Myths and counter myths, utopias and dystopias: rural tourism representations and their satirical valuations based on the critical discourse of social sciences

Abstract

Tourism, both publicity and the activity, is a builder of myths and in recent decades has become a powerful instrument of idealization of culture and rural space. While this process is being critically valued by social sciences since the very beginning, in recent years it has started to appear numerous satirical replicas from the humor and from advertising itself, suggesting that to the social assimilation of the utopian discourse is now opposing another that valued ironically the processes of reinvention of the rural. The text is aimed at contrasting the idealizing discourse with its satirical replicas, in order to reveal the mystification strategies used by rural tourism