Planking has been described as 'actively lying down'. It is an absurd play activity, where one sinply lies down in a unfamiliar place. I suppose for me, the absurd fascination of planking and it's success in social media comes down to the juxtaposition of the body in space in a new and unprecedented manner. Andrew day, an influential parkour photographer in Europe, writes about this phenomena in his Master's Thesis. He specifically talks about the importance of the image, the position of the body in relation to space, and the creative positioning and re-interpretation of interaction with space, which although directed towards the filming and photography of parkour, similarly applies to planking. In fact; planking has been reffered to as "Parkour for lazy people".
The planking craze is not new, and has been known in other areas of the world as 'the lying down game' and has been practice for at least a few years as a locative photo-iterative prank. Even earlier it may have been known as playing 'superman' although the locative photo-iterative component may not have been popular until the advent of digital cameras. Mostly planking did not seem to raise the 'ire' of many and planking continued without any notable condemnation. In the last week, the play practice of 'planking' has grown in popularity in Brisbane, since a youth made headlines after he was arrested for alledgedly planking on a police car in Gladstone. The youth was charged with being "Found on Police Establishment Without Lawful Excuse"and will appear in court soon. Quickly social networking sites capitalised on the media activity and network groups developed and quickly gained followings. Some groups even used the oppurtunity to make charitable donations to local groups, such as the guide dogs and Young Care Australia. Not only was this play simply fun, but out of that fun some purely altruist activities began to emerge setting an exciting positivist trend for this play activity! Fun had legs and play was bringing not only psychological benifit to the ciy, but also a very percievable social and (albeit initially rather minor) economic benifit!
In a terrible twise of fate, several days after the popularity explosion of planking, a Gladstone man died in Brisbane, and it was quickly alledged that the man died whilst planking from an apartment balcony at Kangaroo Point. In response; Queensland Police issued a statement reminding 'plankers' to think about the nature of their planks before-hand, reminding practitioners that if pushing their 'planks' to the extreme, they faced being charged with 'un-regulated high risk activities' (under the summary offences act 2005) and 'tresspass' if their 'planks' were too extreme, and posed a risk to public safety. The Victorian police reacted in a similar fashion.
It is important to note, that despite the sensationalist media reporting, the police have not banned or condemned planking. They have condemned planking dangerously at risk to others. It comes down to the individual to consider what is appropriate and innapropriate. Undoubtedly though, deviancy labelling will occur, and some portion of the 'planking community' will react to this labelling with more extreme actions...
Unfortunately planking, unlike parkour, does not have an established discipline and tradition of gradual incremental skill growth and peer supported progression. Instead is seen by some to exist in a competitive fashion, outdooing peers. This may not necessarily be the case. Parkour is seen by non-traceurs as a competitive activity, when it could not be further from the truth, however this does not stop youth who are unfamiliar with the ethos of parkour to act in a certain way which may be unhelpful to the reputation of the play activity.
It will also be interesting to see how the courts interpret the summary offences act if more people are charged. The 'unregulated high risk activity' subsection was specifically drafted to address base jumping in urban areas, but has been attempted to be used against parkour traceurs a few years ago when someone vaulted what is essetnially a seat (although the judge at the time kicked the matter out of court), an amateur builderer climbing a lower wall of suncorp stadium (not the roof, just part of the facade), and more recently against bridge jumpers during the floods earlier this year (which was a pretty stupid move by the jumpers).
