Below the Deck: A Critical Mapping of Luxury Cruise Culture

Amanda Kercmar University of Washington Bothell, Cultural Studies Spring 2013

Abstract Grounded in key concepts and problematics from Cultural Studies, Critical Tourism Studies, and Critical Geography, my capstone project considers how the luxury cruise industry is discursively produced. With reference to verbal and visual resources used in promotional materials from Seabourn Cruise Line (an industry leader headquartered in Seattle), I am specifically interested in the ways luxury is "spatialized" and the ways "ideal" luxury passengers are imagined. Inevitably, these processes privilege certain social and embodied realities while obscuring others; and while luxury travel may sometimes be marketed as "affordable," it is clearly not intended for everyone. More broadly speaking, the representational politics of this single (and locally situated) company point to the ways that ideologies of travel are globally (re)imagined and to how class status is economically, culturally, and continuously (re)organized.

..The tourist imagination and tourist performance are always heavily (in)formed by prefigured, mediatized representations and actions. (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2011, p. 363) Space is a component of power that penetrates all other social frameworks, and, although not every social relation can be reduced to space, space is nonetheless a force that helps constitute other social relations. (Massey 1994, quoted in Shome 2003, p. 41)

Introduction

In this paper I seek to highlight the ways that luxury is discursively (re)produced through mediatized practices, privileging certain
textual representations over others both in and across space. Specifically, in this paper I investigate the production of the imagined identities of luxury cruise passengers by analyzing and interrogating the ways that Seabourn Cruise Line, a luxury cruise company located in Seattle, positions the cruiser socially, politically, and spatially in their promotional practices and promised experiences. By bringing the theoretical frameworks of Critical Discourse Studies, Cultural Geography and Critical Tourism Studies together, I will argue that the imagined and embodied identities of the luxury cruiser are flexible and continuously being reshaped and redefined within larger power structures governing identity and place making. This project situates luxury in the context of

larger cultural studies themes and is in dialogue with critiques of raced, classed, and gendered sociopolitical economies. The perhaps intentional ways that Seabourn Cruise Line situates tourist as a social and spatial performance points to some of the ways that this specific type of luxury is (re)organized. The two introduction quotes above provide an opportunity to intervene from a cultural studies perspective, into a discourse that quite obviously privileges certain imagined and embodied realities of luxury tourism over others.

This case study investigates questions of how privilege and status are produced, organized, and imagined in the luxury cruise industry. In this paper I am also questioning which realities are privileged and which are obscured or not favored in cruise ship advertisements, and wondering, How might these texts be shaped by the perceived knowledge of how a cruiser should appropriately appear, act, and even eat? Once I have laid the theoretical frameworks for understanding the ways that these imagined and embodied identities of the cruiser are informed by the privileging of certain texts, my critique will show that the information which is obscured plays an integral and vital role in situating the luxury cruise passenger in opposition to non-luxury. I argue the importance of seeking out what is not said is equally as important in understanding the discursive formation of identities, and in positioning the luxury cruise tourist.

It should go without saying that tourists are a particularly privileged people generally with the capacity for physical mobility and
the ability to move across space, with the freedom and time to travel for leisure, and the economic means to afford this luxury. However, even within this high cultural/economic/political status, tensions of power and knowledge still exist. As John Urry

notes, Tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated and organized work. It is one manifestation of how work and leisure are organized as separate and regulated spheres of social practice in modern societies (Urry, 1990, p. 2).

These tensions which are imagined and produced in the promotional materials from Seabourn Cruise Line seek to situate luxury and the ideal luxury passenger in opposition to non-luxury. For this project I specifically focused on the promotional materials produced and published by Seabourn, and performed a textual analysis of the website, brochures, pamphlets, DVDs, magazine advertisements, and web-based commercials/videos to investigate who and how they imagine and sell luxury. I looked primarily at the kinds of images and words Seabourn uses to describe their version of luxury, and who this luxury is intended for. By interrogating both the physical and human geographies of luxury, we can see that luxury is something that is (re)produced through and over time, and as John Urry and Jonas Larson argue (2011), the tourist gaze is not a matter of individual psychology but of socially patterned and learnt ways of seeing(Urry and Larson 2011, p. 2).

