Beyond the Noise: the cultural (or subcultural) politics of Irish surf films

Abstract

This article analyses the subcultural politics of Irish surf films, focusing on Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise. Irish surf films emerged in the early 2000s and have since become a successful genre. The article first discusses the concept of cultural politics and its importance in understanding the political economy of Irish surf films, highlighting the tensions between the professional world of surfing as a sport, and those who regard surfing as a cultural practice. It then examines both films in order to show how Ireland is understood as an ‘alternative’ surf destination in the transnational world of surfing, and how the island is imagined as a place of ‘escape’. The article shows how, whilst appearing to oppose commercialisation, surf films unintentionally contribute to the commodification of the West of Ireland and align with Tourism Ireland’s marketing campaigns for the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’.

Keywords:

• Surfing
• culture
• surf films
• cultural politics
• subculture
• sociology of sport
• political economy

Introduction

Since their emergence in the early 2000s with Joel Conroy’s Eye of the Storm (Conroy 2002), Irish surf films have become an established form of artistic and cultural expression within the Irish surfing subculture, often acquiring national and international exposure.¹ The genre now includes feature films, short narrative films, commercial short films, experimental films, feminist films, community based ‘folk’ films, and a thriving online film culture distributed on video hosting sites such as Vimeo, YouTube, and Garage Entertainment.² This is supplemented by a network of surf and adventure film festivals which have provided exposure to the genre, such as the Shore Shots Irish Surf Film Festival, The Doolin Surf Fest, and the Irish Adventure Film Festival. The most recent example is the Irish Surf Film Festival, staged in Galway in November 2023.³ In an era when surf magazines have lost their role as a primary communicator of surf culture, surf films (and online videos) have an enhanced role within the subculture (the most recent Irish surf magazine – Tides (2021-) exists as online video) (Vail 2024).

Irish surf films are part of a filmmaking tradition which originated in the nascent subcultural surf movies of the American filmmaker Bud Browne in the 1950s, exemplified by archetypal films such as Hawaiian Surfing Movie (Browne 1953). This underground filmmaking reached mainstream cinema audiences during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to films such as Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer (Brown 1966), Pacific Vibrations (John Severson 1970) and Five Summer Stories (MacGillivray and Freeman 1972). By this period, surf movies were already an established genre with their own subgenres, transnational variants, aesthetic characteristics, narrative conventions, and countercultural themes. Their popularity waned in the 1980s and early 1990s as surf films became increasingly associated with commercial sponsorship and the political economy of surfing industries. As their cinematic popularity decreased, VHS and DVD became the primary modes of consumption for what Booth (1996) describes as ‘adolescent fun’. By the twenty first century, the widespread availability of digital production technologies and the accessibility of online distribution on streaming platforms has meant that surf films have proliferated in number and in popularity. Transnational examples now exist in such uncharacteristic places as Gaza, Iran, Iceland and Russia, complemented by a global circuit of dedicated surf film festivals often taking place in non-surfing locations such as London and Paris.⁴

The Irish surfing subculture can be understood as a historical offshoot of the subculture which emerged in Hawaii in the years after its American annexation in the late nineteenth century. This subculture grew alongside the development boom in California during the first half of the twentieth century, quickly spreading to Australia, South Africa, the UK, and France (amongst other places). In Ireland, this subculture emerged in the 1960s, led by surfing pioneers such as Kevin Cavey, Roger Steadman, Davey Govan and Bo Vance (part of the ‘Belfast crew’), and the Britton brothers of Rossnowlagh in County Donegal. By the 1990s, the subculture had firmly established itself in important centres for Irish surfing such as Tramore (County Waterford), Lahinch (County Clare), Strandhill (County Sligo), Bundoran and Rossnowlagh (County Donegal), and Portrush (County Antrim). As described in Sean Duggan’s historical documentary Keep it A Secret (Duggan 2022) and The Silver Safari (Hubbard and Britton 2006), tensions quickly emerged within the Irish subculture between those who regarded surfing as a soulful activity which should remain outside the world of commercial sport, and those who felt that the surfing should be driven by competition, commercialisation and increased sporting codification. These ideological differences highlight that a section of the surfing subculture maintain an ambivalent relationship with ‘mainstream’ sporting culture, opposing traditional ideas of organised sport and its ultimately rationalist impositions of time and space in the form of competition surfing. Surfing did, however, become drawn into the world of competitive commercial sport through a vibrant lifesaving club scene in Australia and the United States. This led to the establishment of the International Surfing Federation in 1964 (latterly becoming the International Surfing Association), followed by the Smirnoff World Pro-Am Surfing Championships in 1973, and the federation of International Professional Surfers (IPS) in 1976, all of which are predecessors of the contemporary World Surf League (WSL).⁵

Tensions remain between the subculture’s countercultural image and the realities of its professionally driven industrial political economy (Booth 2017). Surf films often aim to embody the ideals and values of the ‘soul surfer’, yet surf culture repeatedly ignores its potential impact on the environment, its carbon footprint, its often-negative impact on local communities and coastlines, and its potential for the ‘spoiling’ of untouched locations. These contradictory tensions are encapsulated by the controversy surrounding the environmental impact of the surfing event at the 2024 Paris Olympics (to be held in Tahiti) and its potential impact on a local coral reef.⁶ This tension can also be observed in an analysis of many of the surf films produced within the surfing subculture, including those analysed herein.

This article attempts to understand the social power relations – the subcultural politics - that define the production, distribution and consumption of Irish surf films. It will critically analyse the cultural politics of Irish surf films, with specific reference to two textual examples: Beyond the Noise (Kaineder 2017), directed by Australian filmmaker Andrew Kaineder, and Dark Side of the Lens (Smith 2010), made by Cornish filmmaker Mickey Smith. It analyses key ideological discourses in both films in order to understand their subcultural politics at the level of gender, race, and their often conflicting environmental and economic politics. It examines their contradictory relationship with capitalism and how they actively encourage the ongoing development, commercialisation and marketisation of places in the west of Ireland – what is now promoted by Tourism Ireland as the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ - as spaces for lifestyle sport.⁷ The article firstly explores the concept of cultural politics prior to the film analysis. It shows how transnational representations and discourses of ‘surfing in Ireland’ have become associated with the idea of a romantic ‘escape’ from the commodified world of mainstream surf culture. Finally, it analyses how the subcultural politics of films such as Beyond the Noise and Dark Side of the Lens display the tensions between the depiction of surfing in Ireland as a countercultural practice and the reality of its position as a transnational lifestyle sport with an industrial political economy.

