A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Smurfy said to me, “I heard that someone died from planking. I was really worried until I realised I’d misheard the radio report.” We both chortled like the witty raconteurs that we are and then went on to list words that rhyme with wee-wee.
After the death of that guy in Queensland, the standard position on planking (other than lying rigid on something unlikely) was that it was bad and stupid and only bad and stupid people did it. This was reinforced a couple of days later by a woman who, when talking about the Queensland death at a dinner party, ended up in hospital after an unsuccessful dining chair demonstration to her perplexed mates.
Emergency Contact came home one day to report that a mate of hers had asked, “So, let me get this right. It’s people pretending to be wood?” Which to me, is a perfectly incorrect although amusing explanation and exactly why I’m not anti-planking.
Planking is funny. It’s anti-art but occupies exactly the same space. It is something that exists for no other reason than itself.
It requires skill. Not everybody can do it, as evidenced by the deaths and injuries. I’m not being flip about that.
Planking, when done properly, is anonymous. A really good plank is done with the face away from the camera, which for some reason amuses me even more. Animate objects pretending to be inanimate - in odd places. It amuses for the same reasons we find faces in inanimate objects amusing. For the same reason that the ‘lampshade on the head’ is still referenced to describe certain absurd party moves, planking relies on the absurd, the surreal and quite often the most picturesque and high places. The implied back-story is always, "How the hell did they get there?" and even better, they're not mugging for the camera, they’re pretending to be a lost bit of wood. There’s nothing in that sentence that I don’t find amusing for a couple of seconds and let’s face it, it’s the net. It’s an ephemeral source of entertainment.
I don’t think we should get all disdainful about people trying some danger-art for grins, and certainly don’t think we should get all upset when it occasionally goes wrong. Think of how much more famous Stelarc would be if he plummetted to his death with a bunch of tear marks in his back. That’d be good for no-one.
Finally, some reasoned commentary on the topic. I too find planking rather amusing - and viewed the outcry with incredulity. I'm pretty sure that a few people have tried the dangerous activity of 'sitting' and thought they'd up the ante by 'sitting' on a balcony railing with similarly disastrous results - where's the outcry about sitting huh?
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