“Surf captions are officially dead!” and “Fuck a
caption!”
Bold opinion is such a rare commodity in our
world of “safe spaces” “micro-aggressions” and “trigger
warnings.”
Who knew that one day cartoonists would be gunned down in their
offices and other cartoonists would defend the killings as the result of ‘em “punching
down”?
We’ve become so pompous and solemn and dull, don’t you think?
College students are so terrified of confronting ideas and so
unable to cope with even literary classics, The Great
Gatsby now comes with a warning: (Trigger: suicide, domestic
abuse and graphic violence).
Everyone else is finding hunks of racism, sexism, homophobia and
Islamophobia (but curiously not the more virulent anti-semitism)
and white privilege in their corn flakes each morning.
And surfing magazines, of which I’ve been a part of, one way or
the other, for longer than I’d ever admit, take this piety to new
levels. Which makes ’em ripe for satire and for criticism.
So I always light up a little when I see, read, someone having a
bit of a swing at the status quo.
What Youth, the magazine started five years ago by most
of the key players of Surfing magazine and the filmmaker
Kai Neville, gave it to Surfer and Surfing magazines
yesterday, on their crummy choice of photos. To
Surfer, What Youth‘s editor Travis Ferré
wrote:
“Please, we all deserve better from you. Surfers, editors,
photographers, followers. This is our lives and just because you’re
trying to appease a mil worth of followers, remember when you post
something like this you make us all look like kooks. So please,
stop it. Sincerely, What Youth.”
Today, What Youth is going after captions, the usually
meaningless trope that goes under photos in those spreads.
“Surf photo captions are officially dead. Let’s reinvent them
together. Surf photo captions suck because they’re easy to
write instead of great to read. They’re designed for the supplier
instead of the consumer. And it’s time to fix them. How can we
redesign the surf photo caption? What could improve or replace
it?”
It’s a good question. I haven’t seen a print mag in a while, but
one relatively prestigious title I did find, ran the following
captions:
“All smiles inside the world’s deadliest wave.
Teahupoo.”
“Hard to believe something so beautiful could be so deadly.
Teahupoo.”
One What Youth follower had barely read the Instagram
screed before he started waving his pitchfork.
“WY is punk rock as fuck. Fuck a caption, don’t
conform.”
My philosophy at Stab, although not always followed to
the letter, as some days the lethargy would claw at my fingers and
refuse any industry, was that any significant photo had to feature
a quote from the surfer and the photographer.
For one week out of every six-week production cycle, I’d sit
there and call both participants, chasing top 10 surfers around the
world for a three-minute interview. More than once, Joel or Kelly
or whomever would hear the silence at my end and ask, “Is that all
you want?”
Did anyone care? Did anyone read? Who knows?
Maybe captions are unnecessary. At least they are according to
this guy:
“Honestly, captions don’t matter that much, as long as it says
who the surfer is, and who took the picture, and maybe where their
surfing if it’s not like a secret spot. The main thing is the
picture…”
And you? Do you care?
