Surfing Community. Literature Review.Pages
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!1 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 Surfing Community: A Literature Review LIBR 200: InformaMon CommuniMes Larue Wilson Dr. Debra Hansen San José State University Fall 2014 !2 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 Introduction When I first moved to the Outer Sunset, a neighborhood in San Francisco, ten years ago, people asked me if I was a surfer because they were the only ones that would dare the fog and cold in that area. Living near Ocean Beach, you cannot help but notice this tight knit community. Some live in the area, but most of them come by car to surf in Ocean Beach’s dangerous rip currents. This surf spot is not for beginners. You will have to head to Pacifica if you are still new to surfing. With the numerous surf shops and hangouts in the neighborhood, I have watched them from afar as I sat on the beach watching them on their surfboard ride wave after wave and wipeout only to resurface to face the beast again. I would think it would be great to go surfing after a long day at work, but I am an observer watching this subculture from the outside, and they would prefer I remain an outsider—less people out there competing for the waves. Choosing the surfing community to research for my literature review puts me outside my comfort zone, an African-American woman who grew up in Harlem in New York City. The world of surfing I knew was from pop culture by watching the 1959 movie Gidget starring Sandra Dee and the ultimate guy flick, Point Break with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. The former a teenage flick about a young girl’s initiation into the California surf culture, and the latter an action pack thriller that captures the overt masculinity and male dominance of that sport. Both films were made 30 years apart and the underlying theme in each story was of an outsider trying to gain acceptance into this subculture. It was important in my research on the surfing community to include articles where the author mentioned s/he was a surfer. As participates, the articles provided more insight into the lifestyle of the community, and my challenge was to !3 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 identify any potential bias in the writings and weigh them against my own to present a well- rounded range of topics and theories from the last 15 years. As the popularity of surfing increased turning it into a billion dollar industry, the scholarly writings have not caught up with the cultural and sociological impact of this sport. The literature on surf culture can be quite abundant (topics on surf tourism and surfing masculinity) or quite sparse (articles on female and minority surfers). Most of the literature I will be reviewing are affiliated with universities that are located in a country or state that is known for its surfing, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, California and Florida. I will highlight articles that will provide a varied and complex understanding of the surfing subculture. The review will explore and focus on the following topics: the surfing community in film and how it is represented in mass media, the psychology of the sport, the surfing culture, and surf tourism. Film and Media Surfing is a visual culture that invokes hedonism, fantasy and freedom, or as Jack London (1907) called surfing “…a royal sport for the natural kings of earth”. Surprisingly, there are few academic writings on the visual culture of surfing and perhaps this is due to the abundance of surfing magazines and the Internet. The popularization of surfing during the 50s and 60s produced an assembly line of market driven teenage surfing films starring Sandra Dee, Frankie Avalon and even Elvis Presley (Ormrod, 2005). In 1964, a documentary by Bruce Brown, The Endless Summer, about two surfers globetrotting around the world looking for the perfect wave, was the definitive surf film and antithetical to the current trend of surfing movies at the time. Ormrod argues that the film is a commentary on America during the 1960s and the popularity of !4 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 surfing was a byproduct of the post WWII economic boom. The writer goes further to interpret the quest for the perfect wave as America conquering a new frontier. Before discussing The Endless Summer, Ormrod provides a cultural history of surfing and American culture: economic gains of the middle class during the 1950s, how the raise of the car culture impacted the popularity of surfing, the glut of teenage surf-related films and advances in surfboard technology made surfboards lightweight and affordable. All the themes set the author’s argument in context that the documentary was just an extension of America’s consumerism. According to Ormrod (2005), “It affirmed America’s dominance of global surfing at the time and may be crucial to the popularity of the film with surfing and non-surfing audiences” (p. 50). Tracks, The Surfers Bible, is an Australian surfing magazine that has been around since 1970. Authors, Margaret Henderson and Douglas Booth have written about the magazine, and its affects on their predominately male readers. It should be noted that the articles were written seven years apart and Booth (2008) cites Henderson’s article as a reason to offer a different perspective on the magazine, “But a political reading reveals a much more complex set of gendered relationships in Tracks and raises questions about how sexualized images might influence the purchase of the magazine” (p. 19). Henderson analyzes each issue from its inception and outlines the five cultural shifts in its editorial content from Country Soul (1970-1973), Transition 1: Changing Currents (1973-1977), Pro Surfing’s King Tide (1977-1980), Transition 2: Postmodern Surfing Takes Shape (1981-1994), and Hardcore Men & Wild Boys, (late 1994-to present) (p.320). Surfing community underwent several identities from the counterculture spiritual surfer, more align with the early Polynesians’ surfing way of life, to the acceptance of surfing as a competitive sport. The evolution of the magazine reflects this !5 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 change in identities, and female surfers are featured but marginalized, as they are not their target audience. Interestingly, surfing magazines, like Tracks uses photography to emphasize man and nature and how to avoid looking like a “kook”—a beginner. Booth points out this nuance, “Of course, the line between a photograph that generates stoke and one that leaves no impression can be infinitesimal...asymmetry can reveal a lack of connection with the ocean and the surf...” (p. 24-25). Henderson and Booth’s analytical essays used the format, style and text of the magazine to support their ideas. Sport Psychology Surfing is a dangerous sport and surfers undertake this endeavor knowing the risk of death or bodily injury. The literature on sports psychology has recently begun to focus on big wave surfing, which is defined as waves over 20 feet in height, as an extreme sport. Studies based on interviews with big wave surfers reveal they are addicted to the adrenaline rush and the need to challenge themselves. It has actually been compared to a drug addiction, “In the same way that habitual drug addicts may need to continually increase their dosages to gain the appropriate sensations, some of theses surfers found that they needed to increase the speed and size of the wave that they were surfing to recapture the feelings that they had previously experienced” (Partington, Partington, and Olivier, p. 182) Researchers have conducted qualitative and phenomenological studies to understand the psychology and motivation of surfers in extreme sports. Mavericks, a big wave surfing competition, held in Half Moon Bay has the most dangerous and difficult environmental conditions for surfing as noted by Wiersma (2014) “...the water off the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California is regularly in the low !6 Running head: BRODUS: SURFING COMMUNITY LITERATURE REVIEW / FALL 2014 50s...Extreme fog is also common, which eliminates visibility of the shoreline (which is pivotal to determining whether one is in the proper spot to catch a wave)...high currents result in a 45- min paddle-out a half-mile offshore...”(p. 152). Wiersma’s phenomenological approached reveals six phases, the Presurf, In the lineup, Catching a wave, Riding a wave, The Wipe-out, and Post-Surf that follows the emotional highs and lows of competing (Wiersma, p. 154). The Partington, Partington, and Olivier qualitative study have used the state of flow, “...a mental state evoked when one is poised between relaxation and anxiety” (p. 70), to describe surfers’ dependency on big wave surfing. Most surfers will view flow as being “in the zone”, and it is something a surfer will not be consciously aware of, but it is this aspect that the authors warn that could be a negative consequence to flow. Surfing is an all-consuming lifestyle, and it will come at the expense of family and friends. Surfing Culture The surfing culture is a board topic, and the range of writings covers the environmental movement, political activism, and discussions on the regional differences within the surfing communities. Because of the limited scope of this literature review, I will focus on a controversial issue that is little known outside the surfing community, localism and the advances of surfboard technology. With the popularity of surfing, surf spots are becoming overcrowded and there is a scarcity of waves. This competition for the best waves has led to violent confrontations between locals and newcomers.