Cori Schumacher

The amount of references that are made to how “manly” the men on the ASP World Tour are in video commentary and elsewhere, is utterly overwhelming at times. With comments like “These dudes are manly men”, “He better man-up”, descriptions of turns as “mannish hacks”, or even references to waves as women (“approach accordingly”), it is crystal clear that what audiences are meant to derive from all this mannish talk is that these are real MEN: heroes, gladiators, warriors, Supermen!

Yet this very image was the tool that pushed the ASP, men’s professional surfing, et al. into a state of near paralysis yesterday.

This was achieved via a rather genius strategy instigated by an onslaught of Tweeting Twitter-folk, mostly anonymous, questioning the virility of the top 34 male surfers in the world. The sheer number of references to the scrotum and its pair of inhabitants with #VolcomFijiPro attached to the 140 character slurs, were enough to send whole convents into mad convulsions. All unfiltered, floating just beneath a live feed of Cloudbreak firing at 15ft plus.

The dilemma was set up thus.

Though the event was going to be held at Restaurants, a smaller, cleaner, less heavy but incredibly contestable wave, with their masculinity called into question by frothing viewers on Twitter, contest officials and surfers alike buckled and moved the event back to Cloudbreak. They ran a few heats, but ultimately called off the event for the day after stalling for some hours. An epic freesurfing session followed (which viewers were able to watch live) that left many wondering why the event had been cancelled for the day.

Here’s how the masculinity bait worked its magic:

-The surfers could not bow out of the surf at Cloudbreak else viewers lambast them with slurs about having lady-parts (or being lady-parts), or having pea-sized testicles (or lacking them completely) so half of the equipment that had been moved to Restaurants was moved back to the scaffold at Cloudbreak and the event started later than scheduled.

-The contest directors surely saw the certitude of injuries (like that of Raoni Monteiro in Heat #12, Round 2) and had to find some way to bow out with everyone’s manly dignity still intact. They put the event on hold after two heats, stating that they would be checking conditions every 30 minutes.

-Freesurfers in the line-up caught massive barrels, scored amazing rides, wiped-out, and generally put on an amazing show during the hold in massive surf. These were the “valid men” in the line-up vs. the “boys” (who WILL be remembered alongside shoulder-hoppers and other “weak-willed” surfers).

-Contest is called off for the day… not moved to Restaurants (ostensibly would damage the manly dignity of all involved “why surf Resties when CB is going off!”)… heats were not lengthened (why was this off the table? was it really an issue in the first place?)… It was simply called off after a lengthy stall during which viewers listened to the reasoning (excuses?) behind why Cloudbreak was uncontestable even as they watched freesurfers paddling into stunning, huge waves LIVE.

The absurdity is the image itself.

So did it work? Was professional surfing able to escape from this situation with its manly dignity intact? The very manliness it tries so hard, so often to sell as a marker of its consumer branding? Of its very ethos? Or was this little coup a spectacular calling-out moment in pro surfing that will go down in history? A moment when the veil was lifted, the spectacle suspended briefly, a hiccup inserted, a hesitation engendered.

This was the insertion of the absurd from the land of decentralized, anonymous Surf Media 2.0. How absurd? So absurd it took all that talk about “manning up” and the constructed image of surfing’s “manly men” and slyly threw it back in the face of those who sell it or are a body upon which the image hangs, asking them to prove the simulacrum was real.

The faltering of the commentators, the contest director, the surfers in the face of a massive, seething sea (Mother Ocean?) was honest. These were incredibly tough conditions most surfers would walk away from… the commentators even invoked the humbling families-at-home conversation they usually avoid and attempted to address the accusations of the Twitter feed.

But when you manufacture an image that is a construction composing male surfers as “gladiators” going to battle with and dominating nature, then try to back-peddle in the middle of a colosseum calling for blood (which you too have created), you are going to be called out. And that calling out will inevitably be from the anonymous masses you are trying to sell the image to… who have bought the image… who are looking to you to validate the image every time you paddle out into the line-up… and who are pretty damn pissed they have been fleeced and lied to…

The image is not the man. The man is not the image. This is the moment when we must realize this… before Big Surfing becomes this:

“‘The NFL must open its eyes to the consequences of its actions,’ said Kevin Turner, a former running back with the Patriots and Eagles who has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).”

“The suit accuses the NFL of ‘mythologizing’ and glorifying violence through the media, including its NFL Films division.”

Thank you to Di Mattison for pointing me toward this happening.