Trauma as Entertainment

Sites and spectacular events linked with trauma including death, suffering, violence, or disaster have long attracted curious visitors and consumers. Roman gladiatorial games, pilgrimages, or attendance at medieval public executions are a few of the early forms of trauma-related entertainment and spectacle. During the last century, the phenomenon of trauma as spectacle and entertainment has become both widespread and diverse. War-related attractions, war commemorations, and war museums have proliferated in the 20th century and represent a subset of the totality of tourist sites associated with death and suffering. Tourism scholars have noted the variety of disaster-related or death-related (dark tourism) sites and specific destinations including Ground Zero in New York City; the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas, where the assassin's bullet ...