	The vast majority of film today has a clear narrative drive. Even while Hollywood blockbusters are criticised for selling themselves on spectacle, that spectacle is limited to short flashes within a greater narrative context. Even the flashiest of blockbusters seem likely to be vastly unpopular if they lose narrative altogether.
	This was not always the case. Labelled by Tom Gunning as the “cinema of attractions”, early cinema was characterised by a focus on fairground-like spectacle rather than narrative. Clear genres existed at the time, just as they do today. One of the most popular was the travel film. While the cinema of attractions eventually faded from prominence, it did not disappear altogether. Spectacle and fairground-like attractions repeatedly resurface as selling points for both individual films and entire genres.
The history of the mechanical reproduction of images also includes still imagery. One sort of still imagery was the stereograph which, unlike the photograph, was designed to be viewed through a device – the stereoscope – that created an illusion of three-dimensional depth. Stereographs, too, often functioned in terms of spectacle and attraction. Stereography also has many genres and subjects that cross over with the cinema of attractions, including the travel genre.
If photography is, perhaps, the most important (though not ultimate) progenitor of cinema and stereography, their descendant, stereoscopic cinema, fuses the two back together. Naturally, in doing so, it reflects the traits of both stereographs and the cinema of attractions. This reflection extends beyond the general idea of spectacle. Traits specific (if not unique) to the travel genre still recur in modern films. It stands to reason that this will occur in modern stereoscopic films also. Furthermore, since stereoscopic films recall stereographs by their very nature, it is a reasonable assumption that they can also recall, more specifically, the travel genre as it existed in stereography.
	Two modern stereoscopic films which do both of these are 3D Safari: Africa, and Gravity. Safari, a tour of East Africa focussing on scenery and wildlife (as one would expect from the title), is clearly a modern travel film. Its genre and title, alone, put its roots in stereography and early cinema on clear display – and these similarities are more than skin deep. Gravity, on the other hand, is a science fiction blockbuster about two astronauts attempting to survive in space after their space shuttle is torn apart by debris. Unlike Safari, it is a less obvious vehicle for the resurgence of traits common to stereographs and early travel films – but as with Safari, the commonalities become clear under close analysis.
I refer to the “travel genre” (and travel films, and travel imagery) rather than “travelogue” due to a couple of problems with the latter’s connotations. Firstly, “travelogue” can automatically suggest ethnography. While Alison Griffiths distinguishes between base “commercial travelogues”, and “ethnographic travelogues”, avoiding the term altogether is the easiest way around this issue. Secondly, a “travelogue” also connotes the representation of a journey – but as noted by both Gunning and Charles Musser, many early travel films (especially actualities) merely presented a view of a single location. Stereographs featuring travel imagery did the same, though they were occasionally placed within the context of a journey. Thus, “travel genre” is the most suitable phrasing for this essay’s purposes.
