Selling Paradise and Adventure: Representations of Landscape in the Tourist Advertising

Abstract

The representation of Australia is explored in the visual and verbal texts of the Australian Tourist Commission's 1992 international advertising campaigns. The advertisements employed representations of Australian landscape to signify tourists' desires for either paradise or adventure. By providing the potential visitor with a range of cultural tools enabling the construction of fantasy, meaning, and identity, these advertisements attempt to attract international tourists. My critical reading suggests that these representations of landscape help maintain a myth of Australian national identity originating from oppressive colonial and patriarchal relations. These representations are not only regressive but conflict with articulations of national identity emanating from other Australian institutions.