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’.
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