Gary Osmond

‘Putting up your Dukes’: Statues social memory and Duke Paoa Kahanamoku

Public statues that commemorate the lives and achievements of athletes are pervasive and influential forms of social memory in Western societies. Despite this important nexus between cultural practice and history making, there is a relative void of critical studies of statuary dedicated to athletes. This article will attempt to contribute to a broader understanding in this area by considering a bronze statue of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian Olympian, swimmer and surfer, at Waikīkī, Hawaii. This prominent monument demonstrates the processes of remembering and forgetting that are integral to acts of social memory. In this case, Kahanamokus identity as a surfer is foregrounded over his legacy as a swimmer. The distillation and use of Kahanamokus memory in this representation is enmeshed in deeper cultural forces about Hawaiis identity. Competing meanings of the statues symbolism indicate its role as a ‘hollow icon’, and illustrate the way that apparently static objects representing the sporting past are in fact objects of the present.

'The bloke with a stroke' - Alick Wickham, the 'crawl' and social memory

Solomon Islander swimmer Alick Wickham is a celebrated figure in Australian, Solomon Islander and international sport history. His iconic status is inextricably linked to the myth that he introduced the crawl stroke, commonly known as freestyle, to Australia and hence the wider world. The focus of this paper is not the mythic qualities of Wickhams contribution to the crawl stroke, but rather how this myth has been enmeshed in a range of discourses. Through the lens of postcolonialism and by focusing on the creation of social memory — in literature, postage stamps and documentaries — Wickhams contribution to the crawl stroke has been represented in three dominant ways: as a racial discourse centring on the social construction of the ‘nimble savage’, as part of Australian nationalism in terms of the nations contribution to world swimming, and as a discernible dimension in the construction of Solomon Islander identity after independence.

Myth-making in Australian Sport History: Re-evaluating Duke Kahanamoku's Contribution to Surfing

This article argues that the foundation story of Australian surfing history, the claim that Hawaiian swimming champion Duke Paoa Kahanamoku introduced surfboard riding in 1914–15, is a myth—understood not as an outright falsehood but as an accentuation of one version of the past over others for culturally determined reasons. Overlooked in the exaggerated emphasis on Kahanamokus contribution is prior surfboard riding in Sydney. This article examines new evidence of Australian surfing history, reassesses Kahanamokus contribution, and analyses the myth as a cultural discourse reflecting its cultural appeal and articulation with Kahanamokus strong social memory.

‘Look at that kid crawling’: Race, myth and the ‘crawl’ stroke

Australia and, more specifically, a Solomon Island schoolboy named Alick Wickham, are credited with creating the swimming racing stroke, the crawl, or freestyle as it is known in contemporary parlance. Wickhams contribution constitutes a popular, celebrated and enduring legend. While there is some factual basis to the legend, Wickhams contribution is a sport creation myth. The myth offers an example of the intersection of sport and constructions of Pacific islanders in the racial discourse of the Federation period. As a cultural discourse, the myth reflects how Wickham was accommodated as an exoticised islander and socially acceptable ‘black’ sportsman.

Enveloping the Past: Sport Stamps, Visuality and Museums

Postage stamps are a significant but largely overlooked item of visual culture. This article examines how sports stamps represent the past and the ways that museums package the sporting past through philatelic exhibitions. Using the concept of the historical ‘story space’, we focus on the textual representation of cricket stamps and an associated philatelic exhibition in Australia. These representations of the past will be examined through a combination of both semiotic theory and the ‘new museology’. As case studies, we focus on three individual cricket stamps and the depiction of these and other stamps in an associated philatelic exhibition: ‘A Summer of Cricket: An Exhibition of Art, Stamps and Stories’ curated by the Post Master Gallery, Australias national philatelic museum, in 2005–6. Via such exhibitions, stamps extend beyond their initial utilitarian purpose and become important representations of the sporting past. To critique how this is achieved, this article asks: How do stamps semiotically represent cricket history? How did the gallery curate an exhibition based around cricket stamps? What curatorial philosophies and approaches provided a particular logic of representation and plausible coherence for visitors? And what narratives were generated by exhibiting stamps in a broader context of the relationship between cricket and national identity? Through these questions, this article reflects on the nexus of stamps and museums in visually narrating sports history.

