By: Mosquito (from Sweden)
He originally surveyed members of APK and other websites, and is now sharing the end result.
Le Parkour
The spread of a subculture and an art
SUMMARY
The report concerns the spread of Le Parkour, a sport/art focusing on efficient movement over the obstacles found in one’s path, usually in the city. The art was founded in France, by David Belle, and got some attention there in the late nineties. Among other things, the movie Yamakasi is heavily centred on Parkour.
First, I have looked into Parkour as featured in media in different countries, to see when and how Parkour was first seen outside of France. I mentioned Yamakasi above, released in 2000, and then there is Banlieue 13 from 2005. Outside of movies, the first mention of Parkour in British media is from 2002, and in the US from the same year. In Sweden, Dagens Nyheter was first, early 2004. Two British documentaries, from 2003 and 2005 have also been influential in spreading Parkour.
Second, I have conducted a survey among traceurs, people who practice Parkour, and compiled the result. I have found that even though many have taken up Parkour after seeing mention of it in a newspaper or seen it on their TV screen, the internet has been the largest single influence on them. I concluded that this has to do with the state of the parkour community, not comparable to the communities of other sports it’s size.
BACKGROUND
I have practiced Le Parkour for two years now, discovering it in early 2004, and it has since been one of my main interests. This, together with my interest in subcultures and alternative lifestyles, led me to this project. I realized that there was no clear source available documenting the spread of Le Parkour, only documenting it’s early history. I decided to research the history, spread and media coverage of the art.
There is something about Le Parkour that is incredibly compelling, especially to young adult males, and in a way; I set out to find what it was. Parkour has spread throughout the world in a way I have not quite encountered before, as a sport without instructors, clubs or competitions. I wondered how it could spread like this, especially since it is not exactly prominently featured in mainstream media.
The Problems
My first question was how the early history of Parkour looked, this being necessary to move on to recent history. My second question was when the art first started outside of France, and third, what kind of media coverage it has gotten since. Last, I set out to do a survey on personal level, questioning people about when and how they got into Le Parkour. The survey I designed can be found in the attachments part of this report.
Purpose
The purpose of my project has been to document the spread of Le Parkour, mainly for my own gain, out of curiosity, but also to show this art to those who would read my project, and in a way, as a resource for the Parkour community, a way of giving something back to the art that I practice.
Originally, the purpose was curiosity alone, but has since moved on to the other areas that I mentioned. As I wrote earlier, Le Parkour is an art with an incredible appeal to many, and also an art that has exploded in recent years, becoming more and more famous.
Method
I started of using the means available to me. There is no documentation of Le Parkour in literature, so I had to rely on somewhat looser sources, mainly on the internet. Information has been taken from a number of community webpages with many practicing traceurs who share information in this way. Most of the information concerning Parkour in the media I have located by searching through newspaper websites and asking traceurs about their featuring in or seeing Parkour media coverage.
I used the same media during my survey, putting the questionnaires up on these websites and relying on the answers being emailed to me over a period of two months, from late November in 2005 to early February 2006. I compiled the answers and drew my conclusions from them, dealing with when and how people became involved with the art.
IMPLEMENTATION
I started out with writing a brief article on the history of Le Parkour, which I then rewrote in English, and saved. When I read the article almost four months later, I decided to scrap it and rewrite it at a later stage. I decided that my primary focus on this article was flawed, and that the history of Le Parkour could be fit into another part of my report.
I proceeded with writing a survey with three questions that would give me the statistics required, and posting them on three Parkour communities on the internet, to cover the American, European and Swedish demographics. Since I can’t speak French, I was unable to post an inquiry on any French communities. In hindsight, this would have been a very good idea, seeing as how France is the country of origin.
I left the surveys for two months, collecting around one hundred answers from people with different levels of experience in Parkour, and then collected and counted the answers that I had received. One of my major problems was that I was unable to access one of the sites where I had posted my survey on the day I was compiling the answers.
