The world’s local plank

One photograph I grew up with shows an uncle of mine lying prostrate at the foot of the Vatican altar, the occasion being his ordination by Pope Paul VI sometime in the early 1970s. The shot enjoys the uncompromising colour of period film and the privilege of angle of Vatican photographic officialdom.

Not that ‘plankers’ would care too much about that detail. They would be too distracted by the thrill of my uncle’s unique feat. ‘Planking’ the Vatican altar is no joke. Indeed I’d say it’s possibly the Holy Grail of the enterprise. One can only wonder what Dan Brown would make of it.

Or of planking in general as a matter of fact, for this is no ordinary enterprise. I only got to know about it thanks to last Wednesday’s The Times but my tardiness has probably got to do with the fact that I tend not to spend half my waking life on Facebook. In any case Christian Peregin got there first with one very odd heading, ‘Planking fad takes Malta by storm’.

The recipe for planking makes Delia Smith’s boiled egg sound like haute cuisine: “Lie face down with an expressionless face in a funny or daring location. Keep your legs straight, toes pointed and arms by your side. Take a photo and post it on Facebook.” Neurosurgery it ain’t, then – although some would argue it requires it.

I was intrigued enough to spend some time looking through the ‘Planking Malta’ page on Facebook and, hand on heart, I was instantly hooked. I’m probably not young enough to do much planking myself, at least not intentionally. But I just love the whole thing, for three reasons.

The first is that it’s really about young people (teenagers mostly, though the Facebook photos show some venerable Peter Pans) enjoying themselves doing useless things – ‘stuff’, as the polite juvenile jargon puts it. Having spent the more recent part of my adult life preaching that young people should seriously consider applying most of their energies to useless things (in part in preparation for later projects), it follows I should strongly recommend planking.

The second reason is that this is obviously a bit of fun and humour. The depths of my moral depravity are such that I think that fun and humour are good things.

Put it this way: If I were in the dock and I could choose between being judged by an upright and solemn citizen and one with a sense of humour, I’d choose the latter – provided my crime is serious enough, if you know what I mean. In sum, I think the bench (and Parliament, and public service, and so on) would be well served with a spot of moonlit planking.

The third reason why the whole thing struck a chord is where I must get all analytical and boring (and I won’t even get started on the social media implications). There are at least three rationales, which one may find singly or in combination, to planking. It may be useless but there’s rather a lot of sense to it. A bit like art in fact.

The first thing about planking is that it explores the relation between the human body (rather than the person, because the recipe says ‘expressionless face’) and space. Some of the best shots show plankers in positions that seem to defy gravity. One or two have even dared cantilever between two open balconies, although I’m not sure I’d recommend that variant to a friend.

In this sense planking belongs to a world which includes things like dance and another hot favourite of mine, parkour. Some will object that unlike these two it’s not exactly big on technique and choreography. Maybe, but then not everything has to be sophisticated.

The second reason I’ve taken so happily to this stuff has to do with the many photos that show people planking inside the home – across a sofa, on a kitchen cupboard, or even cantilevering between the two.

This fascinates me endlessly because what it really does is question the order and meanings of domestic space. Since our homes are so ‘familiar’ (or are they?) to us, that’s a set of questions we don’t normally ask. There are parallels with still-life painting here, in that unassuming everyday objects are made to look different – in this case through unexpected use.

One could write a tome about the third set of reasons. Fact is that Planking Malta’s Facebook page also shows some pretty subversive stunts, the sort of thing that would get you 20 years of hard labour in North Korea.

Two of these I particularly loved. The first shows a young lady planking Castille – lying face down across the steps normally used by grander specimens of humanity, that is. The second shows a student planking one of the hallowed lecture rooms at University to the obvious delight of his colleagues. (Let’s assume, safely I trust, that the lecturer wasn’t around.)

This really goes right to the heart of the matter. Planking makes a mockery of the social order by standing two things on their head. The first is obviously space – planking does things in the wrong places, intentionally. The second is time. Big Brother (read ‘police on guard outside Castille’, or ‘lecturer’) may be watching you, but not all the time. Let Him distract Himself for a second, and you may play.

Aesthetically interesting and subversive – what more could one ask of the leading and upright citizens of tomorrow? If there is hope, it lies in the plankers.

mafalzon@hotmail.com