ABSTRACT
Focusing on the well-known Australian surf documentary Morning of the Earth (Albert Falzon, 1972) and its evocation of travel in Bali, this chapter seeks to understand the power of cinematic texts for virtualizing affective travel experiences and creating emotional and social resonances through visual imagery. As both a poetic sports documentary and an ethnographic travelogue of foreign cultures, Morning of the Earth featured compelling sequences of surfing and travel that were filmed in Australia, Hawaii, and Indonesia. The film’s loose narrative, folk-rock music soundtrack, and outdoor cinematography worked together to suggest that a sublime counter-cultural and trans-oceanic utopia was being created through the simple story of thrill-seeking surfers in search of extreme surfing experiences.
Using a textual analysis approach, this chapter focuses on the affective spaces of freedom and possibility that were opened up by this film for travel through this sublime portrayal of surfing experiences. I argue that the film continued a problematic neo-colonial representation that informed the broader Australian public’s perception of this unique Indonesian island. In this film, I argue that the affective positioning of Bali as a utopian site of freedom and paradise meant an erasure of the island’s recent history, going on to present a naïve and apolitical perspective of Indonesian culture for its Australian audience. Drawing on a cultural studies approach, examining the film for its touristic impact also demonstrates how sustained hegemonic ideals are mapped onto real destinations through imaginative texts, which here have real-life consequences in everyday interactions between these imagined “locals” and the subsequent tourists inspired to visit because of the film.
