There is a scene near the end of the 20th Century Fox film The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000) – based on British author Alex Garland’s bestseller about backpackers in Southeast Asia – that highlights the fraught real-life politics between millenial Western tourists and local residents in Thailand. This movie, filmed with a budget of $US fifty million and produced by British company Figment Films, pivots its story around a young American called Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is searching for authentic travel experiences in the East.3 While in Bangkok, a suicidal Scottish backpacker bequeaths Richard a map leading the way to a perfect, unspoiled beach on an isolated island near Phuket. With the aid of a young French couple, Richard locates the island, where the trio discover a virtually self-sufficient Western backpacker community. Over time a series of events – shark attack, the ongoing threat of tourist discovery, infidelity, murder – takes the pleasure out of this supposedly idyllic paradise and Richard is quickly alienated from the ideal backpacking community.

Item Type:	Research Book Chapter
Keywords:	film tourism, media tourism, representations of tourism, backpacker tourism, film studies, film cultures
Research Division:	Creative Arts and Writing
Research Group:	Screen and digital media
Research Field:	Screen media
Objective Division:	Culture and Society
Objective Group:	Communication
Objective Field:	Visual communication
UTAS Author:	Blackwood, G (Dr Gemma Blackwood)
ID Code:	135876
Year Published:	2016
Deposited By:	Media
Deposited On:	2019-11-19
Last Modified:	2022-08-26
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