'Modest monuments'?: Postage stamps, Duke Kahanamoku and hierarchies of social memory

The postage stamp issued by the USA in 2002 to commemorate Hawaiian athlete and cultural icon, Duke Kahanamoku, represented the culmination of a 30-year plus lobbying campaign involving a wide cross-section of interest groups. Via this prominent example, this paper examines postage stamps as an under-explored form of social memory and historical evidence and questions the weight and importance of stamps relative to other types of social memory. Intuitively, postage stamps might appear to be a relatively insignificant form of evidence; certainly, they have not been widely utilised by historians, including Pacific historians. Through an examination of the origins, semiotics and impact of the Kahanamoku stamp, this paper argues that stamps have the potential to reveal broad, underlying cultural forces and meanings, and re-evaluates their commemorative and interpretive effectiveness alongside other, complementary forms of social memory.

Reading Salute: Filmic Representations of Sports History

The Black Power Salute protest by athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith on the medal dais during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, supported by silver-medallist Peter Norman, has been recognised as a seminal moment in sports history, Olympic history and race relations. This article examines the filmic history of this event as represented in Salute, a 2008 film documentary. We argue that understanding contemporary films requires more than an analysis of on-screen representations and is vastly enriched through embracing the ways in which films are circulated between producers, directors, advertisers, merchandisers and audiences. Accordingly, this article combines a textual analysis of Salute with an exploration of how new media influence the dissemination, reception and consumption of the film. The textual analysis explores Salute as a documentary film biography through dominant narratives and documentary strategies that characterise this genre of filmic history. Associated new media are considered from two perspectives: how they facilitate the active intervention of the film-maker in the reception of a film, and how new media provide opportunities for audience interactivity with films and film-makers. Linking new media with a textual analysis of Salute provides insights into the ways in which the past is circulated in the present.

Forgetting Charlie and Tums Cavill: social memory and Australian swimming history 1

Abstract This article explores the concepts of forgetting and remembering in the context of two Australian swimmers, brothers Charlie and Arthur (Tums) Cavill, who died in the USA while performing swimming stunts in 1897 and 1914, respectively. While eulogised as notable Australian athletes, today they are effectively forgotten. Forgetting is understood as an ineluctable facet of memory, a partner with remembering in the creation, expression and dissemination of social memory. The forgetting of the Cavill brothers is explored as an example of the selective, present-centred dimension of history-making, linked to the decline of sporting stunt and spectacle and the ascendency of modern, competitive racing.

Aboriginal Rules: The Black History of Australian Football

This paper is interested in the significance of Australian football to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia. In particular, this paper is interested in the cultural power of football and how it has foregrounded the struggle and highlighted the contribution that Indigenous people have made to the national football code of Australia. This paper also discusses key moments in Indigenous football history in Australia. It questions further that a greater understanding of this contribution needs to be more fully explored from a national perspective in order to appreciate Indigenous peoples’ contribution to the sport not just in elite competitions but also at a community and grass roots level.

A Bird’s-Eye View of the Past: Digital History, Distant Reading and Sport History

Advances in computer technologies have made it easier than ever before for historians to access a wealth of sources made available in the digital era. This article investigates one way that historians have engaged with the challenges and opportunities of this ‘infinite archive’: distant reading. We define distant reading as an umbrella term that embraces many practices, including data mining, aggregation, text analysis, and the visual representations of these practices. This paper investigates the utility of distant reading as a research tool via three newspaper case studies concerning Muhammad Ali, women’s surfing in Australia, and homophobic language and Australian sport. The research reveals that the usefulness, effectiveness, and success of distant reading is dependent on numerous factors. While valuable in many instances, distant reading is rarely an end in itself and can be most powerful when paired with the traditional historical skills of close reading.