The Plywooden Brain Grotesque

 

Marx’s critique of the ‘wooden brain’ from which ‘grotesque ideas’ form is highly relevant in the commodification of skateboarding culture. The wood from which Marx sees a table being hewn is very similar to the plywood from which a skateboard is formed.  ‘The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a [skateboard] out of it.’ Obviously so, but a table and a skateboard are relatively simple objects. Unlike the clock, or the computer which humans have an uncontrollable urge to glorify as great engineering achievements, a piece of wood is, after all, a piece of wood. So the question is howcan a piece of wood sell for $300 dollars more than another?

The frontpage banner for Element Skateboards website lends hints as to how the mythologization of the skateboard occurs: through the construction of what Benedict Anderson would call an ‘imagined community’. The links at the top include family and community, concepts which aim to humanise the company and create in the consumer a yearning for identity and acceptance. 

An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on quotidian face-to-face interaction between its members. In Dogtown where the skaters talk of their Australian fans, and of being swamped by supporters in Japan, they talk of the imagined community which is constructed, i would argue, through an international spread of commodities. If a Japanese skateboarder can purchase a “Alva” skateboard, then he can imagine himself as being involved in the Dogtown movement.

Anderson’s concept relied heavily on the spread of print capitalism to form the nation state (ie. the national identity of say, Australian-ness). I would similarly argue that the spread of image based culture has been the primary medium for skate culture. Skateboarding is still perceived as an ‘authentic’ culture: but this urge is created by what Baudrillard called ‘a nostalgia for the real: a fascination with and desperate search for real people, real values, real sex.’ Whilst initially the Z-boys were ‘real’, they were soon snapped up by the culture machine, packaged and sold. The skateboarding filmmaker’s participation in cultural production is always seen as more ‘authentic’ – but is this justified? Whilst the use of fish eye cameras to capture a wider aspect of action is common, the distortion is only a mild divergence from the dominant modes of filmmaking. Is holding a camera down low really enough to register as different?

 ”Ah, the fisheye… First and foremost, people almost EXPECT to see skaters shot with fisheye lenses since we’ve been seeing those types of shots for years. I don’t know who started it all, but I do know it definitely fits the genre. One of the great things the fisheye does for you is really exaggerate reality. It makes it look like people are jumping higher or flying further than they really are. You can make a 2ft drop look like a 10ft drop with the right angle. It really strokes the skater’s ego.” - “Dizzo” from the creative heaven that is www.istockphoto.com

From Surf to Skate

Initially the skateboarder as an identity was sublimated through the overriding personality of the ’surfer’, which in a way had been legitimized by society.In Dogtown we see all the original riders say how ‘they wanted to bring the surf to the land’ and how skateboarding was simply what they did ‘when the waves were not breaking’.

Also, the skateboard itself was an assemblage stemming from surf culture, the boards being shaped like surfboards initially, and using parts (literally) from rollerblading.  It is only as we see the identity of the skateboarder evolve, we begin to see the evolution of the board into something that is particularly ’skate’: a curved deck with upturned ends.

 I think it would be interesting to note how current skateboards have artwork on the bottom of the board: meaning that to be seen and photographed, particularly in a skating competition, the ‘bottom’ must be presented. Thus the skater is encouraged to perform aerial tricks – bodily movements – in order to fulfill the sponsor’s duties. The branding of clothing is particularly present in skating culture: as the logo comes to signify the capabilities of the body as much as the ‘intel inside’ logo signifies the capabilities of a new computer.

Q: What do Tom Green, Jean Luc Godard and Skateboarders have in common?

Rethinking the Space of the Mall

“The city, like architecture, is like all cultural objects – it is made not once, but remade over and over.”