Tourism Tourism, globally, denotes a certain quality and experience of luxury. Tourism is commonly identified as a privilege people engage

in, which imagines a certain amount of free-willed mobility, availability of leisure time, and affords tourists a social and spatial
vantage with which to gaze (Urry) upon others. Another common but important component of tourism that Urry (1990) points out is that often in tourism, everyday responsibilities and obligations are not tended to, or are suspended for the duration of ones

vacation (Urry, 1990, p. 11). While Urrys gaze is often taken up as visualization, ways of seeing, my work seeks to extend the boundaries of gaze to include imagined spaces. By incorporating a Critical Tourism Studies lens to my research, I show how the tourist gaze (Urry) is implicated in the re-telling and shaping of the imagined identity of the luxury cruise passenger. Understanding how these identities are produced, perceived, and embodied is important because this informs us about the production of power and knowledge in this space. This is also important because tourism exists at local, national, and international levels, and the ways identities are imagined and informed by cruise tourism advertisements and texts might resonate outside of my case study and outside of this specific industry.

Tourism can be thought of as a type of consumptive behavior or performance, in which the tourist consumes knowledges, in addition to goods, services, and spaces, from a host (toured). By investigating the niche of luxury tourism, this assumes that within the greater realm of tourism and tourist, there are different levels of social and cultural capital afforded to different people often by varied levels of socio-economic status. So luxury is then a differentially imagined, embodied, and material performance of privilege.

Geographies

Space exists as both physical and conceptual. Our situations within both physical space and conceptual space must be evaluated
in context, as space is not static. Rather, space is always being resituated and redefined within relational structures of power. Jaworski and Thurlow (2011) argue that these spaces are central to cultural theory especially in terms of identity making and

agency. They argue that space as something conceived, perceived, and lived, is clearly realized in the ways we represent itbut spaces also emerge in the ways we move through them, interact in themand interact with them (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2011, p. 363). The creation and existence of space, while never static, work in constant tension with identity to continuously resituate and restructure our relationships within and between identity and space. These spatial boundaries are flexible and are categories which may expand or contract alongside changing social circumstances or shifting political agendas (Draus, Roddy, and Greenwald, 2010, p. 669). The imagined and embodied identities of luxury cruise tourists are situated across and within particular spatial contexts, and are in part, shaped by cruisers physical locations and their knowledge of the world.

As Sarah Sharma (2009) argues in Baring Life and Lifestyle in the Non-Place, sites of transition and sites that are obscured from the popular public eye play a vital role in the (re)production of social and political capital. She states, As a site where the differential flows of immaterial and material traffic (of bodies, monies, and information) mix, mingle, and sometimes clash, the non-place must be contended with as a critical space within the political architecture of contemporaneity (Sharma, 2009, p. 146). The cruise industry in particular, has embraced the idea of travel not as a non-place space (mode of transportation), but as encompassing the essence of the experience and has created a space for luxury. Essentially, the marketing and advertising practices of the cruise industry set out with an explicit agenda of selling or providing goods and services, but through these

practices they are also forming identities and understandings appropriate behaviors in the travel space. To further build on this
notion that space and place in part produce identities, and to consider both a physical and human geography perspective, Doreen Massey (1994) argues, Space is a component of power that penetrates all other social frameworks, and, although not

every social relation can be reduced to space, space is nonetheless a force that helps constitute other social relations (Massey, 1994, p. 4).

Discourse Discourse, as defined by Michel Foucault (1980) is the production of social knowledge within structures and relations of power. As it pertains to my research, discourse means the continuous (re)productive knowledge(s) of luxury cruising and of the imagined ideal luxury cruise passenger. As Michel Foucault (1972) and Stuart Hall (1992 and 1997) understand, discourse is a way of representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a particular historical momentsince all social practices entail meaning, and meanings shape and influence what we do our conduct all practices have a discursive aspect (Hall, 1997, p. 44). In this project, I argue that representations of luxury tourism are derived and understood through systems of shared meanings and values (Hall, 1997), wherein luxury exists only in a) our shared understanding of luxury and luxury cruising, and b) in opposition to non-luxury cruising. This common or shared meaning is what gives us a language (verbal and non-verbal) and practice with which to understand the social and spatial locations of luxury cruising, and to see commonalities in the ways ideal luxury passengers are imagined. Seabourn Cruise Line draws a clear distinction between the emotions, services, and feelings that they can offer aboard their ships and others, experiences which they claim you cannot find in non-luxury cruising. As there are obviously