Cultural politics as a theoretical concept

The critical framework of cultural politics entails the scrutiny of how cultural practices, representations and meanings shape socio-political identities, and how these discourses perpetuate or challenge existing power structures. This conceptual approach spans a variety of disciplines, including cultural studies, film studies, and political economy, amongst others (Wheaton 2013, 7). This article is based in film studies but also employs a sociological approach to cultural politics in order to explain the political economy of Irish surf films. The study of cultural politics is an important critical tool for sociologists and political economists, because, as Kate Nash (2001) explains, it informs the analyst about ideology and power relations in any given society through an examination of political and economic tendencies in the cultural activities and behaviours of social groups. Irish surf films are mostly produced outside of mainstream systems of industrial filmmaking and are predominantly consumed by members of the surfing subculture and adherents of the lifestyle. This analysis will demonstrate that whilst prevalent hegemonic discourses of power pervade Irish surf films, this power is contested, which reveals the nuanced political dynamics of their subcultural power relations. This reflects Nash’s assertion regarding cultural politics, which emphasises that ‘where social relations are relatively fluid, there will be widespread and frequent contestation of all aspects of social life; where there is power, there will be politics. Where there is domination, by contrast, there will be little political activity’ (85).

The study of cultural politics can also be understood as a means to understand the political economy of a topic. An analysis of the subcultural politics of Irish surf films allows for a greater understanding of their political and economic dimensions, which can inform the analyst about their modes of funding, distribution, exhibition, and their revenue streams. Surf films are an important part of the political economy of surfing industries (Booth 2005, 2017) and the subcultural politics of Irish surf films are very often one of their selling points due to their perceived oppositional discourses to mainstream commodified surf culture. A ‘cultural’ approach to the study of the political economy of film and media is at odds with those who argue that the structural economic function of an entity is of primary importance (Mosco 2009). However, others have argued that to comprehend the economic function of a media object one must also understand its social, cultural and political aspects (O’Regan 2008, 245–246). For theorists such as Vincent Mosco, part of the problem is that a focus on cultural politics can miss larger economic structures and instead place emphasis on individual agency. I argue that an examination of cultural politics actually expands the remit of political economy to include cultural texts, and that this leads to a greater understanding of the cultural economy of any given social group, or subculture. Although Mosco defines political economy as based solely on economic analysis, he offers a definition (which this article corresponds to) emphasising the importance of text-based material culture in the analysis of the political economy of film, media or communication. He defines the political economy of media as comprising:

the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources. From this vantage point the products of communication, such as newspapers, books, videos, films, and audiences, are the primary resources. (Mosco 2009, 24)

Belinda Wheaton attributes many of the founding principles of the analysis of cultural identities – and cultural politics - to the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, but notes that the approach is common across a variety of academic perspectives within the humanities and social sciences (2013, 7). This can be seen in the work of Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (Hall and Jefferson 1976), and Dick Hebdige (Hebdige 1979). Chris Barker states that the Gramscian interpretation of hegemony is a central theme in cultural politics and that ‘issues of cultural representation are ‘political’, because they are intrinsically bound up in questions of power’ (Barker 2003, 404). A contemporary critical focus on cultural politics stems from a desire by sociologists, political economists and cultural analysts to recognise culture as an important contested site to understand where power and meaning are conveyed across society. As Armitage, Bishop and Kellner articulate in their introduction to the first issue of the journal Cultural Politics, this involves asking ‘what is cultural about politics, and what is political about culture’ (Armitage et al. 2005, 1).

Offering a definition, Simon Rycroft states that ‘cultural politics refers to the tactics and strategies used by social groups, both powerful and oppressed, to express their views of the world. Cultural politics…adopted a notion of culture as a politically contested social construction’ (Rycroft 2014, 431). Steph Newell further elaborates that ‘the term cultural politics refers to the way that culture—including people’s attitudes, opinions, beliefs and perspectives, as well as the media and arts—shapes society and political opinion, and gives rise to social, economic and legal realities’ (Newell, 2014). Kate Nash (2001, 77–92) defined this position, arguing for the incorporation of the analysis of cultural politics into the wider field of sociology. Nash argues, citing David Chaney, that ‘it is through culture that everyday life is given meaning and significance’, and that this new dynamic in political sociology would require ‘an understanding of cultural politics’ (77). She further states that ‘all social life must be seen as potentially political where politics is the contestation of relations of power’ (77). Nash utilises Michel Foucault’s analytics of power in order to show that ‘power is plural: it is exercised from innumerable points…and it is not governed by a single overarching project’ (81). Nash argued that a model of cultural politics should consider all aspects of social life as potentially political, from the ‘internationalised state to the lifestyle politics of civil society’ (90). David Chaney (1996, 2002) applied similar critical ideas in his work on lifestyle cultures, arguing that the concept of lifestyle is a ‘good example of a new social form’ with its own ‘sensibilities’ relating to how individuals make meaning in the postmodern world (Chaney 2002, 85–86). Belinda Wheaton (2009, 2013) further extended these concepts towards surfing and other ‘extreme’ sports, maintaining that ‘the allure and excitement of lifestyle sport has been appropriated to sell every kind of product and service imaginable. Indeed, from a commercial perspective, ‘extreme’ has become a means for corporations and advertisers to tap the lucrative ‘affluent, young male’ demographic’ (2013, 3). The expression of cultural politics can also be understood as a form of performativity, according to Elin Diamond (2015). Diamond invokes Judith Butler’s theory of performative identities to show that what is invoked as real or ‘authentic’ within a subculture is brought about through performance. This article argues that the performance of an ‘authentic’ identity (whether real or imagined) is a key factor in Irish surf films.

