has always had a significant impact on my perception of myself as a foreigner. The idea of portraying one's culture in a certain way to create an industry based off of the way a group of people live is a respectable way to produce a steady income. As a supporter of capitalism, I usually approve of antics like this, but I can also disagree on the commodification of heritage because the way a group of tourists view a culture through the tourist industry, usually sets the first impression. Through this initial exposure, stereotypes are embedded into the tourist's minds of all people stemming from said heritage root. For me, I never wanted to be looked at as a rice hat-wearing peasant who works the field, but because of a predetermined generalization of Chinese people portrayed by members of a tourist industry, some people looked at me that way. Because of this reason, I believe the tourist gaze is ultimately detrimental to the curing of racial stereotypes. The initial exposure to a cultural identity is a major portion of what establishes the mental picture of said culture. If people of a certain heritage portray themselves in a different way, it can have an impact on tourists, and lead them to believe, or subconsciously believe all people of the heritage behave in the same manner. However, the balance between reality and fiction is also a problem faced in tourist industries. While portraying an accurate depiction of how a group of people live is important, many places have a measurable amount of income based in the tourist industry, and some areas rely heavily on portraying an exaggerated, watered down, or potentially even mythical version of their history. Because of this blurred line, I will also attempt to find a compromise to fit parties both for and against the commodification of cultures.

The "Tourist Gaze," a term coined by sociologist John Urry, is the idea of a culture being reduced to the expectations of the viewer party (usually western), who visit such areas to feel an "authentic" experience. This also extends into the commodification of culture, defined as the capitalization of one's identity where a person displays a trait of his/her heritage, in an attempt to make a profit. These capitalizations can be accurate, or inaccurate, which is the premise of this argument. Pamela Shurmer-Smith made a review of John Urry's book, where she states, "It was impossible to avoid asking whether the museums of crofting and the ceilidhs catering to the ' visitors 'were serving to reinforce, stunt, destroy o[r] transform the local culture which is a major attraction," where she praises his novel, and begins to question the idea of tourism, just as I did.

Although I have some agreements with the groups supporting the commodification of cultures, I still believe that this commodification is damaging to the people outside of the tourist industry, who are viewed as living the same lifestyle as the people in the industry. In the documentary,     Peasant Family Happiness, the director, Jenny Chio, visits a popular tourist site, and analyzes the way tourist industry employees live in contrast to the image they depict with their showings. In one scene, a woman, Qin, says "Deng Xiaoping said, 'Let some people get rich first.'" (Jenny Chio),  to some members of the tourist group, in an attempt to make her look like a peasant, who still believes the doctrines presented by Deng Xiaoping. Later in the film, another statement is made, this time, from Wu, who claims "Jenny, if I wore Miao women's things ...  this would look even better," (Jenny Chio), which demonstrates her desire to make her activities look more appealing by wearing apparel to fit the image of an Imperial Chinese woman. By using these statements, Jenny Chio portrays the tourist industry's desires to make their images look as pre-modern as possible. Because of this the people at the tourist site, believed that the industry was accurate, and even left money in the form of tipping for the workers to have. 

Just as Jenny Chio analyzed her fieldwork in China, Anthropologist Davydd Greenwood also went into the field, and writes about his findings in an academic journal, "Cultural Authenticity." Davydd Greenwood argues in his article that while the economic benefit of catering to the desires of the tourists are substantial, the tourist gaze ultimately is crippling, not only to the actors who participate in the show, but also the people who watch the shows. In his first example, Greenwood states the event of a victory siege was reenacted in a small medieval city by the people of Fuenterrabia for local people to enjoy. But as the attraction grew, the Ministry of Information and Tourism placed the location into their list of tourist events. With the growing population of visitors in a small medieval square, not everyone could experience the performance, and so, the ministry demanded the show be done twice per sitting. Because of this, not only did the actors become exhausted, but the viewers also experienced a loss in the form of fleeting interest. The people who could not see, could at least hear, so to hear the same sounds would make the experience much less dramatic. In another example, Greenwood discusses the way Haitian Voodoo rituals have been shortened in an attempt to keep visiting tourists interested. Rituals which would usually require many people, and many hours have been cut to fit the staff accordingly, and take less than an hour. Because of this, the dances had to be exaggerated and obvious, to compensate for the time lost, and even the costumes had to be changed to fit the urban environment, instead of the usual rural setting. The tourists are unable to witness the rituals to their full effects, and instead, are left with short, lacking portions of the rituals. By introducing these two cultures, who are affected by the commodification of their own cultures, Greenwood shows how this commodification is not only detrimental to the workers in the industry, but also the people who decided to view the performance. As seen, commodification can exist in all environments, from the medieval square of Fuenterrabia to the jungles of Haiti. As long as there is a culture to turn into money, this commodification will run rampant. I will further demonstrate this global nature with two sources, each from varying areas of the world.

