Paper short abstract:

Taking its cue from T. Conley’s Cartographic Cinema and J. Urry’s The Tourist Gaze, this paper explores the connections Wheatley’s film establishes between heritage, home and constructions of scale.

Paper long abstract:

English heritage sights are transformed into gruesome crime scenes in Ben Wheatley's black comedy Sightseers (2012) as Chris and Tina, a couple freshly in love, tour the English countryside with their mobile home. While Tina soon discovers the murderous leanings of her new boyfriend, she not only refuses to let this ruin their holiday but eventually develops a homicidal streak of her own. Their trip through England is depicted as a journey into national and individual identity. In my paper, I explore the connections Wheatley's road movie establishes between heritage, home and the construction of scale. Crucial to my argument is the aesthetic form of this film because it encourages the viewer to adopt 'a tourist gaze' (J. Urry) with regard to English heritage while simultaneously unsettling this gaze through dissonances between image and sound. Taking my cue from Tom Conley's Cartographic Cinema (2006), I will pay special attention to how the film's affective mapping of homes and homeland challenges familiar maps of Britain with their fixed scale of territorial units.