Water Boys... Japan

[Torchwatch]

Thanks to Byron for giving us the links to the U Tube Water Boys videos.

In the album “The Final Cut” made 30 years ago Pink Floyd noted that Japanese school children were killing themselves; “It cannot be much fun for them, beneath the rising sun when your children commit suicide.”

We learned that in an intensive exam based education system those children who were “holding the class back” were being driven to suicide by the rest of the class.

Parents were ensuring that homework was completed and returned. Failure to keep up led to parents arranging extra tuition in the evenings and being entered into Summer School during the holidays. Even the home was no escape from the intensive education system.

A strange new phenomenon appeared, children would lock themselves in their rooms, for years. The only way that parents knew they were still alive was that meals left outside their bedroom doors were being replaced by empty plates. These children could not even talk to their own parents as language did not allow an opt out from intensive education.

Then in 2001 came The Water Boys movie. A school comedy about a bunch of boys learning synchronized swimming despite being useless swimmers. After being abandoned by their pregnant teacher and exploited by their dolphin trainer coach they suddenly become popular, recruit a big gang of other boys and put on a Busby Berkeley style display.

The original movie is available on DVD with English subtitles and a couple of short sections are available on U Tube. I must admit that I have not seen the full movie.

In 2003, 2004 and 2005 came spinoff TV series, (available in full on U Tube). Somewhat formulaic and reusing characters from previous previous films as the seed for the new film they each end in fantastic Water Boy shows immediately after the big boy swimmer casts are issued with identical Arena swimming briefs.

The first 2 TV series portray the Japanese education system; the intensive exam based school work and the elitist school sports that ignore the needs of anyone that doesn't fit in. They show the School Student President (Head Boy/Girl) as a person who can block anything contary to their own ideas, and the School Swimming Club Captain who controls the swimming pool and won't let anyone else have any pool time. It's not suprising that kids who were useless at schoolwork and no good at competitive sport killed themselves.

Then came boys sychronised swimming. It's a girls sport based on ballet, yet the Japanese with their culture of martial arts kata (dance form of fight movements) added energy, acrobatics and lots of boys in brief swimmwear to create something amazing.

You cannot compete in boys synchronised swimming because no one else does it, you can only work to do your part in the routine as well as possible and to help each other. Co-operation becomes the antedote to bullying where the success of the team becomes greater than the contribution of any one person.

The movie and TV series makers then made it a comedy; starting with making the school misfit boys take up a girls sport and making them do it in tiny swim briefs, they then put every obstruction in their way. They were banned from doing it, they were denied access to swimming pools, they were constantly told to concentrate on their school work (and forget synchro) and synchro started getting them girl friends.

Waterboys depends on just happening to have access to 50m outdoor swimming pools and a climate that allows you to use them for any length of time without hyperthermia. British schools don't have those kinds of facilites or climate, maybe American and Australian schools do. Hiring a public indoor pool is colossally expensive, so if Water Boys were to happen here it would have to start very small in an indoor pool in someones garden. Any adult initiating or getting roped into a Water Boys club would rapidly become of interest to the police and subject to criminal records checks.

The alternative name for the 3rd Water Boys TV series was Water Boys Final, they knew before they started filming that it wouldn't happen again. The spectatular shows that left the participants and audience weeping were made for the camera and would be over.

Water Boys have left us with a few spoof male synchro teams, in Sweden. UK etc, made up of middle aged men they perform synchro shows that lack the energy of the movies young casts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROpVJ...eature=related
The energy lacking in these older male teams strangely seems to have transferred from the Water Boys to women's sychronised swimming which despite the plastic smiles and rather robotic movements have adopted some more dynamic effects.

For the characters in Water Boys it is their last summer at school, their training climaxes at the School Festival, after that they give up synchro, work for exams, graduation and dispersal. A summer they will always remember.

[Byron]

Well, a lot to read but most absorbing to learn the background to something I had enjoyed stumbling upon (and I shall now never forget Carmen).

I was most impressed by the boys' energy and perfect timing (even the body shapes and heights seemed to be identical) and it proves that synchro displays can be done as well (if not better) by the boys as the girls.

The reference to conformity in the oriental psyche was also topical, having just watched part of the vast army of North Korea chillingly goose-stepping with perfect precision before their new Great Leader in PyongYang.

Btw as you mention Busby Berkeley's film sequences from the past I am
also reminded of an old pic I can no longer trace - so anyone out there
with any ideas?
These were pre-war water skiing shows put on at a place I think was called Cypress Gardens in Florida and guys on the skis would support girls on their shoulders to make a quite spectacular pyramid (and how they stayed intact in the towboat's wake I'll never know).

[Torchwatch]

The actors in Water Boys were all selected as good swimmers with no dancing or synchro experience. The main characters had of course to be proper actors and swimmers.
My guess is that they were university students on their summer break, if you watch the TV series you can actually see them ageing between episodes. It must have been quite stressful to take over a school in the summer break and push out an 11-12 episode series 3 years running.

When you watch the 3rd TV series you will discover that proper synchronised swimming takes place in a 3m deep pool. The Water Boys always operate in school Olympic racing pools (50m long). They are able to throw each other out of the water with great force as they are standing on the bottom but have little room for error while passing each other underwater at different depths.

The only 3m deep pools available for training and competition are diving pools, and sections of larger pools under the diving boards. As this limits space proper synchronised swimming cannot really perform the mass spectaculars that Water Boys achieve.

[Byron]

The diving area of my local pool was 12ft 6ins under the boards. A good public facility now sadly closed (but diving had long previously ceased anyway due to one of the usual elf 'n safety diktats).

Btw the joke amongst the Olympics organisers was that they would have to give away spectator tickets for the women's synchronised swimming events.
Proved wrong however as now apparently completely sold out.

[Byron]

Not what I remember at Cypress Gardens as these seem to be post rather than pre war pics - but the ski pyramids are there:

http://www.suprmchaos.com/cypress-gardens_041303.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7043/6...d094d5c6_m.jpg


For added amusement, the Japanese boys making a big one on land
(note how neatly they dismantle):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3oxr3UBu_E

[Crail]

Byron, very impressive pyramid video.

[PSDave]

Cypress Gardens was active all the way into the 90's. It had a lot of owners toward the end but it wasn't until 1999 that the water skiing shows were eliminated due to costs of production.(knowing insurance companies, they were probably much of the costs) The park tried to bank on old theme but failed to secure a target demographic. Lego Land now stands on the the former attraction. Hopefully much of the gardens were preserved. From the pictures I have seen, it was quite beautiful.

[Byron]

Quite a history (1936-2009 and Legoland opened 2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WIKI_CG_09.jpg
It seems the 30 acres of gardens are separately owned by Polk County.

Things got difficult after 9/11 apparently and later hurricane damage
to the rides.
Public donations had raised USD 13500000 to save it but eventually
closed for good.
In its heyday it was a film location on many occasions and in the
water skiing activities 50 world records had been broken there.

[WaterPolo]

Most male swimmers struggle with synchronized swimming because of a more limited flexibility and inferior buoyancy than their female counterparts.

Synchronized swimmers are incredibly strong swimmers with high levels of endurance that match or exceed most male swimmers. A female synchronized swimmer has much more difficult training regimen than male water polo players. Some males however can compete at the level of women in the sport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDJc8tC5i4g