Litmus and the cultural politics of surf films in the 1990s

Irish surf films such as Beyond the Noise and Dark Side of the Lens have their origins in a lineage of surf film history that stretches back to the 1950s and the prototypical subcultural films of Bud Browne, such as Trek to Makaha (Browne 1956), The Big Surf (Browne 1957), and Surf Down Under (Browne 1958).⁸ Browne made professional what had been an amateur hobby for those who could afford early home movie cameras in the 1930s and 1940s; he would winter in Hawaii, filming as much surfing as he could, before returning to California to screen the films at schools and local auditoriums. Browne would edit, direct, produce and narrate the films himself (Engle 2015, 41–44). Browne’s subcultural methods were distinct from the mainstream political economy of the American film industry and its established modes of financing, production, distribution and exhibition. This remains true of most contemporary subcultural surf films. Surf filmmaking quickly became a popular form of alternative cinema in the United States and Australia (through the films of Bob Evans). Whilst the films were initially produced for a subcultural audience and lifestyle enthusiasts, their subversive qualities meant that they quickly became popular amongst a wider audience. The genre gradually expanded and became more varied and thoughtful throughout the 1970s, leading to countercultural films such as Australian filmmaker Alby Falzon’s influential Morning of the Earth (1972); a prime influence on the cultural politics of Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise because of its aestheticisation of surfing as a quasi-spiritual practice rather than as a competitive sport. Like Brown and Falzon’s films, both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise are examples of what have been described as ‘pure’ subcultural surf films, in which a sense of the ‘authentic’ is constructed and maintained (Booth 1996; Ormrod 2009). Historically, these ‘pure’ forms of surf cinema had their own distinct subcultural politics which were often defined by whether the film was representative of the soul surfer/freesurfing tradition (anti-commercial - regarding surfing as a quasi-­spiritual, cultural practice), or a more professional tradition (regarding surfing as a competitive sport).

The dichotomies between these approaches to surfing are epitomised in the opening lines of Andrew Kidman’s (1996) seminal surf film, Litmus. The film opens with an on-screen quotation from Nat Young which states: ‘I wished that when they asked us ‘what is surfing’ I would have said it’s a spiritual activity, and not just a sport, because that’s what put us on the wrong track’.⁹ Engle also articulates the tension between counterculture and commodification in the subcultural politics of these traditions, noting that

perhaps it’s sad, or simply inevitable, that a surfing ethos of marginality and pure connection with the natural world finds itself overlapping with the need to make a living. In filmic representations of surfing…the result has been a cinema of often richly conflicting signals and messages. (Engle 2015, 7)

Ireland had gradually become a known surfing destination in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly after the staging of international events such as Eurosurf ‘72, and the 1979 ‘Smirnoff International’. The island had also been mentioned in articles by the Irish-American surfer/writer Kevin Naughton for Surfer Magazine, but prior to the internet era Ireland remained largely peripheral to the surfing world until the release of Litmus in 1996. Directed by Australian director Andrew Kidman, with Jon Frank and Mark Sutherland, Litmus was the first major surf film to feature Ireland as a location and it was released at a time in the mid-1990s when the commerciality of surfing as a sport had dominated the culture since its professionalisation in the late 1970s. As Steve Shearer (2015, para 3) argues, ‘the siren song of money and high performance had decoupled surfing from its own history, and, more importantly, from the majority of recreational surfers who did it for the love’. The resulting surf films of the period, often released on VHS and DVD, were ‘shoehorned between the contrasting visions of Taylor Steele’s California shopping-mall punk and the escapist fantasies spawned by the Mentawai Islands gold rush’ (2015, para 2). Shearer cites the 1994 Mentawai based film Surfers of Fortune (Bleak 1994) as an ‘example of what surfing had become: parasitic, hubristic, and completely disconnected from the environments upon which it depended and the surfers who lived there’ (para 3).

Influenced by the anti-commercial cultural politics of Morning of the Earth, Litmus is a landmark film in surf film history which espoused the discourse of ‘soul surfing’ and opposed the increased commerciality of surfing as a sport, and of the surf film itself. It did so in its dark, cold, and grainy aesthetic, which was in direct contrast to the global status quo in surf films, and in its resistance to the what Andrew Kidman perceived as exploitative and harmful tendencies present in the commercialised activities of professional surfing during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, Steve Shearer argues that Litmus ‘was the first time a surf film had dealt with themes like failure, getting old, finding and exalting in lineage, history, culture, and self-expression’. The film foregrounded ‘free surfers’ and ‘fringe dwellers’ such as Wayne Lynch, Tom Curren, and Derek Hynd. These surfers were known for unconventional techniques, and the impact and creativity of board shaping on the creative development of a surfer’s ability, rather than following more commercially driven careers. Litmus featured sequences filmed around the world, but one of the key scenes in the film involves Australian surfer Joel Fitzgerald exploring his Irish roots, and riding in empty line-ups in a scene described as the ‘antithesis’ of the surfing world gone awry, where Ireland represented the ‘anti-Mentawai: cold, powerful, and unhyped’ (Shearer, para 20). Released on DVD in the early days of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom in Ireland, Litmus represents a watershed moment for Irish surf culture, and indeed the perception of surfing in Ireland from outside the country. In the film, Ireland is cast as a new frontier location in surfing, and as a place representing the opposite cultural values to the commodified and industrially driven spaces of mainstream surf culture, and those destroyed by surf tourism. After its release (quickly followed by Jack Johnson and Chris Malloy’s Thicker Than Water in 2000) Ireland became an established location for high class surf in a space perceived to be devoid of the ills of consumer driven surf culture. The anti-commercial ethos and thoughtful retrospection of Litmus has been an archetypal influence on surf films over the last 25 years. The film influenced a form of anti-mainstream cultural politics which are present in many Irish surf films, including Mickey Smith’s Dark Side of the Lens, although it does not always reflect the commercial realities of a film’s production, as will be seen in the analysis of Beyond the Noise.