Acting like an out of date South Asian village, the people of Nepali attempt to sell their culture as traditional, and blocking out the tourist's eyes from the upper-class, more "Western" populace. In "Shaping the Tourist's Gaze," Guneratne demonstrates the lack of depth a tourist is willing to view the village. Guneratne states, " To the tourist, all the houses are alike; all the people look alike and to the untutored eye seem to share the same level of poverty. They are never taken to neighbourhoods in the village populated by hill immigrants, however, so people of higher ethnic status are never exposed in the same way to the tourist's gaze," portraying the way the tourists have no regard for diversity in a South Asian nation. Furthermore, this Guneratne also highlights the attempts of the employees to keep the tourists from seeing the higher class people, as this could pose a threat to the image tour guides wish to impose on the tourists. While this may seem common for a nation struggling to keep with the rest of the world, it also happens in Australia, which is well kept with other nations.

Though it may seem heritage commodification exists mainly in rural, unknown areas, it actually can also exists in urban, and suburban environments. As stated by Renee Wirth and Robert Freestone in "Tourism, Heritage and Authenticity," "Urban places can be re-imagined and invested with new cultural meanings to encourage greater consumption, visual and physical, as 'landscapes of pleasure," which demonstrates the effects the tourist gaze can have on the urban areas of Sydney, Australia. Not only urban areas are a victim though, as cities near Sydney such as Newtown are pulled into this fiasco. Wirth and Freestone write, "there remains an alternative side that is not part of the marketing campaigns: signs of continuing poverty and homelessness amid the affluence," and claim further, "There have been efforts to remove undesirable elements to ensure King Street remains attractive to visitors." These efforts mask Newtown as an excellent place to live, and a lively, place to be. But underneath the mask, is the horrors of poverty and homelessness, which cannot be seen until one explores deeper into the streets of Newtown. Although showing poverty, and the homelessness is undoubtedly a bad choice for any community to make, it demonstrates the efforts made by the people of a culture to make their lifestyles more appealing to the eyes of their visitors, as do the people of the Toraja culture.

In places such as Indonesia, where the Toraja reside, the attempts to commodify a culture have taken to some extremes. According to Toby Volkman in her article, "Visions and Revisions," effigies left at gravesites to honor the dead, known as tau tau have taken to "souvenir shops flooded with an array of small tau tau-like figurines, but the ledges of the limestone graves at Lemo were newly occupied by [unabashed] fakes," in a macabre, yet ironically mundane fashion. This demonstrates the lengths to which the indigenous people are willing to make a profit, as they would design a figure used to respect the dead, and in turn, sell them as souvenirs without any regard for the amount of sacrilege it might hold. Because of the weight tourism pulls in the economies of the world, tourist industries are willing to take some extremes to make a profit in their portrayals. This extreme does not necessarily take the form of effigies, but it can also take forms of changing the tour guide's personality.

One instance of a different persona arising out of industry workers trying to sell a culture is in "Sharing Culture or Selling Out?" by Alexis Celeste Bunten. In this article, she makes the claim that, "most cultural-tourism sites follow predictable formats, presenting aspects of local culture that are fixed in a pre(-)colonial past, in which men and women on display follow gender roles, wear traditional garb, and perform traditional songs and dances," (Bunten, 385), which places blame on the owners of the tourist site. In this quote, Bunten claims that the sites usually all follow the same formats, and all end up portraying a usually pre-modern version of the lifestyle. By saying this, she shifts blame onto the owners of the site, and tells them that instead, they should try to change the format by making it a bit more modern, and therefore accurate. Furthermore, she also criticizes the employees when she claims, " Tour guides often go beyond the script and ad-lib during their tours, discussing the use of local plants for food and medicine, observations of animal behavior, and links between the natural world and the Tlingit kinship system," (Bunten, 387), but in a more subtle fashion. While not as noticeable as the statement used before, she essentially claims the people of said culture continue to utilize the Tlingit kinship system to find links from the system to the world they live in today, which she claims has died off earlier in her journal. Through this, she makes the claim that the industry workers are attempting to go off the script in order to convince the tourists to drop some cash for the workers to have. Though the journal article does credit the tour site for breaking away from script, it still has some elements that remind us the site is still utilizing the culture to make money, and the employees are willing to add more salt to the pot, in order to make more money. 

