Revisiting the Beach

Marina de Stacpoole

Waves, sand, clear blue sky and water. Few images conjure up the feeling of escape and pleasure a tropical beach can offer. Looking out to sea, the possibilities can seem endless. The cultural antecedents for this can be found in numerous works of literature and film. ‘The Blue Lagoon’ offers a glimpse of possibility of what it might be like to live in paradise, and questions whether the European is able to find happiness without ‘culture’. The more recent film ‘The Island’ shows us how humans are almost programmed to desire living on a deserted Island. The beach has perhaps become a modern day vision of paradise, evolved from the biblical ideological model of the Garden of Eden. Can such paradise really exist though for those who are born to such an environment? Or do economic realities make the beach of today a post-colonial territory for those in the west? This brings as back to man’s age old search for paradise. Can such a place ever exist with tensions of war and poverty never too far away form apparent spaces of bliss? Does Western man feel they have an entitlement to a ‘slice of heaven’? Does a beach environment bring us as close to that reality as possible?