The subcultural politics of Beyond the Noise and Dark Side of the Lens

Born in Newlyn in Cornwall, Mickey Smith was part of a group of British and Irish surfers who helped to pioneer the surfing of two extremely heavy waves that are now an integral component of the Irish surfing economy, ‘Riley’s’ and ‘Aileen’ in County Clare. Both waves are among the most photographed and filmed waves in Ireland (alongside the big wave at Mullaghmore headland in County Sligo), and a stream of professional surfers and videographers surf, photograph and film the waves for brands such as Red Bull and Monster Energy, and magazines and websites such as Carve, Wavelength, and Surfer. This process is replicated across the international world of surfing and is part of a system which generates income that sustains the political economy of surfing industries. Smith lived a peripatetic lifestyle as a surf cameraman, photographing and filming professional surfers and selling his pictures to industry magazines such as Carve and the Irish surfing magazine, Tonnta.¹⁰ Before directing Dark Side of the Lens, Smith had co-produced an Irish surf film titled From Shadows (Smith and Wilson 2007) and was central to the production of Powers of Three (Ross Cairns 2009), a documentary in which he featured prominently alongside Andrew Cotton and Fergal Smith as pioneering surfers on Ireland’s big waves.

The autobiographical short film Dark Side of The Lens, produced by Helen Hayden, was released online on the Vimeo video hosting platform in 2010 and has since become one of the most seen surf films in the history of the genre. It quickly became a cult short film within the Irish and UK surfing subculture before gaining global prominence through its release at a range of surf and adventure film festivals. In 2016, Vimeo listed the film as one of the top ten most viewed surf films in the website’s history, with over 2.2 million plays by 2014.¹¹ Smith’s visual and aural homily to the County Clare coastline is also one of the few surf films ever made which features very little surfing. Dark Side of the Lens is a deeply personal film dedicated to Smith’s sister, Cherry, who passed away in the same year as its release. The film is a 6-min-long example of what Keith Beattie (2003) calls the ‘radical delirium’ of the surf film, in which a ‘melding of documentary and Avant Garde practices’ takes place, creating a distinctive aesthetic in surf cinema. Smith produced the film with his regular collaborator in cinematography, Allan Wilson, and their film is edited together with footage from winters spent filming at ‘Aileen’s’ and ‘Riley’s’ on Ireland’s west coast. Smith narrates the film himself, introspectively reflecting on his own life, career decisions, and the trajectory that led him to his current position as a surf photographer, whom he describes in the film as the ‘silent workhorses of the surfing world’. Set to haunting music also produced by Smith, the film features euphoric, rapturous imagery filmed around the cliffs of Moher in County Clare, which depicts Ireland as a primitive, arcadian space, far from the industrial centres of the surfing world. As its title suggests, Dark Side of the Lens is a film about the act of filming the surf and surfers, rather than the act of surfing, although the aesthetic presence of surfing and the idea of the countercultural frontier surfing life, imagined since the days of Tom Blake and his relocation to the Hawaiian Islands, pervades the entire film.¹²

Smith’s film reflects the important symbiotic relationship between the activity of surfing and the desire to capture the ecstatic experiences of surfing in photography and film, which mirrors the same quest as surfer/filmmaker George Greenough in films such as The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun (Greenough 1970). The realities of living the surfing lifestyle during a cold Irish winter as both a boardrider and photographer - and its often-scant economic returns - are central to the narrative of Dark Side of the Lens. Smith’s film rejects the commerciality associated with mainstream, warm water surf culture and stands in opposition to the idea of surfing as a codified sporting activity. The economic realities of this lifestyle are epitomised in Smith’s narration, which states that ‘there’s no sugary cliché. Most folk don’t know who we are, what we do or how we do it… let al.one want to pay us for it… If I only scrape out a living, at least it’s a living worth scraping’ (Smith 2010). As an independent production and a personal endeavor, Dark Side of the Lens epitomises the fundamental ethos of the soul surf tradition in its purest, most ‘authentic’ form, highlighting that subcultural capital is often more important than economic capital in the subculture. Smith has since made other surf films (with Allan Wilson) such as the closely related and experimental 20-minute Cornish language film Hunros Jorna (Smith 2022), but the influence of Dark Side of the Lens on Irish (and global) surf films has been pervasive.

Arguably influenced by Smith’s film, Andrew Kaineder’s hypnotic 38-minute-long Beyond the Noise was released in 2017 on the Vimeo-on-Demand platform; a pay per view streaming site that allows filmmakers to independently monetise their films, and to connect directly with an audience without the need for a distributer or any associated advertising. It was also released on iTunes, Google Play, the Fetch platform and via the Garage Entertainment streaming service (which manages the rights to adventure and lifestyle sport films in Australia and New Zealand). Beyond the Noise was partially funded by the Canon Australia ‘Show us What’s Possible’ initiative, which encouraged photographers and filmmakers to push their creative boundaries, and by the Cornwall based surf lifestyle brand, Finisterre. Beyond the Noise was also released with a book of photography by Kaineder, with poetry by Dan Crockett. Kaineder described Beyond the Noise as:

an abstract film about our disconnection and connection with nature, using surfing to simplify the idea. I always want to do something bigger and better each film I make and this definitely challenged me. The deeper meaning goes beyond surfing and I feel everyone will be able to relate to it in some way. (Kaineder 2019)

The film is a collection of almost monochromatic, photographic and cinematic set pieces complemented by an evocative soundtrack – and Kaineder’s poetic narration - in which Ireland is depicted as an otherworldly space at odds with the outside, industrial world. Filmed in Clare, Sligo and Donegal, the film features surfers Noah Lane and Harrison Roach as distant, obscure and enigmatic physical manifestations of the surfers who populate the desolate coastal landscapes of Ireland. From its distinctive opening shot of a surfboard hanging from a tree in winter and a surreal depiction of a surfer reflected upside down in the receding waters of the tide, Kaineder’s film is about the desire to escape an urban, modern existence summed up by an opening quotation by Marcus Aurelius that ‘what is not good for the Beehive cannot be good for the Bee’. There is an implication, common in a history of romantic representation about the West of Ireland and noted by authors such as Luke Gibbons (2014), that the island is a space which can offer an escape from the shackles of modernity and urban life, and in this case, an escape from more commercialised, competitive, and professional surfing environment of Australia. The film’s title, Beyond the Noise, is a direct reference to this idea of ‘escape’. Kaineder emphasises this immediately after the title appears on screen by juxtaposing images of an industrialised cityscape, contrasted by images of rural life in the west of Ireland. Enigmatic marketing for the film emphasised the theme of ‘escape’ and attempted to describe the tone of its narrative:

