A seat with a view

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between tourism, the cinema, and English Literature in the ‘English’ films of Merchant Ivory. I trace the changing nature of tourism mobilities in contemporary society by examining the development from a corporeal tourism to a virtual tourism where the cinematic spectator remains immobile while viewing the moving images on the cinema screen. This is brought into focus through a close examination of E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908/1978) and Merchant Ivory’s subsequent adaptation of the novel. While Forster was critical of the tourist gaze, the adaptation of his novel is ultimately appropriated to the discourse of English tourism. These films function as tourist attractions through their self-conscious screening of objects of the tourist gaze and their canonical literary heritage. Using Friedberg’s (1994) notion of the ‘mobile, virtual gaze’, I argue that these films are viewed through what I term the ‘cinematic-travel glance’.