Fictional media and imagining escape to rural villages

Abstract

There is a recent trend for the rebranding of small rural towns as ‘villages’ offering a quaint ambience and a range of leisure opportunities for visitors. This represents a dramatic reversal of images of villages as stagnating and insular. The branding of rural towns as villages is often reinforced by comprehensive marketing campaigns and physical works, such as cobble-stoned surfaces, new uses for old buildings, new structures disguised as old, decorative themes based on Europe and large numbers of cafes, boutique accommodation and tourist shops. Whilst this process may encourage employment and other economic benefits, it also has social implications relating to identity, displacement and authenticity. To better understand this phenomenon and its implications, this study examines how this imagining is driven by fictional media. Three case studies are analysed in detail, the novels of Agatha Christie (set in England) and the feature films The Quiet Man (Ireland) and Local Hero (Scotland). Our analysis found that these fictional accounts present villages as settings for personal transformations, particularly as ideal places for urban dwellers to escape to. However, these accounts also acknowledge that this escape may be illusory and that modern villages are beset by economic and social problems.