 

The clip above from Freddy Got Fingered demonstrates alternative uses for the suburban Mecca of the Shopping Mall. The shopping mall has been described as a ‘theatre of everyday life’ (Shields, 1992: 7), and as such includes all the necessities of a small city. ‘Strolling, browsing and window shopping are considered acceptable practices because department stores are socially accessible and there is no time limit on how long one can spend in them…’ But the spatial arrangement of the department store also carries inherent modes of surveillance characterized by correct and incorrect modes of shopping. The skateboarder in ‘Freddy got fingered’ avoids the traps of the mall, the disorientation and the desire to purchase by making a beeline through the complex, working his way through the crowds and levels. He literally avoids the authority figures and creates a new use for the mall as a route of travel.

The scene seems reminiscent of Godard’s Band A Part (The Outsiders) in which the would be criminals try to beat the world record for visiting the Louvre: 9:43.

 

It is an absurd act: one that flies in the face of high culture. They pass through the halls of civilization at maximum speed, ignoring all that is around them: specifically the ideals of western society. In doing so they use the gallery as a place of recreation and challenge. The skateboarder does similar things: but they travel using a product of commodity culture. Is the gesture then less worthwhile – less poignant? Is Parkour, which does not rely on a technology as such more pure? Less commodified? Even when Nike can use it as a concept to sell shoes and an image?

This concept of movement through space is mentioned in a very romantic, but worthwhile essay by Peter Lyssiotis (a Melbournian)(read it here). In it he says:

“When we are out walking, we confront social and natural constraints, boundaries and obstacles. But these are the very sources, the conditions of possibility, of the experiences, pains, and pleasures that we encounter on the street. In an aeroplane and in a car, these particular constraints are transcended, as are the experiences that accompanied them.”

When Tom Green skates through the mall, his route changes due to the obstacles he encounters – having to ride up a wall to avoid security becomes a ’trick’, becomes ’style’. This element of serendipity is mentioned in Dogtown, when Stacey Peralta talks of Jay Adams, and his ability to turn a trick that was failing, into something new. This reinterpretation of obstacles is equally important in parkour, which treats literal barriers such as walls, fences and bars as objects to move the body around and through.  

Whilst David Belle in the Parkour video transcends commodity culture temporarily (he literally disrupts a TV aerial at one point) he begins and ends in highly commodified spaces: the office and the TV room, where he is seen passively sitting. In the end, once the subculture is presented in a (mass) media form, it has already been commodified, because the media forms themselves have inbuilt modes of communication that favour this.

Whilst the ideology of the skater would seem to reject the ideals of commodity culture, the skater can only exist in a commodified world. The spaces they inhabit, the clothes they wear, the technologies they use are products of capitalism. However, the skateboarder does demonstrate a large amount of cultural appropriation in transforming the commodities; creating myth, and using space in new ways.

In the end, the skateboarder seems to move through a conflicting world of capitalism and the authentic, where the identity is one that can be bought and sold. However, in the brief and transcendent moments betweenthese: eg. creating a new movement in a new space, i think authenticity does exist. For about as long as it takes gravity to kick in, and the video to be posted on YouTube.

 Bibliography:

Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed., London: Verso.

Adorno, Theodore, and Horkheimer, Max (1993) The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception in the cultural studies reader, ed. Simon During. London & New York: Routledge.

Barthes, Roland, The Eiffel Tower, and other mythologies, University of California Press, Berkeley ,1997

Borden, Iain (2001) Performing the City: Commodity Critique, in Skateboarding, Space and the city: architecture and the body, Oxford and New York: Berg, 229-260

Lyssiotis, Peter, Gyorgy Scrinis, CD’s and other things Backyard Press, Melbourne, 1994

Martin, Fran (ed), Interpreting Everyday Culture, Arnold Publishing, London, 2003

Marx, Karl(1867) The Fetishism of the commodity and the secret thereof”, Karl Marx Capital: An Abridged edition, ed David McLellan. Oxford University Press, 1999

Filmography:

Godard, Jean Luc Band A Part 1964

Green, Tom, Freddy Got Fingered 2001

Peralta, Stacey, Dogtown and Z-Boys 2001