Week 4- In Class Writing

1.) I think the film was both an ethnographic study and a work of entertainment. They were exploring a subculture that has numerous stereotypes and were trying to find out the customs and rituals of skateboarders. It was also a form of entertainment in a sense that they used plenty of footage and pictures to surround the interviews that they conducted.
2.) The interview subjects were the actual skateboarders who started the revolution of skateboarding. That in itself makes them significant because we get the insiders point of views about the subculture, not the opinions of outsiders.
3.) The skateboarders had a solid belief about “members only.” They mentioned in the documentary that anyone who decided to surf in their area that didn’t live there were harassed. They would throw objects at them until they’d leave the surf area. Same went with skateboarding.
4.) The piece is organized in chronological order. They start the film out by describing how skateboarding began and continue on showing out it evolved. Seeing where the sport began helped me gain a better understanding of the subculture.
5.) I always considered skateboarders to be punks who were anti-social. In a sense I still hold this stereotype because in the film they mentioned that they hung around the same people, which was a pretty small group. They weren’t very friendly with people who weren’t a part of their subculture.
6.) I trust that the creator is telling the truth because he’s an insider and knows the facts of the subculture. However, at the same time his opinions could be considered bias because he could be persuading his audience to see only his views on the subculture.