Surf Culture Research Articles

Reimagining Surf City: surfing and the making of the post-apartheid beach in South Africa

South African surfing as a sporting activity has a history located in the waves that break at the beach, the seaward edge of a coastal city. In this history, surfing has been represented as a ‘white’ sport and as such ‘Surf City’ was a symbolic marker for racial exclusivity on the apartheid beach (1960s–80s). This idea of ‘Surf City’ has changed in the post-apartheid era (1990s–2000s), with the beach open to all persons, irrespective of race. However, there is a persistence of race at the post-apartheid beach as surfing as a sporting lifestyle undergoes transformation. In seeking to understand the effect of the apartheid past on the present, this article reviews sources from within surfing culture and available secondary literature to explore the apartheid beach. It highlights the shift to racial inclusivity in the waves and the challenges of sports transformation in the new South Africa. The article offers contextual notes towards the writing of the history of black experiences of the beach and surfing, and points to some reconfigurations of ‘Surf City’ in South Africa.

Surfer Girls in the New World Order (review)

Reviewed by: Surfer Girls in the New World Order Robert Bennett Surfer Girls in the New World Order. By Krista Comer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 296 pages, $84.95/$23.95. Krista Comer's Surfer Girls in the New World Order exemplifies the most prominent theoretical trends that are transforming contemporary western studies. Recontextualizing surf culture within a transnational context, connecting surfing to current debates about globalization, and exploring complex interrelations between the local and the global, Comer's analysis of transnational surf culture vividly illustrates western studies' recent critical regionalist, transnational, and post-western "turns." Focusing still more specifically on how surf culture intersects with the gender politics of both traditional and emergent (third-wave) feminisms, Surfer Girls explores how surfing develops what Comer describes as "girl localisms" that connect gender with place (221). While Comer's methods and terminology draw upon some well-credentialed critical precedents, she twists and refocuses these critical discourses to create a unique project that is unmistakably all her own. In particular, what most distinguishes Surfer Girls methodologically is the way that it moves "increasingly toward ethnography" by focusing primarily on unconventional source materials such as extensive personal experiences, interviews with surfers and workers in the surf microeconomy, explorations of rapidly gentrifying international beach towns, short bios of professional surfers, [End Page 337] and detailed descriptions of female-oriented clothing lines, surf camps, and surf shops (29). Stretching from the macrogeopolitics of Hawaii's colonization to the microgender politics of swimwear design, Comer's project sprawls across a vast critical terrain largely of her own making. Reversing decades of critical neglect that produced only a "single scholarly book" on surf culture, Surfer Girls fundamentally challenges critics to reconsider the significant role that surfing's "values and languages" have played in "articulat [ing] some of the most consequential changes in both local and global cultural and economic life" (11, 6). Through a quick analysis of a few canonical surf texts—such as the Gidget novels and films, the Beach Blanket movies, Endless Summer (1966), and Blue Crush (2002)—Comer attempts to re-envision "new forms of contemporary femininity and of surf culture" by rejecting traditional interpretations of the "Gidget phenomenon" as the "height of the nonbright, the noncommitted" and counter-arguing instead that Gidget and her progeny articulate a more radical "ideology of female freedom" and "rebel girl femininity" that "threatened the status quo" (4, 38, 43, 49-50). Later, Comer interprets Luna Bay: A Roxy Girl (starting 2003), a series of surf novels for adolescent girls, commissioned by the fashion industry. She finds that the novels were part of a "multilayered marketing outreach program" which interweaves literature with online book clubs, chat rooms, environmentalism, modeling opportunities, and new clothing lines and a way of helping advertise "surfing as a form of youth citizenship" with "political ecocommitments," "social consciousness," and "global ethics" (80, 113). Challenging Baywatch stereotypes, Comer reinterprets surf culture as resolutely, albeit imperfectly, political, transnational, environmentalist, multiculturalist, and feminist. With these bold reinterpretations, Comer encourages serious reconsideration of—if not outright debate about—surf culture's larger cultural and political significance. Provocatively extending her analysis of the gender politics surrounding surf culture, Comer attempts to create a new "intergenerational conversation" between traditional second-wave feminism and alternative third-wave feminisms that draw upon what Comer describes as "Generation X's ferocity, courage, and willfulness" and "Generation Y's 'girlishness,' girl-gang solidarity, and female pride" (17, 103). Claiming that the "figure of the surfer girl has the potential to teach older feminists much," Comer throws down a critical gauntlet, challenging traditional feminists to embrace new forms of "girlish play" that might threaten their "aversion to frivolity" or sense of "midlife responsibility" but may potentially reawaken the "'bad girls' so many of [the] boomer feminists used to be" (28, 134, 127, 140, 135). Frequently citing the Las Olas surf camp's goal of making "girls out of women," Comer seems to side with, or at least take seriously, the unorthodox values of third-wave feminist youth cultures, advocating an inverted, intergenerational logic that echoes Carla Lonzi and Rivolta Feminile's Italian feminist manifesto "Let's Spit on Hegel" or any number of...

