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The Melodramatic Structure of New Age Tourist Desire

This essay explores the relationship between media form and tourist imaginations of Sedona, AZ, USA. In particular, it examines the ways in which a pervasive narrative form – melodrama – maps onto New Age tourists’ expectations and experiences. This essay builds on Crouch et al.’s (2005a) notions of media and tourist imaginations and posits that in the case of New Age tourism in Sedona, the tourist imagination is melodramatic. The position in this paper forwards three conceptual ideas. First, conversations about the intersections between media and tourism should extend beyond the dominant focus on media content to questions of the influence of media narrative forms. Second, conversations about media and tourist imaginations should not necessarily be thought of in binary ways, even as ideal types. Third, conversations about media and tourism need to better consider how tourism is embedded in a complex, layered media environment.