A Cheap Holiday ...

Sex Pistols: 'Holidays in the Sun' 

(Virgin Records, 1977) [1]
 

 

I. 

 

I don't know why - perhaps because I'm a little naive and trusting of his lyrical ability - but I always believed that Rotten had penned the memorable opening line of the Sex Pistols' fourth single: A cheap holiday in other people's misery.

 

It turns out, however, that it's borrowed from the Situationists who used the line during the events of May '68 to attack mass tourism, taking particular aim at Club Med; a French travel and tourism operator headquartered in Paris, who specialise in all-inclusive holidays. Founded in 1950, Club Med today owns or operates nearly eighty resort villages in locations around the world (although the company itself is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate).  

 

 

II.

 

The Situationists, led by the brilliant (but troubled) figure of Guy Debord, viewed mass tourism not as a an opportunity for working-class people to travel to foreign lands, but as a manifestation of the Society of the Spectacle (i.e., a sociey in which authentic experience and real events are replaced by mere representation and one's relationships are increasingly mediated by images).

 

A package holiday is - as the name suggests - perfectly commodified and serves only to reinforce capitalist control and intensify the holidaymaker's alienation via the illusion of happiness; you think you're having fun, but actually you're having your soul sucked out of you and being prevented from actively engaging with your environment or knowing real pleasure.

 

What's more, mass tourism forces the local population to prostitute themselves and make their towns, cities, even whole countries attractive for visitors over and above their own needs. At first, everyone thinks it's great and tourism is a huge boost to the economy, but then one day they wake up inside a theme park and their traditional way of life has been made impossible.

 

Recently, in European cities including Barcelona and Venice, there have been anti-tourism protests; local residents finally deciding to try and resist their homeland and culture being turned into a consumable product by the Spectacle. One suspects, however, that these protests are in vain; too little, too late when the whole world has been Disneyfied and we are all tourists now [2].    

 

 

III.

 

Jean Baudrillard - who was a bit of a situationist himself - didn't quite say that tourism and terrorism are one and the the same thing, but he did argue that they are inextricably linked phenomena arising from the process of globalisation and that tourism is itself a form of terror as an avatar of colonisation and a viral infiltration of traditional cultures by foreign capital and alien values [3]. 

 

Like it or not, as you sit at the airport waiting to fly off for some winter sun, but tourism imposes a universal and commodified experience upon the world and incites (sometimes violent and symbolic) acts of resistance from those who don't wish to see their singular experience Disneyfied and consumed by tourists; who understand that any culture that loses its singularity dies.     

 

Like it or not, but no matter how much you paid for your trip and how much you love the locals and try to respect their way of life, you are still just enjoying:

 

 

 

Notes

 

 [1] 'Holidays in the Sun' was released on 14 October 1977 as the fourth single by the Sex Pistols. It reached number 8 in the UK charts. It also serves as the opening track to the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols which was released two weeks later (Virgin Records, 1977). To play the track and watch the official video on YouTube, click here. 

      Jamie Reid's artwork hijacked images from a Belgian holiday brochure and added speech bubbles with lyrics from the song. Unfortunately, the tourist company sued and the record sleeve (along with promotional materials that made use of the artwork) had to be withdrawn. Over 50,000 singles were recalled and re-issued in plain sleeves, although not before an estimated 5,000 had already been sold (one of which I bought). 

      Anyone with £2000 to spare can buy a 'Holidays in the Sun' poster from the London-based bookseller Peter Harrington: click here for details.  

  

[2] See the post titled 'Travels in Hyperculture with Byung Chul-Han 1: We Are All Tourists Now' (30 Jan 2022): click here.  

[3] I'm paraphrasing what Baudrillard writes in 'Where Good Grows', an essay written in 2005, which can be found in The Agony of Power, trans. Ames Hodges (Semiotext(e), 2010), p.102.