Time, Myth and Rhetoric in George Greenough and Albie Falzon’s Crystal Voyager (1972).

Joan Ormrod, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

joanorm@lineone.net

This paper uses Kenneth Burke’s notion of dramatism as the basis for an exploration into the rhetoric of Greenough’s Crystal Voyager. Beginning with a discussion of Burke’s ideas about the use of identification in rhetoric as being closely implicated in the construction of ideology, the chapter places Greenough’s work and life in the context of the early 1970s. Burke argues that a culture constructs myths from rhetoric and these myths are the basis for the beliefs of that culture. This paper explores the myths constructed by surfing culture in the later 1960s and early 1970s , relating them to the ways in which Greenough uses myth in Crystal Voyager. Greenough’s use of myth in Crystal Voyager may indicate why audiences identified with the film and why that film was relevant to the specific cultural and historical moment.

The paper stresses the events in Australian and American culture that influenced the film narrative such as drug culture, Vietnam and flower power. There is also a discussion of surfing culture in the early 1970s in which longboards were replaced by shortboards, and Australia gained ascendancy over American surfing. With the introduction of shortboards (in which George Greenough was a key shaper) the concept of riding the tube, with its associations of birth, death and timelessness, became the focus of surfing performance.