Overall, the plan was followed, except for my delaying any writing concerning the history of the art, and a one day delay waiting for the website to become available.
Further, I searched for newspaper articles, movies, documentaries, music videos and commercials that featured Parkour in one way or another. This research went without any problem, since in most cases; I had been given tips on what to look for. The idea behind this search was to discover when and how Parkour had been showcased in media in various countries.
The last part was writing a few ‘articles’ for the report, as a way of explaining Le Parkour. This has proven challenging, because of the different ideas and interpretations. Since David Belle, the founder of Parkour, doesn’t speak English, his message is not always clear, and translations are scarce. Therefore, a lot of this is my personal opinion, and maybe not entirely consistent with the opinions of other traceurs.
RESULT
What is Le Parkour?
Le Parkour is an art/sport based on motion with a purpose. It is about travelling through different environments using only your body as a tool, moving swiftly between A and B.
It is also the art of escaping, and reaching. In a way, this focus of parkour is a kind of self-defense, being able to outrun and lose any pursuer, while remaining in control of your actions, never being phased by any obstacle encountered while running.
The application of Parkour also transcends into the philosophical, about finding a way past a task or a problem on a different level. Parkour is concerned with efficiency, using what movements and paths are most efficient for the situation.
Many traceurs, Parkour practitioners, do not get involved with the more philosophical sides of Parkour, preferring to keep their training on a more play-related level, simply moving around freely or training techniques. In a way, this is still philosophical parkour, in that they take the most efficient path toward their own goal.
Either way, the movement is the center of parkour. Never a single movement with a dead stop at the end, but the continuous moving between on a path.
The art was founded by David Belle in the early 1990’s in Lisses, a suburb of Paris. He was inspired by his father, a fireman and army veteran, who was fond of obstacle courses, “le parcours de combatant”, and he passed his passion to his son, inspiring him to add obstacle course training into his child-games. David and his friends practiced more and more seriously, and were encouraged to take their training beyond the physical limits, to train in a way that would enable them to use their skills in everyday life.
When training for Parkour, focus is usually heavier on individual techniques since it is important to become familiar with ways to move that may seem a bit frightening or strange at first, in order to learn them perfectly for when they are needed. Some tracuers like to play games of different kinds, such as Parkour Tag, as a way of practicing the chase/escape scenario.
Parkour in the Media
The first article I found concerning Le Parkour was from the British BBC, concerning the station’s Rush Hour commercial that was airing at the time (2002). In the commercial, David Belle used Parkour to get home from his office, choosing to run over the rooftops instead of standing still in the traffic below. For many soon-to-be British tracuers, this was their first view of Parkour.
I believe there have been a few articles in French newspapers before this, but I was not able to locate them, mostly because I don’t speak French. David Belle’s friends, who later dubbed themselves Yamakasi, featured in both a movie and a TV-series before the Rush Hour advert in England, but the movie Yamakasi was not released until afterwards outside of France.
In the same year, 2002, David and his friend, Sebastian Foucan featured in a US campaign for Nike shoes. Foucan featured in a TV add called the Angry Chicken, which got similar results in US as David’s Rush Hour commercial did in the UK. There had been a few tracuers before in these countries, but this is when the scene really started growing.
These TV adds, and the movie, have in common that they show parkour as long and high jumps and drops, with a few shorter movements in between, a very visual kind of parkour, suited for marketing and catching attention.
In 2003, Sebastian Foucan and friends went to UK and filmed a documentary for Channel 4, where they demonstrated Parkour all over the famous buildings in London. This documentary, Jump London, let to an almost explosion of Parkour in the UK, and was seen in other countries as well. In Sweden, the “Making of Jump London” aired on Discovery a few times in 2004.
In early 2004, Parkour was mentioned for the first time in Swedish media, by Dagens Nyheter, on the 18th of May. Already, there were Traceurs in Stockholm, and there had been two national Jams held there. In early July, a third was held, and this was where I first experienced the art. Prior to the exposure in DN, most traceurs had found the art through friends and over the internet, watching videos of French practitioners.
