| This dissertation uses classical social theory and psychoanalysis to examine the image of the surfer in American popular culture over the last century. The surfer has been a consistent and enduring American archetype; it signifies a way of relating to the world that is profoundly subversive of capitalist work discipline, of the separation between the human and the natural, and of rigid gender roles. In addition, although defenders of these values, from Puritan missionaries in Hawaii to mid-century critics of California "surf bums," have always been highly opposed to the surfing subculture, commercial forces use it to sell both tourism and products. In this way, the image of the surfer illustrates what Daniel Bell has called the cultural contradictions of capitalism, whereby the commercial side of capitalism taps into subterranean, repressed desires on the part of the public - precisely those desires most ardently repressed by the employer side of capitalism and the ascetic Puritan work ethic and disrespect for nature that Max Weber points up as its essence. |
