Is It Roslyn or Is It Cicely? Representation and the Ambiguity of Place

Representations or images of place are widely recognized as contributing to how people understand the places in which they live, work, and study. Increasingly they are being seen to contribute to the production of places as well. This paper addresses the relationships between representation and place as social processes by examining the blurring of Cicely, the Alaskan town in the television show Northern Exposure, and Roslyn, the town in Washington state where outdoor scenes of Northern Exposure are shot. Two main points are raised. First, the production of place-images by the entertainment industry has material repercussions for the residents of places. Second, the relationship between Roslyn and Cicely helps advance an epistemology of place that recognizes that the entire set of boundaries we use to define places limits our understanding of places as open, ambiguous, and, therefore, political social processes.