by Abby Sledge (class of 2019, majors in Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Visual and Dramatic Arts)
When thinking about a vacation to the coast, at least in the United States, the notion of “the coast” usually signifies either the East Coast, where land meets the Atlantic Ocean – home of rocky northern shores and the white sands of coastal Florida – or the West Coast, bordering the Pacific Ocean – the prototypical location for surfing. Which coast is chosen depends on proximity and what kind of beach is desired. The coast that tends to be left out of this mental equation altogether is the Gulf Coast, the southern edge of the United States that borders the Gulf of Mexico. Pay attention to the fact that even the name follows a different formula; while the East and West Coasts are named based on their location relative to the land (and the direction in which you must travel to reach them), the Gulf Coast is named simply for the body of water that makes it a coast.
The Gulf Coast draws the attention of the nation at large only during moments of disaster, when an oil spill devastates the region, or a hurricane sweeps across the land. If this seems like an exaggeration, consider the fact that out of three class days dedicated to the Gulf Coast in Krista Comer’s Issues of Access course, two were dedicated to oil and hurricanes. Only one day diverged from this disaster narrative, and even then one of two readings featured the broader topic of the “Blue Humanities,” as described by John R. Gillis, leaving only one – Jack Davis’ discussion, “Gulf: The Making of an American Sea” – to speak specifically about the Gulf. Even this class, interested in exploring conceptualizations of the coastal beyond what is typical, was restrained by the narratives of the Gulf that currently exist.
Each time a major catastrophe strikes, the media turns its eye towards the Gulf – for a moment. News outlets brandish endless images of oil-covered birds or flooded streets and ruined homes, while countless articles keep a running tally of the number of injured and dead along the disaster’s path. Owners of summer homes on picturesque beaches like Gulf Shores, Alabama, or Destin, Florida, keep track of the damage to their property and, if it is too much to recover from, shrug and begin to consider different locations for their next vacation spot. The attention of the nation is not held for very long; people removed from the disaster shake their heads at the destruction for a week or two, perhaps donate some money, but by the time the floodwaters recede the lingering ruin is no longer so newsworthy, and the rest of the country moves on. Those unfortunate enough to live in devastated areas are left on their own to recover, or to move on to less hurricane-prone pastures.
It is for many of these same people, for whom the danger of a hurricane is a constant reality, ever-possible and always looming not particularly far in the distance, that the Gulf Coast takes on its other identity: not a site of intermittent catastrophe, but a destination. Most of those who live adjacent to the East or the West Coast go to those well-represented places when they want a beach vacation, and even some of those for whom the Gulf is the closest shore are willing to make a longer trip to reach one of those more idealized places. The East and West Coasts are the romanticized locations for movies like Carousel (1956, set in Boothbay Harbor, Maine), Big Wednesday (1978, based on the writers’ experiences in Malibu), and Romeo + Juliet (1996, set in fictional Verona Beach but clearly Californian in locale). Even films that never venture onto a beach, like Rebel Without a Cause (1955, set in Los Angeles) or West Side Story (1961, set in New York City), present their settings with enough beauty that the desirability of the East and West Coasts is maintained despite the conflict contained within their stories.
The Gulf Coast, on the other hand, has few films to represent it. Wikipedia, in fact, has a “List of films set in New England” and “Category: films set in California,” neither of which is exactly a comprehensive list of East and West Coast movies but are still closer than the search result nearest to films set on the Gulf Coast: “Category: films set in Alabama” (Wikipedia). The movie the “Issues of Access” class watched for a sense of filmic representation of the Gulf Coast, Urban Cowboy (1980), is set in Houston, not quite a true coastal city, and spends its duration contemplating a very Texan conception of a cowboy; the closest it comes to discussing water or the Gulf is a brief mention of the oil industry. (Take a look at any of the pieces under the “Oil” heading on the Institute Gulf Coast’s home page for a deeper investigation of the significance of oil to constructions of identity along the Gulf Coast.) Thus the best example of Gulf Coast representation in film hardly represents the Gulf at all, because it is too busy grappling with separate, equally disheartening representations of Texas as a whole.
Without countless films glorifying its beautiful beaches and bustling, cultured cities, representation of the Gulf Coast is left primarily to popular perception (in between disasters, that is). Unfortunately, popular perception of the Gulf of Mexico is frequently less than positive. Many people may have only seen the Gulf in images taken after oil spills, of tar-covered wildlife and rainbow slicks on its surface, or after hurricanes, when the water is muddied by an overabundance of rain and debris. That, combined with knowledge of the oil production that sustains much of the Coast’s economy, leads to a belief that the Gulf is dirty, polluted, and industrialized, and therefore unsafe.
