Dr Rebecca Ogden, Lecturer in Latin American Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, has recently published an article for The Conversation based on the controversial Fyre music festival, which was scheduled to take place in 2017 on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma and has been the focus of recent documentaries on Hulu and Netflix.
In ‘Fyre festival fiasco: exploitation of Caribbean islanders highlights colonial legacy of tourism‘, Rebecca writes: “Luxury, consumption, hedonism and sexual conquest are all tropes that have been long associated with travel to the Caribbean. The 2017 luxury music event Fyre Festival [and its organisers], repackaged these tropes for a millennial market. But thanks to drastically insufficient planning, the fantasy turned into a nightmare…”
“The Fyre fiasco and the documentaries that have followed it expose the cruel reality of a global capitalist system where material resources and labour have been (often violently) extracted from “peripheral” countries by “core” countries.”