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.