‘Fake Paris’ in Tianducheng, China
The Diffractions Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture, run by the Lisbon Consortium, has published my article in their 5th issue: ‘Urban Imaginaries’ (Fall, 2015). Employing Edward Said’s notion of ‘imagined geographies’ and Robert Alter’s notion of ‘phantasmagoria’, my new article ‘In Search of Lost Cities: Imagined Geographies and the Allure of the Fake’, looks at the portrayal of famous cities in popular culture and media, and discusses the touristic disillusionment with the ‘real’ city. Here is the abstract:
Despite audiences being aware of the way in which popular culture frames and invents history, places and people, these representations inevitably impinge on a viewer’s initial conception of various global landscapes and features, particularly the nature of an urban environment so often depicted through the lens of popular culture. It has been well established that the disparity between one’s expectations and the reality of a city’s layout…
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