Abstract

This thesis examines narratives of race and colonialism in honeymoon advertisements. Borrowing from the conceptual frameworks of Barthes (1972), O’Barr (1994), and Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), I undertake a textual analysis of Sandals’ advertising images. Sandals is a leading resort chain operating in the Caribbean that makes use of visual advertising to promote couples-only romance in tropical settings. I situate these honeymoon advertising images within the political spheres of international tourism and the North-American wedding industry. In closely analyzing the visual advertisements of Sandals, specifically the ‘luxury-included’ honeymoon, I argue that Sandals’ advertising campaign perpetuates racialized hierarchies between tourists and local peoples, cultures, and spaces, as well as discourses of class and empire. Sandals’ myth of the ultimate luxury honeymoon emphasizes a larger narrative structure of contemporary racial hierarchies in the realm of tourism in the Caribbean. Sandals’ images sugarcoat modern-day racialized discourses of power and inequalities and sell such imbalance of power to a vast North-American audience.