differing degrees of luxury, imagining luxury in opposition to non-luxury does not have to be a glaring polar opposite, but can
exist as more subtle differences and include such things as smaller ship size (this does not have to be individual ships, although many of the images Seabourn produces provide this illusion), more exquisite food (the distinction is not so drastic as to say caviar

versus fast-food, but does illustrate a status that sets Seabourn apart), and thus in opposition to non-luxury cruise companies. As Jacques Derrida (1981) argued, difference (what Im referring to as opposition) cannot be contained in a binary structure, so opposition does not necessarily exist as an exact opposite, and in this case luxury cruise tourism exists in opposition to more than just a single difference. So any notion of a final meaning is always endlessly put off, deferred (Hall, 1997, p. 42). And these meanings are being continuously (re)interpreted and (re)imagined.

Discourse, as a continuous and flexible process, creates and enables the production of cruiser identities, which are embedded in larger cultural critiques of class, race, privilege, and mobility; and the political economy of cruise tourism is situated in the commodification of the tourist gaze. Imagined identities, while experienced individually and uniquely by cruise tourists cannot be known individually, but are understood within social relationships.

Mapping the places of luxury An extraordinary escape

Physical Geographies of Luxury Cruising This map, produced by Seabourn Cruise Line, can be found in their cruise brochure (2013), and is intended to show the number of places a world cruise with Seabourn takes you. The layout of this map situates the place names in such a way as to occupy the majority of the central map. In the advertisement that accompanies this map, Seabourn cleverly situates luxury both spatially and

socially by boasting, Youre invited to join us for the definitive travel experience: a World Cruise with Seabourn. Over the course of 116 glorious days, well add to your collection of treasured memories while making new friends with your fellow travelers. The adventure begins the moment we depart, and the dawn of each day brings us closer to extraordinary wonders. As we make our way across the world, youll be treated to a range of enriching luxuries (Seabourn Cruise Line, 2013).

However, what I see in this map and quote is the privileging of elite spaces while ignoring or obscuring other spaces. By interrogating this map using the theories and methods I learned in MACS, when I look at this map I see the privileging of certain spaces as being luxurious and worthy of exploration, while perhaps others are not. I see tropical islands, the sets from Mutiny on the Bounty, the exotic Far East and South Pacific, The Orient, the wealth of the Middle East, and the Rich colonial history of the Mediterranean.

Mapping the places of luxury A voyage unlike any other

I created this map to highlight some of what I see when I look at the world cruise map produced by Seabourn Cruise Line. Specifically, my map highlights what they dont explicitly say.which is that this 116 day journey, which allows cruisers to put forth a tourist gaze and claim they have seen the world or traveled the world largely dismisses entire continents and thousands of miles of rich coastline. I constructed this map to show the disconnects between these claims and the large parts of the world,

including entire continents, that are not represented by this cruise. When looking at this world cruise route from the map I constructed, it becomes clear that this cruise which is advertised in a way that imagines a vast broad view of the world is in fact very narrow and controlled, privileging certain knowledges and experiences of the world over others. By calling this a world cruise Seabourn is influencing and (re)producing the meaning of a world cruise, which in turn restricts and limits other ways of thinking and considering what a world cruise might be. Seabourns world cruise map produces and obscures knowledge(s) about spaces that are considered to be and are intended for luxury. Another striking observation I made about Seabourns world cruise route is the location of the origin and destination points. This cruise originates in Miami, Florida, United States of America and concludes in Venice, Italy. The origin and destination locations of this cruise make very intentional statements about who this luxury is intended for. One observation I made is that this is not a round-trip sailing, but requires cruisers to, at the very least, fly one way in order to participate. This cruise also begins and ends in what Edward Said (1979) popularized as The West. This is an example of a large scale way in which the promotional materials from Seabourn privilege certain spaces as elite.

Mapping the places of luxury A voyage with Seabourn is beyond anything youve experienced before

This image evokes the emotion of serenity; that this is perhaps the only boat on the sea. The pristine white ship is set against the tropical and lush virgin landscape with a mild sky and calm waters. The visual representations used in this image set out with an explicit agenda of selling an ideal of luxury as something not accessible to everyone, and that Seabourn cruises can travel to places where other cruises cannot. This image shows the ship as the intended location of luxury, not as a mode of transportation. This image does the work of leaving you wondering what the inside of the ship must be like, as well as wondering what you might

find or learn while exploring and gazing upon the exotic or enchanting cultures the reside beyond the ship. Or perhaps you have
the luxury of traveling to places that can only be accessed by sea.

