Our three readings for week one deal primarily with the origins of surfing in various cultures, dating back thousands of years before the incredibly arbitrary Western Christian timeline marker of Jesus Christ's birth and death. In fact, the (mainly British) Westerners' effects on surfing as a metaphor for greater native culture especially in (but not limited to) Hawaii, from ill-fated explorer and bringer of disease, Christopher Cook, to more coordinated attempts at colonialism ("salvation") by Protestant missionaries and, later, United States Marines, is a somewhat unexpected but not at all surprising analysis of imperialism in the grand scheme of Manifest Destiny and its earliest prototypes.
Ben Finney's article, "Whoa Dude! Surfin's That Old?" details the author's research on a personally significant topic. As a researcher, he brings up the complicated and hotly debated issue of what constitutes a reliable historical source. For generations, documentary sources have been hailed as especially trustworthy, largely because they are the white way (though not necessarily the right way) of remembering history. While Finney addresses the importance of oral histories and storytelling as integral to many cultures, his article doesn't seem to refer to any effort on his part to go beyond the libraries at the University of Hawai'i, and then at Harvard. While the latter is revered as especially comprehensive in the field of anthropology, it seems to me to contradict Finney's own attempts at uncovering the "truth" about the origins of surfing rather than the Western retellings that any literate person may access by reading a book, as evidenced by the other two articles which repeat a lot of the same information. Warshaw, in "Out of the Blue," writes that the culture of surfing has always been "one of storytellers, not historians." Are these two categories mutually exclusive?
As a white man writing on a deeply spiritual and, as C.J. Stecyk emphasizes, a culturally plural pastime, Finney seems to act almost as an ethnographer with no claims to the sport besides a recreational enjoyment. This is not to say that surfing should be reserved for descendants of Polynesian ancestry; that ship sailed long ago, and in Hawaiian culture, surfing was enjoyed by all members of the community, pointing to surfing as an experience meant to be shared. However, I personally don't find it all that revolutionary that yet another white anthropologist would write a thesis about older, dead white explorers experiencing a culture so opposite in nature to their own.
As Stecyk further points out, this adaptation of native culture to white understanding would later result in "surfploitation" films, which are rooted in turning the inherently sexual, violent, and otherwise 'amoral' savage sport into something consumable for economically comfortable (and not even necessarily coast-dwelling) white people. This, for me, brought up a few questions about the more modern and insanely profitable surf culture we're more familiar with. Is surfing, as we know it now, necessarily a poor bastardization of a formerly sacred cultural activity, or is it a separate but related makeover? And with that question comes another: is it better (or at least, more respectful) that traditional types of wood and board shapes are no longer seen in most modern boards, especially given the knowledge that certain kinds of woods and boards were reserved for chiefs? Or would mirroring old practices make this neo-surfing movement a more authentic homage to its roots?
I don't want to claim any kind of authority on this topic, as someone who is a little afraid of the ocean and has never so much as touched a surfboard. These are just my reactions to the readings based on my past education in matters of imperialism and colonialism.
Natalie -
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your insights into the field of anthropology and the notion of reliable sources. I concur that Finney's article failed to elucidate the means which he may have hoped to attain more of the 'oral' history of Hawaiian surfing. Perhaps, as a haole outsider and intellectual interloper, Finney was aware of his position and latent racial and linguistic barriers that may have kept him from acquiring such accounts. It's also important to note that (most of) these histories had already been recorded by native Hawaiians who, taking advantage of their imposed western educations post-overthrow, were aware that much of their oral cultural history would be disappearing with progressive generational shifts now that the Hawaiian language had been essentially outlawed (made legally obsolete) by the US government.
Your comments on surfboard mediums in relation to respect for the sport's past is also very interesting and I think you'll get a lot out of the Salt of the Earth shaper's panel. In terms of a resurgence of indigenous Hawaiian modes of surfing, look more into Tom Pohaku Stone's website and look up Tom Wegener as well. Contemporary surf culture is in this interesting full circle period where everything old is new again, and alaias and the finless 'fiction-free' glide has become the ultimate test of mastery and control for the avid surfing connoisseur.