ABSTRACT
The obvious differences are the naming-the surfie journal uses “tribal” nicknames; TV uses full given surnames with place of origin. The surfie journal refuses to focus on one; the TV finally pulls one surfer, the oldest, out of the water to individualize him. The day before, TV had done exactly the same with the “captain” of the NSW team-not only individualizing him, but giving him a rank in a hierarchy and identifying a community other than a surfing one to which he belonged. The TV concentrates on socially constructed individuals in competition with each other; the journal emphasizes the surfie-wave relationship. TV has colonized the meaning, has tamed the untamed continent and civilized it (cf. the notice on Cottesloe Beach). Surfers are now constructed as individuals competing in the capitalist rat race just like the rest of us, and surfing becomes not the threat of man’s reentry into nature, but a sport in which the points awarded by judges become the missing signifieds: they complete the sign and allow culture to extend its control over sensation and the signifier.
