Ever since I first began to watch Surf movies like Surf's Up and Soul Surfer, I knew that there was much more value in the art of surfing that just people standing on a board, floating on the ocean waves. As I read the articles, I learned that Surfing has existed since the late 1700's when I naively thought that it was recently discovered in the 1950's. Similar to any sport, there is always a main, important person that inspired the sport, as well as excelled at it: Duke H. Hawaii is known for its popularity in surfing but I did not know that that was the area where all the stubborn, young teenagers would go to pursue their desire for surfing.
The Beach Boys were also very interesting. According to the few photographs that I've seen about surfing, surfing is an all-white male sport. Yet, it the sport of surfing involves the females as well. Females have always been involved in the surfing areas, either for publicity or company. But The Beach Boys' story proves that surfing, because of women, was always seen as a very sexually open and "young, wild, and free" sport. All this is just the surface of the surfing life.
Surfing is a passion that has saved a lot of people emotionally. An example would be the surfer who had a "bad-boy" character, sent to jail, and carried guns. He almost ruined his life but his surfboard and the ocean waves were always there to help him reconsider the fact that surfing was his passion and his only way out of trouble.
Angie -
ReplyDeleteSurfing has existed much longer than that - it was only witnessed by Western observers for the first time in the 1700s. In terms of co-mingling of surfing and sex, go back and look into the Makahiki Festival, etc, for a fuller understanding as to why these aspects have been traditionally related and why surfing therefore became an unintended victim of the missionaries evangelizing in the islands. It's also important to note that in indigenous Hawaii, women surfed just as much as men and their abilities were often celebrated over their male counterparts - how does that relate to surf culture today?