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Chapter Five - Conclusions.

There are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City...

The radical destabilising of [distinction] has far-reaching ramifications for cultural analysis as well as cultural production because it exposes the impossibility of any kind of cultural orchestration that somehow could assign functions and audiences to specific discourses in one grand system. (Collins 1989:26)

I would like to be looking over your shoulder and saying, "No, no - I didn't exactly mean it to be interpreted like THAT!" (Tilley 1991:193)

In gathering material for this research, I posed the question, "Is Surfers Paradise Utopia?" to various friends and associates. A number of them looked bemused and asked if I was joking, implying that the two were irreconcilable. The most interesting response, however, was as apparently superficial as the question: "I certainly hope not!" For my respondent, the experiences and acquired knowledge of social life are not rigid constructions. Upon reflection and in attempting to draw this research together, this retort is a fitting conclusion. It parallels the broader epistemological and methodological questions of this research. The postmodernity "discovered" at all levels of this research, from the most detached academic reflexivity to the cityscape itself is a recurrent theme despite the lack of any binding cultural "logic" beyond that of the interpreted parameters of this research. Postmodernity is, however, merely a tool for the expedient viewing of the world. Viewing and describing the world from a centre-field position requires a level of methodological flexibility that also prohibits any conclusion which is drawn from being the conclusion.

This, apparently, all-encompassing fluidity is reflected in the etymology of the word, "paradise." The pairidaeza was a Persian pleasure garden which contained different plants obtained from other places which were at that time under Persian control (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1969:649). The place was a collection of difference intended to be experienced briefly in contrast to daily life. The fluid arrangements available in considering Surfers Pairidaeza and its representative as the encapsulation of difference could be seen as confirmation of the place's postmodernism.

Surfers is not, however, a universal Utopia. My own personal reservations regarding the place confirm this assertion. Surfers is better cast as a signpost to Utopia. The distance remaining, however, until that impenetrable destination is reached may vary greatly, according to personal preference. Gazing upon Surfers and its representations, however, allows the spectator to compare these excesses of hegemonically constructed representations with their previous experiences of social life and arbitrarily label them as "good" or "bad," "same" or "different," or as part of the experience of the "Self" and "Other." These personal comparisons are political acts that can - as is the case with most tourists - completely disregard the residents and Other tourists. Singly minded tourists only "see" the sanitised "reality" which their preconceptions and daily lives allow them to comprehend.

The "message" of Surfers, if one exists beyond the fevered imagination of my own scholarship, is not one of caution, foreboding or rudimentary economics. Surfers blatantly presents the realisation of fiction. This task of making fiction "real" is undertaken by all the social participants of the site including the tourist. This overt blending of fiction with the physical city demands the constant attention of the consumer, the social participant and the spectator - embodied as a single person - simultaneously. Learning from Surfers may not be the intended purpose of the continual hegemonically-inspired representation-making but the lessons available are a result of this vigorous activity. The interfaces between the ideational and physical worlds of human existence have been altered by heightened representation-making in the Surfers environment to create a site that is supposedly spectacular to those accustomed to the daily urban life of advanced capitalism. Put more directly and simplistically, in Surfers "reality" is altered.

This different type of "reality" is reflected in the constant efforts of hegemonic groups to achieve spectacle for the tourist's gaze. This manufacturing of spectacle creates a varied collection of material culture items. These items, considered individually, do not, however, differ greatly from the consumer items of daily life. The same items considered together are the physical components of the ideational concept - Surfers. Material culture items, then, are part of the interface between the ideational and physical worlds of existence. Material culture items negotiate the boundaries between these two worlds of experience requiring input from both to exist. The human ascription of new meaning to their existence is sufficient to make them different to similar items of "ordinary" daily life regardless of the nonexistence of any physical disparity. Surfers is different because we - as a consumer/participant/gazer - want it to be different and, as a result, see it differently.

The consumer/participant/spectator who experiences the representations of Surfers hold their encounter as a mirror to their daily lives. This mediation of new encounters with old is a process that does not solely occur in the experience of Surfers, it is part of all ongoing human experience. The significance of these encounters with difference in the environment of Surfers is the primary importance they hold in this place. Surfers "lives" to be gazed upon, it is its most basic raison d'etre. To ensure the continuation of this procession of gazers, Surfers must be continually re-presented as spectacular in contrast to "ordinary" daily life. This ensures that any personal encounter with Surfers renders the spectator one of the many strangers in a strange land.

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