Table Of ContentCharting Scottish
Tourism and the Early
Scenic Film
Access, Identity and
Landscape
Samantha Wilson
Charting Scottish Tourism and the Early Scenic Film
Samantha Wilson
Charting Scottish
Tourism and the Early
Scenic Film
Access, Identity and Landscape
Samantha Wilson
Glasgow, Scotland
ISBN 978-3-030-39152-2 ISBN 978-3-030-39153-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39153-9
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For my mother and father, who taught me to love the Scottish landscape,
even before I had the chance to set foot in it.
Acknowledgments
This book exists at the intersection of two very different projects. The
first was my doctoral thesis tracing the role of the natural sublime in
environmentalaestheticsandvisualcultureandthesecondapostdoctoral
research project interrogating the historical links between the sites and
circulation of scenic films and the spatial identities of Scottish communi-
tiesattheturnofthecentury.Forthisreasonthereareseveralindividuals
and groups to thank for their commitment and contribution to this final
piece of work.
I would first like to thank Professor Peter Rist (Concordia University)
and Professor John Caughie (University of Glasgow) for their indispens-
able support and insight over the course of both projects. Without both
of their contributions to different stages of this research this book would
not have been possible.
I would like to acknowledge Professor Martin Lefebvre (Concordia
University)whosesupportandcommentsintheearlystagesofthisproject
provided the theoretical foundations for the rest of my research.
I am also grateful to a number of libraries and archives who made
their resources available to me over the past several years including the
Moving Image Archive at the National Library of Scotland (formerly the
ScottishScreenArchive),theBritishFilmInstitute,HistoricEnvironment
Scotland,theNationalArchivesofScotland,InverclydeCouncilArchives,
Bute Museum and the London Metropolitan Archives.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Fonds de
Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture whose Postdoctoral Research
Grant funded the two year project, ‘A Trip to Bonnie Scotland: Regional
Scottish Identities and the Circulation and Exhibition of Early Scenic
Films at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.’
Iwouldliketo thank theInternational JournalofScottish Theatre and
Screen whohavegraciouslyallowedmetoincludearevisedversionofthe
article“ATrip‘DoontheWatter’DuringtheGlasgowFair:WorkingClass
Leisure Patterns and the Role of the Scenic Film at the Turn of the Cen-
tury” which I published in the journal in 2017. Portions of the second
and sixth chapters of this book are derived in part from Samantha Wil-
son,“TheAestheticsofAstonishmentandContemplationinEarlyBritish
Scenic Filmmaking,” published in Early Popular Visual Culture on July
2nd 2016, reprinted by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as
Taylor&FrancisGroup,availableonline:https://www.tandfonline.com/
doi/abs/10.1080/17460654.2016.1183362?journalCode=repv20.
Lastly,IoweaparticulardebtofappreciationtobothmyparentsLaura
and David Wilson and my partner Neil without whom this book would
not have come into being.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Home and Away: The Rise of the Walking Tour and
Guidebook 23
3 Mapping, Ordering and Recording the Tourist’s
Landscape 51
4 Reclaiming Space and Fortifying Identity: Working Class
Travel During the Glasgow Fair 75
5 I Never Leave Home Without It: Amateur Filmmaking in
the Interwar Period 99
6 Conclusion 123
Index 135
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract This introductory chapter explores how the interplay between
material forces and aesthetic and cultural discourses paved the way for
nature appreciation to be embedded within the tourism industry in Scot-
land between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Several
representational technologies played a role in this process including pho-
tography and film. The latter, in the guise of the scenic film, renego-
tiated one of the central debates surrounding first-hand contact with
nature and its aesthetic parameters—that is how to frame the embodied
gaze.ThisquestionwasparticularlyimportantwithintheScottishcontext
because of the impact of transborder tourism and the circulation of land-
scape imagery during the period. Both regional and international leisure
patterns transformed not only how individual communities moved and
looked at the spaces they called home but also how they conceptualised
their relationship with the natural world.
Keywords Nature appreciation · Scenic filmmaking · Aesthetic
philosophy · Travel and tourism · Scotland
Jean Adamson spent her childhood holidays outside of the Highland vil-
lage of Ardentinny. In her private memoirs she described that period of
her life with reverent detail. It was there in the forest that she created
her own magical world detached from the cultural and economic pres-
sures that surrounded her family back home in the mining town of High
© The Author(s) 2020 1
S. Wilson, Charting Scottish Tourism and the Early Scenic Film,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39153-9_1
2 S. WILSON
Blantyre. When revisiting these memories Jean describes herself as being
completely“absorbed”bythenaturalworldaroundher,where“Lifeitself
seemedtoproliferatefasterthanathome”.1 Withaheavysenseofnostal-
gia,theseperiodsofleisurebecamea“timelessworld”with“someatavis-
tic power that made us think and behave like our ancestors… extracting
the savour of life from the rhythm of nature and getting myths from the
lips of the story tellers”.2 The experiences she retells and the rhetoric she
uses to do so are, of course, not entirely unique. They reflect a com-
plexsetof discoursesandperformedbehaviourembedded inthefounda-
tions of the cultural identity of her home country of Scotland, discourses
which would have a profound effect on the spatial patterns and expecta-
tionswhichwoulddrivethedomestictourismindustryforthenextseveral
decades.
Over a period of a few hundred years, looking at and moving through
natural spaces became central features of what particular socio-economic
groupsdidwhileawayfromhomeonholiday.Infact,theemergenceand
valorisation of nature appreciation as a performed set of first-hand expe-
riences went hand in hand with the development of a range of techno-
logical,economicandpoliticalchangeswhichmadeincreasingamountsof
leisuretravelpossibleforalargerandlargerpercentageoftheBritishpop-
ulation. Individuals and groups chose to spend their often-precious time
outside of work in natural landscapes because, in the words of John Urry
andJonasLarsen,they“anticipate[d]”thoseexperienceswouldprovidea
kind of pleasure or benefit that was unlike anything they could acquire in
their regular day to day lives.3 Those benefits, whether physical, psycho-
logical,aestheticorintellectualwereconstructedbyaseriesofoverlapping
discourses which circulated through a number of texts and devices such
as topographical literature, guidebooks, photography, and by the turn of
the twentieth century, cinema. Each of these representational technolo-
giescontributedto“formalizing”particular“patternsofappreciationand
mobility” extending the reach of the initial philosophical debates to the
middle and working classes.4 In Tourist Gaze 3.0, Urry and Larsen argue
that this combination of the “means of collective travel”, “the desire for
travel”andtheriseofrepresentationaltechnologiessetthefoundationfor
theemergenceofthe“touristgaze”whichbecame“acorecomponentof
western modernity”.5
Charting Scottish Tourism and the Early Scenic Film interrogates how
one of these technologies, the moving image, not only reconstructed the
Scottish tourist map but renegotiated the already complex relationship