Surface and substructure: beneath surfing's commodified surface

This article discusses the important role that surfing's own ‘culture industry’ plays in the internal dynamics of the surfing subculture and at the nexus between the subculture and mainstream society. It looks at the ‘Big Three’ surfing culture companies – Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl – and their trajectory from grass-roots, cottage-industry businesses to global corporations. An alternative model to Marx's modern (economic) base and (social) superstructure is proposed; i.e., an (economic) surface and (social) substructure. This alternative model provides a useful framework for examining the dynamic between the postmodern surfing subculture and the economy (both its own and the mainstream economy). The model depicts a substructure consisting of surfing's social formations and sectors, based upon shared foundational experience of transcendence– a sublime loss of self in the act of surfing. Surfing's culture industry is shown to provide goods for insiders and present a commodified surface of symbolic tokens for mainstream consumers of surfing style, and in the very process act both as a bulwark against mainstream subsumption and an agent of postmodernization within the mainstream.

Surfacing Tension: Toward a Political Ecological Critique of Surfing Representations

AbstractHistorically, surfing has been perceived as an environmentally conscious endeavor. Some attribute this environmentalism to the ways in which surfing became a manifestation of American counter‐cultural political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, although others, like deep ecologists, indicate an inherent environmentalism in surfing, which makes surfing an important tool in developing an ecologically mature ‘self’. The evolution of surf culture, however, presents complexities to these representations; the commodification of surfing introduces contradictions to surfing as ecologically benign. Technological advances, while dramatically changing the face of surfing, have also had significant impacts on the environment. Surfparks, world travel, and the construction of surfboards bring to light not only the complications of an environmentally conscious surfer, but also the complexities which all humans face as ecological actors. Surfing may lead to an ecological ethic, but at what cost to the environment? Using the critical theory of political ecology, this research aims to illuminate the contradictory relationship between representations of surfing and the environment.

Judging Surf Culture: The Making of A White Exemplar Masculinity During the 1966 Natal and South African Surfriding Championships Held in Durban

The 1966 Natal and South African Surfriding Championships was a founding moment in the history of the sport of surfing in South Africa and shaped the future trajectory of South African surfing culture. It did so by prioritising the masculine surfing styles of white men who surfed competitively. The championships were held over the first weekend in July in Durban – South Africa’s “Surf City” – during the peak winter swell season. It was the first ever national surf contest organised under the auspices of the newly formed national surfing association, the South African Surfriders’ Association. It was at these national surfing championships that a judging system was created to allow amateur South African surfers to compete for a place in the national Springbok team that travelled to the Third World Surfing Titles held two months later at Ocean Beach in San Diego, California, USA. The introduction of this judging system during the 1966 Surfriding Championships throws light on the development of three trends in the history of (stand-up board) surfing in South Africa : firstly, how local surfing sought out international acceptance as a sport; secondly, why surfing came to be seen as a largely white sporting and leisure activity; and thirdly, why women’s surfing has not receive the same attention as that of men’s. This article explores how the emergence of a competitive surfing culture, typified by the codification of judging competitive surfriding on boards of between nine and eleven feet in length, infused local surf culture with a need for global recognition as a surfing “nation” and, at the same time, accommodated racial segregation and a male-dominated gender order. The contention of this article is that the cultural logic embedded in the 1966 judging criteria has left a legacy for future generations of South African surfers; one that privileged a hegemonic white masculinity located in competitive surfing. Today, though an understanding of the making of surfing’s past and that exemplar masculinity, it becomes possible to promote new cultural configurations in South African surfing that are racially inclusive, gender equitable, and not determined by competitive prowess alone.

Cluster theory and competitive advantage: the Torquay surfing experience

This paper aims to explain the global expansion of the Rip Curl and Quiksilver surfing brands through the lens of Michael Porter's cluster theory of competitive advantage. Porter's cluster theory was used to identify the special features of the Torquay region in Australia, and explain how these features provided the conditions for the explosive international growth of these businesses. Data was collected though interviews, document analysis, and field trips to the Torquay region. The data was interpreted through the prism of Porter's cluster theory of competitive advantage. It was found that the successes of Rip Curl and Quiksilver were not only the consequence of a historically strong surf culture but also the result of their ability to innovate and design superior surf products, develop strong inter-organisational synergies, and the international exposure from their association with the annual Bells Beach surfing contest.