The amount of displeasure in seeing a culture having to depict ideas not native to their lifestyle is not only bothering to people like me, but also the people who are doing the actual portrayals. Sometimes, the workers in the tourist industry even try to resist the effects of the tourist gaze, by bypassing the leaders of the company, and attempting to sell an actually authentic good to the consumers. In "Global Integration and the Commodification of Culture," by June Nash of The City University of New York, Nash claims that in the 1980's,  U.S. businessmen began to take control over production of Oaxacan production, leading to a different design in an attempt to lower the prices needed to produce the items. But, through studies of Zapotec rugs, and the families that make them, she claims the Zapotec were able to regain some control over the process. Because the Zapotec employees took back the way their goods were being produced, they obviously showed their disdain for how their culture was being handled. Nash makes further claims, such as, "Kaqchikel women do get tired of playing themselves to an audience of tourists, now invited into their living space so that they can experience the total impact of Mayan life. Totonicapan dance and drama groups might prefer to do their performances in the ceremonial cycle, but must conform to the tourist season," (Nash, 129). Again, Nash shows the displeasure in the employee's eyes, of having to constantly portray a part of the culture, but staggered on a different calendar than the traditional cycle. This is because many of the tourist industry's decisions are not impacted by the culture of the people, but by the economical benefit that comes with the tourists who visit. By showing two groups of Central American culture who are workers in the industry and are disgusted by the decisions made by the owners of the industry, Nash clearly demonstrates the detrimental impact of heritage commodification on the employees of the tourist industry. 

While I strongly believe the tourist gaze is considered a detriment to the abolishment of racial stereotypes, some anthropologists believe it is actually beneficial, maybe not to the curing of racial stereotypes, but for their own, unique ways. 

Starting with an article by Chris Halewood and Kevin Hannam, the remains of Viking heritage will be viewed. According to Halewood and Hannam, the tourist gaze can be beneficial because of the uniting element given to scattered groups of a common ancestor, they say " key members of the Viking version frequently proclaim their European identity with statements such as "we are all united under a common bond." This uniting bond can bring people who have split from a common ancestor, back together and strengthen their culture behind an entity who were considered "[bloodthirsty] men...pillaging." I can agree with this article, because to me, one's heritage is important, and if it means bonding under a common visualization of an ancestor, then doing so is justifiable. 

Another example of a good counterargument is written in Alexis Celeste Bunten's article, "Indigenous Tourism: The Paradox of Gaze and Resistance." In this journal, Bunten claims that the tourist gaze is ultimately not a problem is the tour guides and workers of the industry present themselves as they live. Instead of cashing in for opportunities to look like a traditional member of a culture, they should correct any inaccurate assumptions made about their heritage. When referring to the Alaskan natives and Maori Culture, Bunten says, " Tour guides refute stereotypes that they are part of a timeless past by presenting themselves as firmly entrenched in modernity," which also puts an end to the idea of people living in old fashioned styles. These arguments, as well as the nature of the topic, all bring me to conclude that a compromise is inevitable when dealing with the idea of a tourist gaze.

Because of the way humans develop first impressions, we will always carry some sort of bias towards how certain operations should be handled. This could range from the way bombs are launched, to how indigenous natives should portray their cultures. The human mind is mostly incapable of ridding itself of assumptions, so to completely wipe the idea of a "tourist gaze" from the earth is near impossible. However, instead of feeding into the ideals and desires of the people who come to tour the area, I assert that tour guides should attempt to correct any inaccurate ideas of how the culture works, just as Bunten claimed in "Indigenous Tourism: The Paradox of Gaze and Resistance." Even if these workers of the tourist industry feel like they must uphold a myth to unite scattered people of a common ancestor as seen in Halewood and Hannam's "Viking Heritage Tourism," I think they should declare the historical inaccuracy, or continue to use this method, as long as it is not used to solely create an economic profit, like the effigies in "Visions and Revisions: Toraja Culture and the Tourist Gaze." Although this may not entirely cure the idea of people viewing me as an imperial Chinese rice-peasant, it might help mend the tensions between a modernized culture, and western tourists seeing them as a group of inadequate, backwards people.