Certainly, there is a great deal of industrialization, especially industrialization pertaining to oil, along the Gulf Coast. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “[o]ver 45% of total U.S. petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf coast, as well as 51% of total U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity,” with a total of 235 natural gas processing plants in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas (EIA). It is also true that there is pollution to be found along the Gulf Coast. Of over 1,700 Superfund sites – extremely hazardous waste sites marked for cleanup by the 1980 Superfund program – 195 are situated in the states that form the Gulf Coast; there are six sites within 10 miles of Houston, a city known to be a cancer cluster (National Geographic). (It should not, however, be ignored that there are 600 such sites along the states on the East Coast, and nearly 200 in California, Oregon, and Washington – the favored coasts are not any less hazardous than the Gulf by this measure) (National Geographic).
In Texas in particular, though, there is more behind the nation’s disregard of the Gulf Coast than disdain and fear of toxicity, despite the importance of those factors. If only disdain kept the Texas Gulf Coast from the list of vacation coasts, which might seem to be the case when looking at the less prototypical waters of beaches like Galveston Island, or Port Aransas, then nothing would keep beachgoers from the more stereotypically picturesque shores of places such as South Padre Island or Whitecap Beach in Corpus Christi. For fear to play the most important role would be hypocritical since, as noted above, the Gulf Coast is no more toxic than the East and West Coasts.
No, the failure to consider the Texas Coast as a beach space, or indeed as a natural space in general, arises out of a connected failure to consider water in general. When one thinks of “nature” in Texas, one does not first think of water; with the state’s dry climate (only 2.5% of its total area is water), the natural usually encompasses desert plants, wide open skies and sunshine. Such an imagination does not consider the bodies of water that run through the state – like the Colorado River, one of 15 major rivers in Texas, which flows directly through Austin, the state’s capital – or the water that surrounds it – the Rio Grande to the west, the Red River to the north, and the Sabine River and the Gulf of Mexico to the east (Wikipedia). Although the state’s unusual shape makes it difficult to quantify, between all of those bodies of water Texas is surrounded by water on what amounts to approximately three quarters of its border.
It is also made difficult to imagine water in Texas as a means to connect with nature when that water is so frequently used for another purpose: profit. Man-made reservoirs along the Colorado River are often used for recreation, but in increasingly regulated, developed, and commercialized means. One of these reservoirs in Austin, Lake Travis, has only 15 public access points – of which only five do not require payment of a fee – across a body of water that can reach a surface area of 20,000 acres at full capacity (Texas Parks and Wildlife). In Houston, our class kayaked on a relatively undeveloped bayou, taking advantage of department funding to participate in activity that usually would have cost each of us upwards of $60 – clearly not an accessible way to connect with nature (Bayou City Adventures). In New Braunfels, famous Texas waterpark Schlitterbahn uses water from the Comal River in its attractions, and while this does provide access to natural water, it is both deeply removed from its natural context and also available only for a price. All around the state, water that was originally purely undeveloped has been utilized for recreation and profit in manners that all but erase its connection to the waterways it comes from.
The picture painted here of how the Gulf Coast as a whole and the Texas Coast more specifically are perceived might seem to be a grim one. Undoubtedly, it will take time and effort to improve and maintain, along the Gulf Coast, the kind of water knowledge that the Institute for Women Surfers has been working towards in California since 2014. The Institute’s Gulf Coast Initiative is even now beginning the same sort of work in and around Houston, and it is not alone. Eric Granquist, for one, brings a unique and heartening perspective of Texas water through his experience as a kayaker. (There can be a link to Sierra’s piece here, or they can be combined into a larger piece, whichever works better for her piece and the site generally.)
Bibliography
Bridges, James, director. Urban Cowboy. Paramount Pictures, 1980.
“Category:Films Set in Alabama.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_Alabama.
“Category:Films Set in California.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_set_in_California.
Davis, Jack E. “Gulf: The Making of an American Sea.” YouTube. Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, 19 May 2017, Gulfport, FL, Gulfport History Museum, www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-sFKNMqeQM.
Gillis, John R. “The Blue Humanities.” Humanities, vol. 34, no. 3, 2013, www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/mayjune/feature/the-blue-humanities.
“Gulf of Mexico Fact Sheet.” U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Energy Information Administration, www.eia.gov/special/gulf_of_mexico/.
“How Close Are You to a Superfund Site?” National Geographic, National Geographic, www.nationalgeographic.com/superfund/.
“Lake Travis.” Lake Travis Access, Texas Parks and Wildlife, tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish/recreational/lakes/travis/access2.phtml#areaa.
“List of Films Set in New England.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_set_in_New_England.
“Texas.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas#Geography.
“Weekend Houston Skyline Tour on Buffalo Bayou.” Bayou City Adventures, bayoucityadventures.org/tours/skyline.html.