Surf Rhetoric in American and British Surfing Magazines Between 1965 and 1976

This article examines how subcultural values are influenced by place and environment within a specific time period between the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. At this time America was one of the major surfing nations in the world and American surfing culture was the most easily accessible to British surfers. Conversely British surfing was at an early stage of development and the article compares the rhetoric of American surfing with British surfing subcultures to determine the extent to which the fantasy lifestyle of searching for the perfect wave expressed in American surfing magazines and films was accepted by British surfers.

When the Sun Sets over Suburbia: Class and Subculture in Bruce Beresford's Puberty Blues

Bruce Beresford’s film Puberty Blues (1981) focuses on Australian surf culture of the 1970s and the Sydney beach-side suburb of Cronulla Beach, presenting the Cronulla surf subculture as a prism through which Australian society is viewed. The film, which centres on the quest of the characters of Debbie and Sue to join the elite Greenhills surfing gang, signifies a turning point in Australian screen depictions of class, prefiguring an increased emphasis on the middle class and deviating from a traditional equation of class with the working class. The film’s bleak and satirical portrayal of the Australian middle class also reveals dimensions of suburban Australia that are usually absent from local films and television series. Based on Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s 1979 novel of the same name, the film draws on a cultural tradition that associates surfing with freedom from social constraints. Yet the film depicts the protagonists’ idealization of surfers as being undermined when drugs intrude upon their world. The flight from middle-class suburban existence also suggests that the comforts of suburbia are deceptive. This article’s analysis of class and subculture in Puberty Blues aims to draw greater attention to Australian film depictions of subculture and middle-class life, for despite the large body of work around subcultures and although the majority of Australian films made in the last 25 years centre on the middle class, these aspects of Australian cinema have generally received little analysis from film and cultural studies scholars.

How to Surf

This article explores the sensual world of men who surf. Self-reflexive and fictocritical in tone, it meditates on how many studies of masculinity tend to separate the social and bodily. The article maps a way to pull bodies and feelings back into such studies in a productive manner. Affect theory is used to evidence how doing masculinity is built on feelings and intimacy. In turn, the article grounds gender in the activities of everyday life that function to bring together the sociological, psychological, and biological. Furthermore, the article argues that by researching through bodies, it is possible to complicate traditional tropes of masculinity that position it as stable and unemotional. Most important, the researcher's body is shown to be integral to any imagination of how the surfing culture works.

Green and Extreme: Free-Flowing Through Seascape and Sewer

AbstractActivities to do with the coastline and the aquatic environment such as fishing, boating and seaside holidays have been mainstays of the Cornish peninsula for generations. Building on this legacy of marine leisure, this paper explores both the fluidity and materiality of waves, tides and coastal seascapes through a metaphorical framework encompassing symbolic as well as literal issues of pollution and embodiment. It examines Cornwall's distinct surf culture with regard to concerns over the effects of sewage and other malignant discharges on public health and the quality of the seashore environment. Extreme water sports are an increasingly prominent factor in the formulation of Cornish identity. Hence, the paper outlines the ways in which certain environmental pressure groups, charity campaigners and corporate surf companies have become involved in attempts to safeguard the ecological sustainability of coastal leisure pursuits. It does so primarily through ethnographic case studies concerning Surfers Against Sewage, protest-art exhibitions and environmental campaigns. On the surface, the symbolism of fluidity and pollution may appear contradictory. But through an exploration of the materiality of waves, this paper illustrates the dialectical ways in which water and the sea relate to shifting local identities and to creative forms of extreme subversion.

Gazing, Strolling, Falling in Love Culture and Nature on the Beach in Nineteenth Century Sydney

In the twentieth century, the Australian beach came to be celebrated as a unique site of ‘Australianness’, with a culture which embraced surfers, surf lifesavers, sunbaking, and beach fashion. Despite the wealth of analysis of this ‘modern’ beach culture, the nineteenth century Australian beach has rarely been examined in depth. This article looks at different attitudes towards ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ on Sydney beaches in the nineteenth century, in an attempt to better understand the roots of twentieth century surf culture. It finds that while culture and nature overlapped in many ways, it was primarily through beachside romance that the two were merged in this early period.This article has been peer-reviewed.

Perceptions of Surfboard Riders Regarding the Need for Protective Headgear

To examine the use of protective headgear by surfers, their perceptions of its usefulness, and barriers to its use. A researcher-administered questionnaire was used to undertake a cross-sectional survey of 646 surfboard riders at 8 popular surfing beaches in Victoria, Australia. The main outcome measures were rate of use of headgear, perceptions of head injury risk relative to a range of other activities, perceptions regarding headgear, and the reasons for not wearing headgear. Most surfers were men (90.2%), young (mean age 28.2 years), and experienced (mean years of surfing 11.6). Only 245 (38.0%, 95% CI 34.2-41.9) surfers considered the risk of head injury while surfing as moderate or high, and only 12 (1.9%, 95% CI 1.0-3.3) reported routine use of headgear. The surfers were more likely to believe that there was a higher risk of head injury in other sports and physical activities (P < .001). Although 475 surfers (73.8%, 95% CI 70.2-77.1) thought that surfers who wear headgear are less likely to become injured, 400 (62.1%, 95% CI 58.2-65.9) reported that headgear restricted surfing performance and that they would rather surf without it. The main reasons for not wearing headgear were "no need," discomfort, claustrophobia, and effects upon the senses and balance. Although most surfers acknowledge some risk of head injury, headgear is rarely used and barriers to its use are apparent. Research is required to clarify the risk of head injury among surfers and the effectiveness of headgear in reducing injury risk. Until this evidence is available, educational initiatives, improved headgear design, and profile within the surfing culture would be required to increase rates of wearing headgear.

