As the planking epidemic enters its second week, some tough questions must be asked. Is the Government doing enough to prevent youngsters from lying horizontally on inanimate objects?
Should the Prime Minister use the next COAG meeting to secure sign-off from the States on a national anti-planking strategy? If so, what form should the campaign take?
It’s simply not enough for Julia Gillard to declare herself tough on planking and tough on the causes of planking. Maybe we need a well-funded advertising campaign, backed up with appearances by celebrities in the schools, to drive home some powerful anti-planking messages. Friends don’t let friends drink and plank. Re-think your first plank. Drink. Plank. Bloody idiot.
The truly chilling thing about the planking juggernaut is that trends such as these are generally followed by even edgier forms of behaviour, whereby the young people seek more illicit risk-taking thrills in a bid to out-do one another. The schoolyard yo-yo craze of the 1970s was followed by the emergence of crack cocaine in the inner-cities in the 1980s. For a while we liked Abba, but then we got into Kiss. There are other examples that could also be made up and inserted here. Feel free to send them in.
The vertical world now seems a distant memory, as everyone from the staff at the Woolworths deli counter to the young women at Adelaide’s Walford Anglican School for Girls chooses to get horizontal. It is only a matter of time until Al Qaeda releases a planking video, or one of the nation’s top hospitals is mired in scandal when footage emerges of a patient being planked by a rogue radiologist while under general anaesthetic.
I am not sure what was sillier – the fact that Julia Gillard was asked by journalists for her views on planking, or that she chose to answer the question. Not that Gillard should be singled out. Tony Abbott has also entered the debate (he’s against it). As has NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, although to his credit he struggled to wipe the smirk off his face as he looked down the camera and said whatever you do kids, don’t plank.
At the other end of the humour spectrum were the Queensland Police who declared last week without so much as a smile that they were about to launch an “all-out blitz” on planking. Hopefully we’ll see those signs on the side of the road soon. Police now targeting: Planking.
It says something about our propensity for wanting the state to protect us from our own stupidity that politicians and law enforcement agencies are being dragged into this non-debate. The fact that people have died or been seriously injured pursuing their love of the plank is obviously terribly sad. But at the same time, it is hard to see what can or should be done about it. It’s understandable that the relatives of those who have hurt themselves, or worse, have lashed out and blamed this unusual epidemic on the evil of the internet and the rise of social media, and demanded that young people should be warned about the inherent dangers of high-risk planking. Celebrities such as Sam Newman, who unnecessarily confirmed his stupidity by planking on the balcony of his high-rise Melbourne apartment, have been condemned as poor role models.
Whatever. The whole issue seems to be such a painfully obvious question of personal responsibility, on a topic which is so patently ridiculous, that it’s hard to muster the air to enter the debate.
Society can sometimes resemble a Simpsons episode, or that excellent teen movie Heathers, whereby behaviour which is innately stupid invites an even stupider and laughably earnest response. The high point of the planking epidemic so far was the attempt by a group of teachers and social workers in Victoria to start their own zany - but safe - new craze called teapotting. Teapotting involves young folks being photographed while standing upright with one arm bent for a handle and the other one stuck out for a spout. That sounds like a whole stack of fun. The initiative struck its first hurdle though when a youth was photographed teapotting while standing on a horse.
As far as hysterical over-reactions go the good people at the Walford Anglican School for Girls take line honours for now. Twenty-two Walford girls have been disciplined for planking, despite the fact that their plank was very much at the lowest end of the spectrum. They were simply lying in a row on a staircase, not on the spire of the school chapel, or the roof of a bus or on a Great White Shark or anything. Despite this the school opted for a zero tolerance strategy and made it clear that they won’t take this kind of thing lying down. The students have probably been contacted by Slater and Gordon’s new planking unit and will be part of a pending class action with the people from the Woolies’ deli counter, given management’s failure to tell them in advance that they shouldn’t be photographed lying on top of the milk crates.
The answer to the question “what can we do about this disturbing new trend?” is hopefully nothing. I plank you for your time.
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