Over in America, Parkour was getting featured in among others the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal and the New York Times at different times through the year. Newspaper articles usually result in more people picking up the art, maybe because Parkour differs a bit from the extreme sports that it is compared to. A written piece can be just as influential as a filmed one.
In a way, it can be said that 2005 was a year when Parkour came closer to the spotlight. In the UK, the documentary Jump Britain was shown first late 2004, and then released on DVD in early 2005. This was the sequel to Jump London, with Foucan and a number of British traceurs, or freerunners as they referred to themselves at the time. The documentary was one size bigger then Jump London, featuring parkour done all over the country. British parkour websites were flooded with newcomers interested in the art. It was also shown in the US later that year. In Sweden, Parkour was shown in a add campaign, and written about in many newspapers, among them GP, Aftonbladet, Sydsvenskan, Frida and ÖP.
The movie Banlieue 13 didn’t get the best of reviews for dialogue or story, but the general consent was that the action was spectacular. Many traceurs loved it for it’s very realistic feature of Parkour. David Belle played the lead. I have not talked to anyone inspired to being Parkour because of this movie, but it is well worth a mention.
2005 also saw the creation of Freestyle Parkour, a different interpretation of the original art. I will not touch upon it further, as I consider them too different to be grouped together. It mainly developed a following in the UK.
For 2006, Sebastian Foucan has again been seen on TV. He featured, very briefly, in a Parkour sequence in Madonna’s video Hung Up. He will also feature in the new Bond movie, Casino Royale, in a parkour scene, shot in the Caribbean. And Yamakasi got it’s second sequel, but they have also moved beyond the realms of Parkour, into other things.
The Survey
All together, I received around 70 answers for my survey, which is not much considering how many traceurs there are. There are no numbers for traceurs world wide, but there are many who practice the art, even though it remains very small compared to any kind of sport, extreme sport or trend-activity (like casual skateboarding). Of those who responded, half, or 52% had practiced parkour for somewhat less then one year. 39% had practiced Parkour between 1 and 2 years, the category where I belong myself. The remaining 9% have practiced the art for more then two years. This, I believe, is a very representative spread of traceurs, seeing as how the art has amassed practitioners with the Yamakasi movie and the Jump Documentaries. One of the persons from Sweden, who answered, has practiced parkour for five years, one of the very first in the country, which means that Parkour came to Sweden as early as 2000-2001. I do not have equivalent results from other countries.
For the second question, 20% answered that they had learned about Parkour from any of the two Jump documentaries, and a further 20% that they had been introduced to it by an already practicing traceur. 17% had found it through a website, reading about it on the internet, while 13% had found their way to Parkour through watching videos over the Internet. I should mention that there are many websites that specialize in showing cool or funny videos, and a few Parkour training videos, mainly of David Belle, have found their way onto such sites. 8% respectively credited a newspaper article, a TV commercial and the movie Yamakasi. The remainder had heard about it from a friend, who was not himself involved in Parkour.
As I believed previously, the Jump documentaries have been instrumental in spreading Parkour, especially in the US and UK; two countries with large numbers of traceurs compared to Sweden. A whole 30% found Parkour over the internet, a number that I believe shows why Le Parkour has been able to spread so far in so few years. With no instruction needed, it is easy to pick up the art on your own guidance. I believe that while any TV exposure creates waves of people taking up Parkour, it is the internet that has been essential to Parkour’s spread. Those seeking to start training have a huge pool of advice, techniques and contacts to dip into, something that is not true for many other sports without governing bodies.
Last, I posed a question regarding appearances in any media (newspaper, radio, TV) concerning Parkour. 52% responded that they had in fact been featured in media at least once. Most of these had featured in the local newspaper or on a local radio show. My main reason for this question was to get some help in finding where Parkour had been shown in any large media, but I also concluded that Parkour is a great art to practice for attention, even if I believe most traceurs are not the kind who always wants to be the center of attention.
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