"It's shite being Scottish," Renton yells into the clear mountain air. "We're the lowest of the low! The scum of the f--king Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilisation!"
You can just picture the Scottish tourism authorities watching that scene in the original Trainspotting movie and freaking out. What sort of an advertisement is that for their fair country? In fact what sort of a branding exercise is the entire film, the tale of a bunch of thieving smackheads and ultra-violent nutters eking out an existence in the tenement flats of poor, working-class Edinburgh?
Of course Renton's monologue turned out to be far more a reflection of him and his friends than the Scots as a whole. But still, the tourism people must have been worried. As far as images of Scotland go, the stars of Trainspotting weren't exactly up there with kilted pipers and highland moors. These were truly horrible people in a pretty ugly place. Who'd want to go there?
And now, there's a sequel. In a few weeks, T2 will be released, picking up the adventures of Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and co 20 years down the track. It promises once again to be a dark portrayal of Scotland's underbelly, a gritty, honest look at a side of the country that those in charge of attracting tourism to Scotland would probably prefer you don't see.
And yet, as with the original Trainspotting, T2 will probably make me want to go to Scotland. In fact I can almost say for certain that watching that movie will have me itching for a return to my family's homeland.
It's hard to say why. Maybe it's the accents. Maybe it's the glimpses of familiar streets in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Maybe it's the tiny recognisable traits of some of my Scottish friends that you can glimpse in Irvine Welsh's characters: the irreverent wit, the battles with temptation, the ingrained dislike of anything English.
In many ways Trainspotting is an examination of the worst of Scotland, and yet it doesn't turn me off going there for a second. And I'm sure it's the same for many other travellers. It doesn't matter how bleak the portrayal is of a destination – merely seeing it on screen makes you want to go there. The tourism people have nothing to worry about.
This works the same way, too, with so many other movies and TV series and books in various locations around the world. People aren't turned off by the bad stuff. There's been an influx of travel into Baltimore, for example, from people keen to check out the city featured in the TV series The Wire. It doesn't seem to matter to fans that the place portrayed in the show was a crime-ridden hellhole – they still want to see it for themselves.
The movie City of God was a fairly brutal tale of life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, complete with gang violence and poverty, but I didn't see it and think to myself, "I'm never going anywhere near Brazil." I saw it and started planning a trip to get over there.
People want to go to New Mexico because they saw it on Breaking Bad. They want to check out Boston because they watched The Town. They want to visit Naples because they read about it in My Beautiful Friend. They call in to Calder Valley in West Yorkshire because they've seen Happy Valley.
All of these are stories of poverty, or violence, or crime, or drug use. And yet they inspire people to go and visit their locations. What's with that?
The reality is that the type of portrayal of a destination offered by a film or a TV series or a book doesn't affect people's desire to go and see it for themselves. All it does is inspire an interest in the place. Maybe it makes people want to discover the truth about these destinations. Maybe it makes them want to see with their own eyes the locations that have been inhabited by the characters they've loved.
Whatever it is, even movies like Trainspotting and T2, which might seem like the worst tourism campaigns imaginable, will inspire people to want to visit Scotland. They'll certainly make me want to go. Edinburgh might be the modern-day home of a few fictional washed up junkies and heavy-drinking scammers, but they're all part of the city I love.
Maybe it really is shite being Scottish. But I doubt it.
Have you been inspired to visit a place by a movie or TV series? Was the portrayal a good one, or bad?
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
