Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An
insoluble problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves.
What a week here*, what a month! Surfing in the
dock on two fronts.
The hottest new species of VALs shish-kebabed by a
respectable bourgeois publication, the mighty Vanity
Fair and then it’s inner entrails cut out
and examined in the sunshine (in forensic detail) by the
magnificent Magistrate Karen Stafford in the Ballina
Courthouse.
Appropriate time to ask, as Sally Fitz would say, “Where you
at?”
Surfing in the age of the Tub has become almost a byword for
techno-utopianism for a new species of masters and mistresses of
the Universe. The soft fascism of market-mediated narcissism
peddled by the Murfers, as they are now tagged, rolls on with
momentum undiminished by the Vanity Fair hit piece.
In fact, the photographer became insta-pals with the Murfers,
the network extended, greater reach into American markets etc.
These are the new, modern day Darwinians.
The Murfers have inverted the usual Darwinian rules of modern,
crowded surfing and life.
Ruthlessness does not happen in the water or in the glossy shots
but in the background as a red in tooth and claw version of
self-branding total commercialisation.
To look into their hot soft eyes is to believe in a version of
innocent theme park narcissism.
Darwin showed us that humans are like other animals. We compete
for mates, for resources.
In the surf we compete for waves. Implicitly or explicitly.
Our animal inheritance is a consequence of the evolutionary
success of what English local John Gray calls “an exceptionally
rapacious primate”.
To believe otherwise, despite 50 years of a surf media ever
ready to pander to self-mythologising grinning-hippie capitalists,
is to deny reality.
I saw that reality relentlessly and surgically flayed and
exposed in a court last week.
More on that in a moment.
Like all animals our existence and access to “our playground” is
conditional, subject to all kinds of local and regional vagaries
and territorialism, even sometimes to the threat or reality of
violence. If Kala Alexander shows me his knuckles and tells me to
beat it kook at the Pipeline, or Tahiti, or even Indonesia it’s
likely I will submit. Even under the protective umbrella of the
rule of law I may submit to the law of the Wolfpak.
The genie of technology can not be put back in the bottle. The
bitter irony is the Murfers cause more harm with their soft fascism
than the direct output of violence in the name of self-interest,
but also tolerated by the community in the name of order. These are
slimy, slippery eels to grapple with.
The VAL fantasy is access to a playground of uninhibited freedom
accessible to all.
But this is a lie.
Like all animals our existence and access to “our playground” is
conditional, subject to all kinds of local and regional vagaries
and territorialism, even sometimes to the threat or reality of
violence. If Kala Alexander shows me his knuckles and tells me to
beat it kook at the Pipeline, or Tahiti, or even Indonesia it’s
likely I will submit. Even under the protective umbrella of the
rule of law I may submit to the law of the Wolfpak.
The rule of law which protects the VAL is the ultimate human
construct. The ultimate freedom they fantasise about is only
accessible in an even more mechanised playground, and it comes at a
very high price.
These strangely fruitful internal contradictions constitute the
new surfing myth and the true work of the surf writer in our new
woke age.
Jodie Cooper, of course, is very far from a kook or a VAL. The
violence perpetrated against her is of a kind that is much more
repellent, even amid the chaos of the most crowded day of the
winter. Even considering the breakdown of order during a tourist
invasion which threw the vibe for the season from its normal strict
but sunny disposition (the most noted local enforcer told me: “I’m
a fucking mirror, they bring smiles and good manners that’s what
they get back. If they’re cunts they get a smack”) into a dull,
sullen resentment.
Something had to crack.
The perpetrator had few, if any, allies. Trussed up in an
ill-fitting suit and clutching a mat, his last stand as some kind
of local enforcer was now in the hands of two barristers and a
solicitor.
The one, with a massive lionine visage and physique shaped by
expensive wine and cheese.
The judge put the aggression of localism in the dock and found
it wanting, not strictly on its own terms, but because it violated
Cooper’s rights as an experienced surfer to her “perfect wave”
.Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An insoluble
problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves. Still,
violence has decreased. Old hardheads mellow out or become
legit family guys. The culture has become more feminised, more
passive and older.
His sidekick: a version of Robert Duvall from
Apocalypse Now who had been cryovaced for 30
years and then microwaved a little too long to thaw
him out.
The judge did not share my appreciation of the comic effect of
the barristers talking about a mat’s inability to cut back. She put
the aggression of localism in the dock and found it wanting, not
strictly on its own terms, but because it violated Cooper’s rights
as an experienced surfer to her “perfect wave”.
Rights are assumed in the surf now, not earned. An insoluble
problem when the numbers exceed the supply of waves.
Still, violence has decreased in the surfing world.
Old hardheads mellow out or become legit family guys.
The culture has become more feminised, more passive and
older.
You’ve pretty much got to travel to the Third World, or
Victoria, to be threatened these days. The Carcass case looks more
like the last of an endangered species being put against the wall
than any kind of brave new “Straw Dogs”** world.
Violence is more sublimated now into a soft fascism: my life is
superior to yours, you can’t afford it etc.
Blocking and ghosting takes the place of the open fist but the
Darwinian reality remains. The human animal will stay the same: a
highlyinventive species that is also one of the most predatory and
destructive.
More, much, much more to come.
*Boring Bay/Lennox Head/Ballina.
**Sam Peckinpah Film with Dustin Hoffman.