Distracted by realities of our own invention, the natural world becomes invisible, technology is our king. As the cracks in society spread, two surfers seek refuge in the vastness of the ocean, away from the deafening clamour of humankind. Unchained and dangerously close to freedom. (Kaineder 2019)

At the core of Beyond the Noise is Kaineder’s desire to reconnect with the natural environment and to ‘get some bloody real experiences’ (2019). For the director, the role of surfing in this quest is clear: ‘surfing is one of the few things that really immerses you into present moment and you actually feel like you’re living’ (Kaineder 2019).

Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise are both highly accomplished and award-­winning films, yet their subcultural politics, and those of the surfing subculture, are often contradictory, with problematic structural distinctions. As Sarah Thornton (1995) articulates, ‘subcultural capital’ often emerges from ‘ad hoc communities with fluid boundaries’ (200) and is characterised by the appearance of ‘vague opposition’ (201). In this sense, subcultural capital relates to the acquisition of status within the subculture through ‘a series of distinctions, or authenticity claims, within the culture (such as the authentic versus the phoney, the hip versus the mainstream and the underground versus the media). However, it is underpinned by structural differences in gender, sexuality, race, class and age’ (200). Jensen (2006, 257) also suggests that the best way to understand these distinctions is within the context of the subculture, stating that ‘the relation between the subculture and its surroundings is best understood by focusing on what is appreciated within the subculture (i.e. subcultural capital) and at the same time analytically situating the subculture in terms of class, gender, ethnicity and ‘race’. Both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise can be analysed in terms of their performative ‘authenticity claims’, and clear structural distinctions and contradictions emerge in their subcultural politics. It should be noted again that Irish surf films exist across a broad spectrum; however, many characteristics in their cultural politics are shared. This can be observed in their intertwined racial, gender, and often contradictory economic and environmental politics.

In terms of gender politics, the historical political economy of surf culture has been predominantly male, with women regarded as ‘peripheral to the adventure imaginary’ (Frohlick 2005, 175; Engle 2018). This tendency can be observed in the masculine ideological characteristics in both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise. Both films are representative of a genre that is almost exclusively male, straight, and white. Within the structural paradigm of the surf film genre, certain ideas of masculinity are constructed, performed and reproduced in cyclical narrative structures. This tendency can be traced through the history of surf films from the early performative hypermasculine tendencies of the films of Bud Browne and Bruce Brown, which John Engle (2018) argues served as ‘an underground debate on the future of an American masculinity abruptly losing ground in the post-war years to the office cubicle, the little woman, and the demanding suburban lawn’. The masculine discourses that circulate in Beyond the Noise and Dark Side of the Lens can be understood as a recurrent example of a neo-colonial male romantic adventurer trope that has been central to the genre since the earliest days of surfing on film. What Wheaton describes as a ‘colonial imaginary’ (2013, 65) in surf culture has also been noted by Beattie (2001) and Comer (2004), and can be traced to the archetypal Eden-like space in surf movies, the Hawaiian Islands. After their colonization in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and their annexation by the United States in 1898, the Hawaiian Islands quickly became the central travel location for young Californian surfers and surf filmmakers following the surfing lifestyle, which provided an ‘exotic mystique that conferred subcultural capital on the émigrés’ (Ormrod 2005, 43). When Hawaiian surf became too well known and too crowded, white western male surfers and surf films reimagined other developing parts of the world - where surfing was virtually unknown - as the new frontier; see Senegal in Bruce Brown’s problematic Endless Summer, or Bali in Falzon’s Morning of the Earth. This neocolonial frontier masculinity is a structural force in surf culture’s history and development and it is key to understanding the cultural politics of Irish surf films, as Ireland has acquired the role of a peripheral, virginal frontier space to be conquered by visiting surfers.

Additionally, both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise are indicative of what Wheaton (2009) has described as the output of ‘surfing’s white tribes’. Wheaton (2013, 64) states that ‘lifestyle sport, both in the increasingly ubiquitous appropriation of its imagery across media and public space and in terms of participants (in the West) is often constituted as a white space’. This is true of almost all Irish surf films. Whilst this may seem unjustified in a country with a predominantly white population and in which there isn’t a native ‘Other’ from which the whiteness of the visiting surfer is differentiated, Kyle Kusz notes that the whiteness of lifestyle sports is ‘rarely imagined as a racially exclusive space’ (Kusz 2004, 207). Kusz argues that mass media representations of extreme sport in North America throughout the 1990s became key cultural sites in the construction of whiteness, which promoted American values of ‘individualism, self-reliance, risk taking and progress’. Alongside colonial masculinity, these normative themes have been incorporated into the subgenre of Irish surf films, which perpetuate and reconstruct the fantasy of a ruggedly individualistic frontier existence on the west coast of Ireland (when in fact it is a commercialised lifestyle activity which requires significant engagement with mainstream economies and capitalist practices). These imagined ‘white’ values underlie both films analysed in this article, and this can also be understood in terms of their associations with masculinity, which ‘re-inscribe the historically dominant version of the hegemonic male adventure hero as ‘white, heterosexual, bourgeois, athletic, courageous, risk-taking, imperialist, and unmarked’’ (Wheaton 2013, 65; Frohlick 2005).

