Rooms for Rent

Abstract

Inspired by insights from Topor's Le Locataire Chimérique (1964) and Roman Polanski's 1976 film version of The Tenant, this subjective account explores the hypothesis that because people own virtually nothing they are paradoxically attracted by a tourism which provides situations that are likewise bereft of belonging and identity within an alternative culture. The reflection covers three phases: pre-trip, travel and on-trip. The first contextual stage examines Topor's ideas of what it is to be a cultural tenant along with all that this status implies in terms of daily living. This is arguably akin to the experiences of his anti-hero, Trelkovsky, a Polish émigré, when renting a flat in Paris and coming under various prescriptions and proscriptions enjoined on him by the recently deceased previous tenant and the surrounding neighbours. Although he decides to escape such mental oppression, ironically he comes under a new set of obligations. These constraints carry over imaginatively from Topor's descriptions to the next stage of the current paper, in which Trelkovsky, now projected as a first-time tourist, continues his role as tenant by renting a seat on a plane, and, once arrived, by renting a taxi and a hotel room. Furthermore, at his destination, everywhere he goes he suffers increasing anomia. However, his greatest disappointment is an encounter with his supposedly more experienced compatriots, from whom he wanted to get away in the first place, and who find themselves in a similar predicament.