Here, the vastness of the horizon enables you to visualize and imagine that the places for exploration on a Seabourn cruise are possibly endless. The social location of luxury cruise tourists in these pictures is situated across and within particular spatial contexts, and is in part shaped by potential cruisers physical locations and their knowledge(s) and understandings of the world. The capacity for tourism, time, mobility, and economically speaking suggest that luxury is something only available to very few, as there is only one ship in the sea that can provide these endless possibilities for exploration. White appears to be the color of

luxury, as all Seabourn ships are white, and as you will see in the coming slides, everything from popular clothing to who
embodies the ideal luxury cruise passenger, are also white.

Human Geographies of Luxury Cruising In this additional image, you can see that these people appear to be the only people on the ship, perhaps the only people on the sea. This reiterates the ideal that this type of luxury is not intended for most. While the image is focused on the people, you can see in the background that none of the lounge chairs are occupied. The intentionality of

representation in this image does the work of allowing us

to only imagine what these people are gazing at. As Mike Crang (1997) argues, photography sustains a particularly embedded and constructed subjectivity through the fusion of the material and ideological possibilities. (Crang, 1997, p. 364). Most of the passenger images, such as the one here, are of a single, couple, or few people occupying large vast spaces, giving the sense that this kind of luxury is intended for very few.

While the promotional materials published by Seabourn Cruise Line situate luxury as having these particular social and spatial
locations, they are in turn obscuring other imagined and embodied realities, which shape who and how luxury is envisioned. Each of these images was taken from the Media Bank on Seabourns website, and can be found under the category of Lifestyle Images. This fairly explicitly tells us that the lifestyle of luxury is meant for very few. In my research I saw no images alluding to like-gendered couples, no images showing families or small children, and very few people of color. These images are very representative of the colonial narrative underlying Seabourns advertising. In my case study luxury was produced as, and seemingly meant only for white hetero-normative couples appearing 30-60 years old.

Another observation I made as when reviewing the images in this section was with regard to the careful clothing choices that the image subject wore. Stereotypically offering a nautical or sailing representation, many of the people are wearing white and khaki colored warm weather appropriate clothing. The only color represented in these images is blue, though only on top; luxury apparently does not come in denim. Further, every image in the Lifestyle Images section showed people appearing to be as a couple. There were no images of single people provided in this section, producing the knowledge that Seabourn luxury cruises are perhaps not meant for solo-travelers.

Mapping the human geographies of luxury The perfect day, as you like it

This image reiterates the colonial, raced, and gendered narratives if luxury, the whiteness of this space. These people appear to be discussing an exotic cultural artifact, likely something they acquired while on an excursion in The Orient or perhaps a tropical island. The gendered politics of this image set the women to the side and behind the men, while the man possesses the souvenir and thus the knowledge and power than come with this artifact. The expression on the faces of the men is more serious and matter-of-fact, while the women are smiling, perhaps laughing at the wonder of this mysterious token. This image alludes to these being two white hetero-normative couples, and their clothing suggests that of a safari or other adventure. The artifact here can be seen as a token of their worldly knowledge and experience that they have gained while gazing upon a foreign culture.

Mapping the human geographies of luxury Passionate about pleasing our guests

While the cruise ship is constructed as a space of luxury for tourists, it is also a space of labor, labor which is both produced and
producing (of bodies, interactions, and performances). Using John Urrys (1990) understanding of the power and perception of the tourist gaze, allows us to consider the ways that identity and difference are imagined and embodied. Performance and identity are informed historically and cannot exist outside of discourse, thus the significance of the luxury cruise is experienced uniquely by each person in any given time, and the meaning/value of the luxury is derived only through these experiences and interactions.

Many promotional images show the occurrence labor, labor performed for the benefit of the luxury traveler. Seabourn boasts that their passengers receive 1 on 1, personalized attention, imagining that luxury means having a personal servant to tend to

your every whim or desire. As John Urrys (1990) argument would agree, tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its
opposite, namely regulated and organized work. It is one manifestation of how work and leisure are organized as separate and regulated spheres of social practice in modern societies. (Urry 1990, p. 2). By situating the tourist versus host/laborer in this way, it is quite apparent who this luxury is intended for. Speaking of this labor, Seabourn offers cruisers a Caviar in the Surf Beach Party where crew members wade out chest deep in the ocean in their deck uniforms (white slacks and buttoned shirts) to serve caviar from a surfboard to passengers enjoying a beach day. Luxury apparently also has a flavor.