Aside from their racial and gender politics, both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise display an unusual and often hypocritical relationship with capitalist practices, which Lawler (2010, 1–16), Stranger (2011, 187–214), Booth (2017, 318–341) and Laderman (2014, 131–153) have all noted reflects a problematic dichotomy in the cultural politics of the surfing lifestyle and in the political economy of surfing industries. A major trope in surf film history is ‘the search’; a desire to travel to what are often patronisingly perceived to be undeveloped and ‘unexplored’ locations in order to find remote and undiscovered waves. The problematic dichotomy behind the ‘search’ lies in the romanticisation of locations which are perceived to be free from modernity, consumerism, and crowds, whilst simultaneously commodifying the same spaces and ignoring the realities of local culture. The irony becomes apparent when considering that the idyllic places portrayed as ‘escapes’ from the commercialised surf culture in surf films eventually transform into commodified spaces themselves due to the filming process, thereby mirroring the very conditions that initially motivated the ‘search’ for such locations. As Matt Warshaw (2011, 38) argues of the early days of Californian surfing, ‘discovery invited “ruin”’. The idea of romantic escape is present in wider filmic depictions of Ireland, but in Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise it is aided by the perception of Ireland in the surfing world as a space largely outside regulation, professional competition and commercialization, which has led it to being imagined as an empty cold-water surfing dreamscape where world weary lifestyle enthusiasts can regenerate. In ‘Landscape and Irish Cinema’, Martin McLoone (2010, 131) calls this a form of ‘outsider romanticism’, in which ‘the west of Ireland now exists as a kind of ideal regenerative environment for the troubled and worried mind of modernity’. Ireland’s status at the relative periphery of global surf culture has meant that the island is often imagined as a place of escape and posited as a space removed from the ills of consumerism. This idea underpins Smith and Kaineder’s films.

Both Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise owe their cinematic heritages to Alby Falzon’s Morning of the Earth, in which Bali is euphorically and romantically imagined as a ‘pre-lapsarian’ surfing paradise free from commerciality, before becoming overrun by surf tourism in the subsequent decades (Falzon, Kidman and Smith all worked on Falzon’s spiritual follow up to Morning of the Earth, known as Spirit of Akasha (Kidman 2014), which incidentally features female surfers).¹³ The archetypal images of surfing in Ireland in Andrew Kidman’s Litmus frame the island as a similarly bucolic arcadia to Bali in Morning of the Earth, in which both islands are perceived as ‘alternative’ surfing spaces outside the realm of commerciality and modernity. Peripherality, ‘anti-mainstream’ discourse, and the depiction of Ireland as a cold-water ‘Eden’ are common themes in Litmus, Dark Side of the Lens, and Beyond the Noise, yet there are problematic contradictions within this narrative.¹⁴ For example, Beyond the Noise is funded by the British luxury lifestyle clothing brand Finisterre, who exploit the rugged coastal scenery of Ireland as part of their brand strategy, and the film serves as a form of advertising through product placement for wetsuits and clothing worn within the film. This method of film financing through product placement has been an important part of the political economy of surfing industries since surf shop owner and manufacturer of ‘Velzy Surfboards’, Dale Velzy, financed Bruce Brown with $5000 dollars to produce his first film Slippery When Wet (1958). This form of brand attachment and Veblenian conspicuous consumption could be regarded as an ideological form of what Jim McGuigan describes as ‘the neoliberal self’, in which consumers adopt a ‘cool’ posture that derives symbolically – and ironically – from cultures of disaffection and indeed, opposition’ (McGuigan 2014, 223). Both films posit Ireland as a space far from consumer driven lifestyle industries, whilst reifying the same locations (through the act of filming and distribution) as capitalist dream spaces for lifestyle sports enthusiasts, often the aforementioned young, white, male adventurers.¹⁵

Mark Stranger (2011, 15) notes that this postmodern ‘commodification of the sublime’ is central to the aesthetisation of surfing in the subculture’s magazines and media. This process takes place in films such as Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise through their commodification of coastal spaces. In addition, Irish surf films have influenced a new lifestyle sports based ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry and Larsen 2011) toward the Irish coastline. This ‘gaze’ is based on the peripherality of Ireland as a surfing location, which inevitably causes the numbers of participants to rise once the locations have been signposted. This form of reification of space proliferates on streaming sites and social media channels, encouraging more and more people to visit the locations in the films and turning coastal landscapes into tradeable commodities. Ormrod (2005, 44) has previously noted the recurrent obsession with peripherality in the surf film and linked this to tourist practices, stating that ‘tourism is implicated geographically in the ‘pleasure periphery’, in which certain geographical locations are designated tourist areas by virtue of their proximity to urban centres’. Whilst both films do attempt to keep their peripheral locations a secret, they promote the comparatively quiet surf breaks of Ireland as a destination, unintentionally aligning with Tourism Ireland’s desired marketing image for the Wild Atlantic Way, which itself involves a commodification of place and space. Surf films and online video distributed and displayed on social media channels such as Instagram and TikTok now play a key role in constructing the contemporary tourist gaze in many of the heritage spaces of the Wild Atlantic Way. This will inevitably lead to environmental consequences for the Irish coastline, including heightened plastic ocean waste and the potential disruption of coastal and marine habitats (Serong 2017). The ongoing commodification of the west of Ireland through surf imagery can be seen in an Instagram post (#FillYourHeartWithIreland) for the 2023 Tourism Ireland campaign, which begins by stating that ‘the island of Ireland is a surfer’s paradise…’, and features an interview with Irish professional surfer Gearóid McDaid, alongside rapturous imagery of surfing on a sun kissed Wild Atlantic Way in County Sligo.¹⁶ Although Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise appear to set out to oppose the commerce of modern surf culture (the title of Beyond the Noise suggests just that), they equally contribute to the neoliberal commodification of the public, liminal spaces of the Irish coast. It could be argued that Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise even represent the contemporary equivalent of an imperial nineteenth century travelogue, in which the lives and experiences of the tourists are deemed to be of far greater importance than the local population.

