Kirschenblatt-Gimblett and the New Zealand Hobbit

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/category/hobbit/

http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/
the-hobbit-star-martin-freeman-calls-bilbo-baggins/289698

As I read Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett's article on how museum curation is heavily tied to tourism, "Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Culture," my mind turned to The Hobbit, a common occurrence when I am reading anything lately, but this time it seemed applicable to the article. New Zealand has been in the news a lot lately with Hobbit-themed marketing ploys/displays of national pride. It's increasingly difficult to separate the two as the nation has embraced Jackson's Lord of the Rings industry with enthusiasm.

These Hobbit-themed gold coins, featuring elvish runes and the movie faces of Gandalf, Bilbo, and Thorin, are not only collectibles but also legal tender in New Zealand.

This New Zealand airline safety video also made the social media rounds a few weeks ago.

With these kinds of ads, New Zealand is positioning itself as Middle-Earth--the place to come when you want to visit the actual land of Tolkien. It's the only place I know of that has so successfully supplanted the original 'real location' of a fictional world. England still has its claim on Middle-Earth, as illustrated by the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremonies, where many saw a stadium recreation of English countryside as a hobbit village. But if you want to actually walk in Middle-Earth, you go to New Zealand.

http://www.comrz.com/blogs/my-blog--stefan/london-2012-
olympics---opening-and-closing-ceremony-highlights

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from all this. Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, who is quick to point out the imperialist and cultual heritage motivations behind museum-keeping in different ages, might decide that the use of New Zealand as surrogate Hobbiton still whispers of imperialist disregard of the cultures of places that aren't England--we need an exotic and faraway land to serve as a real-life fantasy world, and we can cover over its native culture in favor of our imported one. But I don't think this interpretation fully explains the pride that many New Zealanders seem to take in their image as Middle-Earth, not the sizable benefits they gain from it. To me, it is most interesting how we have cultivated so many different locations and museum preserves for Lord of the Rings--it exists in England and in New Zealand, in movie studios and sound stages and scale models.