Heritage entropy and tourist pilgrimage in Brave’s Scotland

The paper explores the production of a cinematic tourist industry connected to Scottish landscapes and heritage with the release of Disney-Pixar’s animated fairy-tale Brave (2012). It contends that the first ever planned synergy between a creative industry and the country whose traditions and landscapes allegedly inspired the former’s filmmaking resulted in what is termed ‘heritage entropy’. This state-backed nationalist reinstatement of Scottish identity as a naturalised ‘being in time’, ready to be marketed to global tourists, both drew upon and was inspired by (1) broadcast professional pilgrimages of the Scottish Brave artists and (2) the marketing of Brave holidays to Scotland as a family experience. To illustrate the digital and imagological-auditory nature of heritage entropy, which both naturalises communities and technologizes their merit so as to present them as ‘civilized’, examples are presented from the websites of Adventures Disney Tours, the industry’s marketing tourist body, and VisitScotland, the country’s tourist organisation.