An analysis of the cultural politics of Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise may highlight how connected they are to dominant ideological discourses in surf films, but it would be incorrect to say that these discourses go unchallenged. As discussed previously, Kate Nash has shown that where there is domination there will be little political activity, yet it is clear that social relations in Irish surf films are more fluid, resulting in the contestation of power. For example, Irish surf films do not represent the monolithic dominant masculine structure that might be expected from a genre so historically dominated by men (Engle 2018); Orla Walsh directed Riders to the Sea (Walsh 2013), a narrative based short surf film funded by the Irish Film Board, which emphasises surfing as a vehicle for female empowerment in the surf. Donegal surfer, scientist, and writer, Easkey Britton is in many ways a ‘star’ of the genre, featuring in numerous films such as Waveriders, Into the Sea (Marion Poizneau, 2016) and Andrew Kaineder’s 2018 short film A Lunar Cycle (also produced by Finisterre, for whom Britton is a brand ambassador). Alice Rosaline Ward has emerged as a leading young female surf filmmaker and her films Ebb and Flow (Ward 2019), Other Land (Ward 2022), and Oishii (Ward 2023) further affirm the position of women in Irish surf culture.¹⁷ Furthermore, both Kaineder and Smith’s films portray a depiction of masculinity that diverges significantly from the hyper-masculine tropes often ­associated with mainstream surf films, from Kathryn Bigelow’s Hollywood thriller Point Break (Bigelow 1991) to the exaggerated - and real life - male bravado of Stacy Peralta’s documentary Riding Giants (Peralta 2004). Additionally, in terms of their inherent whiteness, it is important to highlight, as Wheaton does (2012, 67), citing Richard Dyer and Kyle Kusz, that:

despite its apparent ubiquity and privileged position, whiteness, like other (racial) identities, is multiple, fluid and spatially contingent; therefore, the forms of whiteness that operate in different lifestyle sport contexts need articulating in order to explore if they are, in all cases, sites of domination, superiority and privilege.

This can be observed on the west coast of Ireland, where the surfing subculture encompasses white people from diverse social, economic, cultural, and national backgrounds, to such an extent that the surf community in Ireland can be considered transnational, and even postnational, in its formations of cultural identity (Boyd 2014, 2017).

Wheaton (2013) has argued that ‘art-house’ surf documentary films have been a progressive development which challenge dominant discourses in surf culture, and the avant-garde Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise do just that. Neither film is deliberately exploitative of its locations, as has often been the case in surf film history, and neither film is beholden to the commercial world of surfing industries, regardless of the sponsorship of Beyond the Noise by Finisterre. As has been previously noted, neither film is produced as a means to gain economic capital, but rather as a means to acquire subcultural capital for both the filmmakers and the Finisterre brand (in the case of Beyond the Noise).

Both films also represent the values of the ‘soul surfer’ branch of surf film history, which rejects the exploitative political economy of industrial surf culture in favour of an anti-­commercial and arguably more spiritual approach to the activity. Both texts emanate from within the surfing subculture and they should be understood as such, with their own distinct signifiers and meanings which relate to subcultural capital. Drawing on Nash’s work (2001, 78), citing Anthony Giddens’ use of ethnomethodology, it is possible to argue that social structures are reproduced in the everyday practices of social actors who are knowledgeable about the practices in which they are engaged (2001, 78); a concept shared by the French cultural theorist Michel De Certeau (De Certeau 1984). For example, as has been noted, a contradictory element in the political economy of subcultural surf films is that they deliberately feature sponsored products such as branded wetsuits or surfboards which, over time, has created the idea of inauthenticity and commercialisation within the subculture. In contrast, Mickey Smith’s film eschewed this tendency and the director recognises this in his narration. Whilst Kaineder’s film is partially funded by a surf lifestyle company, Finisterre is an ecologically conscious brand – not dissimilar from Yvon Chouinard’s Patagonia - which produces sustainable wetsuits and clothing, and claims that ‘sustainability is key to everything we do’.¹⁸ Finisterre have also emerged as enthusiastic supporters of surf filmmaking in Ireland, sponsoring and offering prize money to the 2023 Irish Surf Film Festival. For followers of the surfing lifestyle, Smith’s aversion to commercial culture and Kaineder’s desire to escape commerciality means something symbolically ‘authentic’, whether this authenticity is real or imagined. The importance of these authenticity claims lies in the fact that it is:

one of the defining metaphors of traditional notions of culture. To be authentic is to be true to (consistent with) tradition, or locale, or one’s self. Thus something is authentic when it corresponds to how it would have been in its original state or before it had been significantly affected by external influences. (Chaney 2002, 84)

This idea of authenticity pervades the cultural politics of Irish surf films and the discourse is central to the symbolic narratives of Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise, which counter the perceived inauthenticity and commerciality of mainstream surf culture. For the surfing subculture and those who follow its lifestyle whilst opposing its commerciality, this discourse is tied to preservation of the authenticity of surfing’s original spiritual and pre-industrial principles. These principles are perceived to have originated from traditional Hawaiian cultures prior to their ‘discovery’, which thrived before the introduction of the plastics, pollutants and waste associated with modern surfing, and the effects of American imperialism on the Islands (Laderman 2014, 8–40). Irrespective of veracity, Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise imagine the act of surfing in Ireland as something more ‘authentic’ than in more traditional locations such as California or Australia, where surfing has become more crowded, commodified, codified and regulated as a professional sporting activity.

Concluding remarks

John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson argue that the history of sport ‘is an ongoing narrative of struggle that blends individual and collective action or agency with political, economic and cultural flows and forces’ (2002, 8), and that to understand the tensions between these relationships is critical to an understanding of the sociology of any given sport. This analysis has attempted to understand these conflicting tensions in the context of the cultural politics at play in Irish surf films, and to argue that ‘it is inadequate for social scientists to simply identify power relations’ (Wheaton 2013, 18). They must ‘learn to understand what the power relations mean to those engaged in it’ (Sugden and Tomlinson 2002, 9). In attempting to understand the cultural politics of Irish surf films, this form of analysis emphasises the acquisition of subcultural capital to a greater extent than economic capital. This also highlights the distinct subcultural dynamics of these films in which depictions of surfing in Ireland have become emblematic of a peripheral, ‘alternative’ surfing lifestyle space, contrasting with regions where surfing is commodified to a greater extent as a competitive sporting activity.