Mapping the human geographies of luxury Service simply to delight you

Images such as this do not specifically show labor happening in action, but rather allude to it (or imagine it). This labor comes in the form of having your bed turned down nightly, having every spaced cleaned and presented fresh daily, having your food plated perfectly, towels folded neatly waiting for you on your lounge chair, and drinks delivered to you poolside. In this image, luxury is not being explicitly shown, but there are many indications that labor has occurred here. Visible in this image are the folded towels placed perfectly on the evenly spaced and aligned chairs, the pristine ship deck with spotless spas that have had their jet and water features turned on. This invisible labor plays a key role in situating luxury spatially and in considering the embodied

performance of luxury cruise passengers. Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski (2013) explain that The way that labour/ing is imagined in luxury travel is not only normative in its visualization of certain practices, certain bodies, certain interactions; these visual performances also materialize and normalize the very notion of luxury itself (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2013, p. 25) This

image imagines that the cruiser can simply choose any seat of their preference, and does not need to expend any effort to experience relaxation.

In addition to who is favored and who is not shown in Seabourns publications and advertisements, cruisers identities are also informed by their relationship to the ways that cruise ship maps/deck plans are constructed. Cabins are described and situated in particular ways, textually privileging certain cabins and spaces over others. The depth and breadth of cabin descriptions also shows inconsistencies that favor the more luxurious cabin types over standard balcony suites. Higher priced, more exquisite room types are advertised with a greater number of images and longer, more descriptive and illustrative room descriptions. The Ocean-View Suite aka lowest level cabin type description informs shoppers and customers as to the amenities of the room, but offers few adjectives and descriptors to help the passenger imagine their experience, all-the-while still reminding you that you are of the socio-economic status and class to book a suite with a view of the sea.

Conclusion
Identities, both imagined and embodied are always being (re)interpreted and (re)negotiated by individuals and groups within and across geographic spaces, both physical and conceptual. Identity and meaning are not inherently in an object or body; rather,

they are understood through the ways in which we talk about object/body in relation to difference and within structures of power and knowledge. However, to understand something to be, difference and opposition are not contained within a single political binary because the boundaries of meaning are flexible and are continuously being (re)organized. The production and

consumption of the imagined and produced identities of luxury cruise tourists must be understood as flexible and discursively formed. This knowledge production and archiving of lived/embodied experiences contributes to the ways we understand the tourism, luxury, and the cruiserindividually and in combining these identities. As Doreen Massey (2006) informs, much geography is imagined, and the images and knowledges we have of the world are shaped and influenced by our lived experiences. This pattern of embodying imagined identities shapes the discourse of tourism, and regulates our knowledge of tourism to privilege certain realities over others. This discursive formation is what John Urry and Jonas Larson (2011) refer to as socially patterned and learnt ways of seeing (Urry and Larson, 2011, p. 2).

My research has shown that the mediatized practices of Seabourn Cruise Line privilege certain textual representations over others, spatially and socially. Through these intentional representations of luxury, my research has shown that this particular brand of luxury favors certain social and embodied realities while obscuring others. By employing a critical cultural studies lens on the promotional materials from Seabourn, I was able to show how the obscured and less obvious realities of these images

provides just as powerful of a narrative as to who embodies the ideal luxury cruiser as the privileged textual representations. This
analysis of Seabourns (re)presentations of physical and human geographies shows that the production of cruiser identities is multi-faceted, relying on components of culture and location to produce and inform knowledge, while discursively being

reinterpreted. Understanding how these ideals of luxury cruise tourists are produced is important because this informs us about how the values of travel and tourism are being globally (re)imagined and how class status is continuously (re)organized. It is

important to consider the role these practices play in the production of traveler identities and perceptions, as this perhaps lends to the ways tourists are imagined and produced: politically, culturally, and across space.

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**The images in this presentation were borrowed from Seabourn Cruise Lines Media Gallery and Image bank. These images are specifically intended for use by the media, for advertising. The intentionality of the images Seabourn offers for media and public consumption, continue to point to colonial narratives of elite status and luxury.