From a Tourist Journey to a Hero Journey. Film Mimesis in the Japanese Tourist Discourse on Spain: The Case of "Andalucía" (2011)

Abstract

This text interrogates the imaginary of Spain in the film Andalucia: Revenge of the Goddess (Andarushia Megami no Hōfuku, Hiroshi Nishitani, 2011). The relations between film and tourism are tackled with a methodology inverse to that usually used. In contrast to the literature dealing with the impact of film on tourism, this work assesses the impact of tourism on film. On one hand, it studies the adaptation of a journey across Spain promoted by Japanese travel agencies into de cinematic narrative. This approach brings to the forefront an appropriation of iconography pre-existing beyond the big screen. Andalucía draws on essentialist views of Spain with an aim to seduce audiences with images that paradoxically, the Japanese audience already knows. On the other hand, this article explores the renewal of the Spanish imaginary, first, through transnational figures creating a novel exoticism, embodying the fantasies of the Japanese spectatortourist and projecting symbolic power relations of Japan with Spain and the U.S. Second, the representation of the tourist destination transformed into a film location is updated with references to financial corruption that seem to evoke issues of Spanish current affairs.