This has not been an exhaustive analysis of the cultural politics of Irish surf films. Other areas worthy of examination include a deeper examination of gender in Irish surf culture, the subcultural politics of online streaming, where Vimeo carries more subcultural capital than other video hosting sites, and the relationship between cultural politics and the construction of Irish national identity, where there are clear transnational and postnational qualities (Boyd 2017). At the core of the contradictory subcultural politics of Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise is whether they are – as they imagine themselves to be - representative of true ‘ways of life’, or the depiction of consumer based postmodern lifestyles (Chaney 2002). This is a relevant question in the cultural politics of both films since ‘authenticity is important because it concerns the possibility of ethical choices’ (84). Regardless of the distinct subcultural meanings in the films and their authenticity claims, it is impossible not to critique Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise based on their embedded neo-­colonial masculine tendencies and an often-hypocritical relationship with capitalism, particularly in the case of Kaineder’s film. Referring to the frontier capitalism of Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer, Joan Ormrod (2009, 48–49) concluded that ‘surf films turn the wave into a commodity to be sold to surfer audiences’ and that they ‘make known the unknown’. These processes of commodification can be observed in both films. Dark Side of the Lens and Beyond the Noise are aesthetically pleasing alternatives to mainstream surf cinema, but they are also performative fantasies for young, white, western, male, lifestyle consumers. Both films pose as soulful expressions of anti-commercial discourse but add to the ongoing commodification of space and place in the west of Ireland, becoming unintended partners to the marketing construct of the Wild Atlantic Way.

Postmodern lifestyles are representative of new reflexive ‘sensibilities’ by which members of subcultures make sense of meaning and make ethical and moral choices within their communities (Chaney 2002; Rojek 1995, 129). Foundational to this sensibility in the cultural politics of the surfing subculture is what Stranger (2017, 249) defines as the ecstatic, transcendent experience at the heart of surfing, which binds the subculture as a social form. In this sense, ‘the signs and images of surfing culture are inextricably linked to ecstatic experience that creates an expanded sense of self, anchored in nature and various layers of the surfing community’ (178). In its personal narrative and its phenomenological resonance with place, Dark Side of the Lens embodies the sensibilities of the soul surf ethos in its ‘purest’ form, whilst Beyond the Noise is unable to escape its commerciality. However, both are cinematically mediated attempts to convey the sublime, and potentially transcendent, sensation of surfing alone during an Irish winter, which is an integral experience in the subcultural politics of Irish surf films.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a comprehensive history of the surf film, see Thoms (2000), Beattie (2001), Engle (2015), Booth (1996).

2 Garage Entertainment is a streaming service dedicated exclusively to action adventure films.

3 Gillespie (n.d.) “The Irish Surf Film Festival”, Odysea, (accessed 07/02/2024) https://www.irishsurffilmfest.ie/].

4 “The London Surf Film Festival”. n.d. (accessed 07/02/2024) https://londonsurffilmfestival.com/. Examples of transnationally produced films from such places include Gaza Surf Club (Gnadt and Yamine, 2016), Into the Sea (Marion Poizneau, France/Iran, 2016), Under an Arctic Sky (Burkhard, 2017), and Corners of the Earth: Kamchatka (Frost and Williment 2023).

5 “The World Surf League”. n.d. (accessed 07/02/2024) https://www.worldsurfleague.com/.

6 Eckhardt, Jade. October 2023. “Paris 2024 Refuses to Move Teahupo’o Surf Comp Despite Olympic Tower Outrage” (accessed 15/11/23). https://www.surfer.com/trending-news/paris-2024-refuses-to-move-teahupoo-surf-comp-despite-olympics-tower-outrage.

7 The Wild Atlantic Way is a marketing term to describe a 2500km long tourism trail on the west coast of Ireland that was created in 2014 by Tourism Ireland. The trail passes through the counties of Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry and Cork, where many of Ireland’s best surf breaks are found.

8 Surf Down Under (1958), filmed by Browne in Australia, is arguably the first “transnational” surf film; a tendency that would become common in the history of surf films.

9 Nat Young (born 1947) is an Australian former World Champion of surfing who won the International Surfing Federation World Championships in 1966, and the Smirnoff World Pro-Am Championship in 1970. Young appeared in numerous surf films during the 1960s and 1970s, most notably Crystal Voyager (David Elfick, 1973).

10 The influential Irish surfing magazine, Tonnta, edited by Wayne Murphy, is no longer in print.

11 Carve Magazine. March 17, 2014. “The top 10 most played surf videos on Vimeo (accessed 07/2024) https://www.carvemag.com/2014/03/top-10-played-surf-vids-vimeo/.

12 Tom Blake (1902–1994) was a legendary “waterman” figure in surf culture. Born in Wisconsin, Blake relocated to California and then Hawaii, where he befriended Duke Kahanamoku, redesigned traditional Hawaiian surfboards and wrote books about the history of the activity of surfing and of traditional surfboards.

13 Beattie (2011, 118 -125).

14 This is also the title of a recent autobiographical book by Bundoran surfer Richard Fitzgerald, Coldwater Eden (Fitzgerald, 2022). Fitzgerald has had a role to play in key Irish surf films such as Eye of the Storm (Conroy, 2002) and Waveriders (Conroy, 2008).

15 For more on this trope, see Lawler (2010), Ormrod (2005, 39-51). Laderman (2014, 8-40), and Engle (2015, 66).

16 Tourism Ireland. 2023. “The island of Ireland is a surfers paradise…”. Instagram, November 2023. (accessed 26/11/23). https://www.instagram.com/p/CzOZIMmtpnF/?hl=en.

17 This redressal toward the lack of female representation in the history of surfing, and surf cinema, can also be seen in recent mainstream surf films, such as Girls Can’t Surf (Christopher Nelius, 2020).

18 Finisterre. n.d. “Impact”. (accessed 10/08/23). https://finisterre.com/en-ie/pages/sustainability