Endless Summer (1964): Consuming Waves and Surfing the Frontier

"The Endless Summer defined our sport. For the first time the rest of the world would have a clear look at the surfing lifestyle." Matt Warshaw, Surfer's Journal History of Surfing Films "Brown cobbled together $50,000 and set out with two California surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, to produce a true documentary on real surfers. Not beach bums or playboys who sang to their girlfriends, surfers were athletes who enjoyed the adventure of scanning the globe in search of the perfect wave." "The Sick Six: Six of the Most Important Surf Movies Ever Made, from the Fifties to Now" The early 1960s was a time in which youth was shamelessly exploited by the mass media. Surfing was identified as a hot new sport with a youthful focus epitomising the ideal Californian lifestyle. This led to a surf craze in America and Australia. Surf music in the shape of The Beach Boys, Dick Dale and His Del-Tones, Jan and Dean, and a dance improbably named The Surfer Stomp seemed to offer a new direction for a tired and corrupt pop industry replete with manufactured pop stars named Bobby or Frankie.1 The Beach Boys particularly were marketed as all-American high school boys who surfed, were clean-cut, and cared only for cars, girls and fun, fun, fun. Hollywood produced up to seventy surf-related exploitation films purporting to lift the lid on just what happened on the beach when adults were not around to regulate undesirable behaviour. Out of this heady, consumerist mix emerged what many surfers regard as the definitive surf movie, Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer (1964). The Endless Summer has a simple premise, the quest for the perfect wave, which is one of the defining myths of surf culture and representations of surfing outside the subculture. Brown follows the travels of two surfers, Robert August and Mike Hynson, around the globe in order to experience an endless summer and catch the perfect wave. To do this the friends travel to little known destinations such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Tahiti and Ghana in addition to Malibu and Hawaii. Brown explained that: "Originally we were just going to South Africa and then come back...But it turned out to be $50 cheaper to go all the way round the world, so we did that."2 The Endless Summer belongs to a sub-genre of surf films Booth describes as "pure."3 These are surf films made by surfers for a limited surfing audience and typically exhibited at surf clubs. Brown's credentials as a surfer, a surf filmmaker and his association with significant shapers such as Dale Velzy would assure the authenticity of surf culture to its audiences. "Pure" surf films relied on the film producer distributing and exhibiting them around a "four wall" circuit. As with many four-wall producers at the time, Brown exhibited the film along with a running commentary around the usual high school halls, and clubhouses to enthusiastic surfer audiences.4 On the tour Brown developed a script from which he distilled the best of the jokes and script elements before recording a permanent soundtrack. In an effort to gain Hollywood studio distribution, Brown, aided by Paul Allen, toured around America to places such as Wichita, Kansas, a venue little famed for its waves, where the film ran for two weeks to full houses. However, something unexpected happened with The Endless Summer, it crossed over the border from niche to mainstream audiences when the distribution was taken up by Columbia. Indeed, such was the popularity of the film that Newsweek dubbed The Endless Summer one of the best 10 films of 1964. So why was Endless Summer so popular? Robert August, one of the film's "stars" believes that the re-release of the film in 1966 was a reminder to...

Amateur surfing on the south coast of São Paulo: lifestyle and work as factors of adherence to practice

In the present study, we dealt with the relationship between lifestyle and adherence to the physical activity and discussed the conditions that make it possible for amateur to remain in a complex practice as surfing. For these purpose, we interviewed eleven surfers with over eleven years of uninterrupted practice on the South Coast of São Paulo. Through an analysis of the interviews content, it was possible to verify that their permanence is less influenced by gender issues, age and marital status (usually prioritized in the literature about this subject) than employment conditions. It is argued that adherence to surfing is linked to lifestyle and youth ideals, while the conditions for the continuity of the amateurs practice involves the family and employment ties, whose stability gives security to the routine and modulates the possibilities between social times and nature times. Thus, mature surfers narrate a way of life that values prudent attitudes as a way of redefining surfing in their lives, pointing out to a transformation of surf culture. It is considered that the relationship between permanence in practice and job stability deserves to be investigated in future studies