Waves of Power
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Waves of Power The Spectacularisation of Professional Surfing Submitted by Elliot Pill PhD Thesis May 2019 School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Cardiff University 1 DECLARATION This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed …………………………………… (candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of …PhD……………………… Signed ……………………………………(candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed ……………………………………(candidate) Date ………………………… 2 STATEMENT 3 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available online in the University’s Open Access repository and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ……………………………………(candidate) Date ………………………… STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available online in the University’s Open Access repository and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Academic Standards & Quality Committee. Signed ……………………………………(candidate) Date ………………………… ………………………………….. Elliot Pill 3 Acknowledgements Many thanks to my supervisory team, Dr Jenny Kidd and Professor Paul Bowman. Jenny has been so supportive and positive but equally constructively critical at key times to ensure the subject area was explored fully. Paul has always been supportive of the project and I am grateful to Jenny and Paul for embracing the emerging field of critical surf studies. I must also say a thank you to Professor Stuart Allan and Professor Richard Sambrook for allowing me the space and time to complete this work and for showing their support. The work would not have been completed without the love, care and support of my endlessly patient partner and writer in crime, Helena. I am forever in your debt and there will never be enough time to spend with you. I would also like to extend a thank you to all my interviewees and the growing number of academics who research and publish in the field of critical surf studies. It is an important and worthy field of study. Many thanks also to Jackson (Jaxon) Fearns, holed up in his surfboard shaping den in deepest Helston, Cornwall, who taught me the art of shaping a block of foam into a thing of eternal beauty. And finally, this submission is for my mother and father. Mum, I don’t know how you did what you did but thank you for your love and strength. And Dad, you never got to see who I became or what I did and left us way too soon. I hope this makes you both proud. Elliot Pill 4 Abstract This thesis seeks to outline new paradigms in the field of Critical Surf Studies applying critical theory to the systems of power used in the privatisation of professional surfing. In 2013, a private company, ZoSea Media Holdings (ZMH), assumed control of the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) and began a rationalisation process of the sport. This culminated in the creation of a re-imagined vision for the commercialisation of elite, professional surfing with the invention of the World Surf League (WSL) in 2015. Using Guy Debord’s theory of The Society of the Spectacle as a lens through which to critically examine this transformation, the research adopts an experimental, qualitative research approach, combining data gathered through lived experiences, auto-ethnographies and key figure interviews. The central research questions ask; what does ZMH mean in seeking to professionalise surfing? How is professional surfing reified under monopoly and private ownership? What does this ownership mean for the wider culture of surfing? The key findings indicate little resistance to ZMH’s global vision for surfing. The findings further identify a range of new media systems of power used to create a new spectacular surfing society. In branding the WSL as the self-styled ‘Home of Global Surfing’, these systems include wholly-owned digital media platforms and the construction of sophisticated marketing and promotional practices to meet the owners’ political, economic and cultural objectives. These findings build on, and contribute to, previous work in this field examining the governance and hegemony of surfing. These processes have implications for the way in which lifestyle sports are appropriated, re-packaged and commodified by capitalist owners seeking to gain profit from the commercialisation of sport. 5 Table of Contents Pages Thesis Introduction 8-12 1. Review of Literature 13 1.1 Introduction 13-15 1.2 Literature – The Society of the Spectacle 15-20 1.3 Resistance and Spectacle 21 1.4 Spectacle and Sport 21-25 1.5 Surfing and Spectacle 25-30 1.6 A History of Professional Surfing 30-34 1.7 Governance and Professional Surfing 34-38 1.8 Surfing as Brand 38-41 Chapter Summary 41 2. Methods and Modes of Investigation 2.1 Introduction 42-43 2.2 Methodological Approach and Research Framework 44-45 2.3 Ethnography and its Forms 45-47 2.4 The Watched: WSL CT Event Analysis 48-50 2.5 The Watched: Application of themes: J-Bay Pro, 2015 50-51 2.6 The Lived: Praxis of a Beach-Based Auto-Ethnography 51-54 2.7 The Lived: Creating the sign – surfboard shaping 54 2.8 Key Figure Interviews 54-60 2.9 Personal Surf Diary 60-61 Chapter Summary 61 3. Findings 3.1 Introduction 62 3.2 Themes from the Literature 62-64 6 3.3 The Watched: WSL Webcast Analysis 64-71 3.4 The Watched Event – J-Bay Pro, 2015 71-84 3.5 The Lived: Swatch/Hurley Pro, Trestles beach 84-104 3.6 The Lived: Creating a surfing sign – the surfboard 104-116 3.7 The Interviews 116-134 Chapter Summary 134-137 4. Discussion 138-149 Chapter Summary 149-151 5. Conclusions 152-154 6. Recommendations 154-155 7. Epilogue 156-159 8. Appendices 160-164 9. Bibliography 165-176 7 Thesis introduction This is not a study of surfers. This is a study of the process by which a venture capital company came to own, dominate and control the sport of professional surfing on a global scale and with little resistance, by creating a spectacular surfing society as a system of governance to build and maintain cultural and political power. The research seeks to understand the effects of the re-shaping of elite, professional surfing and attempts to critically evaluate ZoSea Media Holdings’ (ZMH) role in the creation of a spectacular surfing society to enable the total economic, political and cultural domination of the sport. Each chapter is introduced with an overview of content and direction of argument before ending with a summary and a lead into the next section of content and analysis to ensure each section of this work is taken forward in a clear and necessary way and has a logical, sequenced structure building on each subsequent chapter. Overviews of previous observations, current arguments and future analysis of this work will also be written into each phase of its development. The interest in, and motivation for, understanding this process is the result of my own embodied experience of the practice of surfing; professionally writing about surfing as a journalist and, further, being a ‘cultural intermediary’ (Davis, 2013, Wernick,1991) in the State of Modern Surfing (SMS) (Hough-Snee and Eastman, 2017), mediating and circulating the mythology (Barthes,1972) of what it means to be a surfer to those who have never been near a beach. I am critically intrigued by the way lifestyle sport (Lanagan, 2010, Wheaton, 2004, Thorpe, 2014) brand owners use capital to create, shape and control audience agency by manipulating images and developing powerful storytelling narratives that move those audiences to consume ideas, surf products and brands and in specific and organised ways. This thesis analyses the rationalisation and privatisation of professional surfing by ZMH and adopts a provocative, Marxist, approach to study the field by using Guy Debord’s rebellious Society of the Spectacle theory (Debord, G.,1990,1994) as a lens through which to evaluate and critically study the transformation of the incumbent governing body of professional surfing – the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) - into an integrated spectacle - the World Surf League - to create a new paradigm in surfing cultural history with the creation of, what appears to be, a new spectacular surfing society. 8 A Marxist approach was used as a way to critically analyse the framing of surfing as a lifestyle pastime centred around play and born in the liminal coastal spaces of Peru and Hawaii in the 1800’s (Laderman, 2014, Hough-Snee). Surfing, as a competitive sport was commodified and reified in the late 1950’s by American marketers as an elite competitive sport shaped to appeal, firstly to tourists and later, to the Western-centric counter cultural movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Therefore, you could confidently assume, given the cultural history of surfers’ counter-cultural tendencies, strong resistance to change of ownership in the sport of surfing. Particularly given that the ASP was effectively a trade union organisation representing both surfers and sponsors. Under this new ownership surfers would be workers with little say in the direction of the sport. They would lose political power. As such, concepts of alienation, false consciousness, recuperation and aura are important theoretical building blocks of this work and will be explained in both the literature review and explicit examples connecting theory to the data will be presented in the discussion.