Having just returned home from the winter OR Trade Show, I was pleased to see that my article about the new Adam Ondra movie, as well as Ondra’s big-league wobblers, created such a lively online dialogue. There were many people who seemed to be right there with me, while there was an equal number of people who were appalled by my critique. Most people seemed to be in the camp of agreeing that the video could use some work, but that I was probably being a little too harsh on the Wonder Kid.
One guy criticized my review of the movie for being “almost entirely subjective”—I thought that was pretty funny.
My younger sister Victoria, who I’m proud to say is the new director of the Reel Rock Tour, was bemoaning the fact that she had to attend her very first Trade Show the same week that her older brother “made everyone mad” with his film review.
Jamie Emerson posted a comment on my Facebook page, which he then decided to use for a post on his excellent hub B3Bouldering.com, thereby creating what seems to have become the de facto rebuttal to my article, and therefore making Jamie and me online nemeses, even though in real life we are friends (and further, even though we seem to agree about more points than we disagree).
I think if I were to re-write my article, I’d make a few points more tactfully. But that said, I stand by what I wrote in terms of my critique of the movie. I thought “The Wizard’s Apprentice” was disappointing. Jamie thought it was the best sport climbing film he has ever seen. We’re still friends. Remember: it’s a movie, which in terms of separating people by their subjective tastes, falls second only to pizza toppings.
It’s funny because, when I wrote it last Tuesday, I honestly didn’t think the review was all that inflammatory. I knew it would get mixed feedback, but what I hadn’t accounted for was the degree to which Adam Ondra has become a true hero to the climbing community, which is to say, he has become a symbol upon which the community has subscribed their beliefs, attitudes, strengths and values that it wants to see reflected in him. Values which may or may not actually be there.
As he said, Jamie’s post wasn’t a review of the movie—or even strictly a critique of what I wrote—but rather an explanation of why he finds Ondra to be such an appealing and important climber. (Let me just state for the record that I think Ondra is the best rock climber in the world right now, and that I find him to be incredibly inspiring. I’m rooting for him as much as anyone else.) One thing that Jamie—who has done probably more than anyone to have deep discussions about what things are graded—writes about is Ondra’s courage in terms of being open and talking about grades.
Aside from reading the comments on Ondra’s 8a.nu scorecard, I still don’t really see how Ondra is all that unique in terms of what he has done for climbing grades. One of my biggest disappointments with “The Wizard’s Apprentice” was that we don’t get to hear Ondra, in his own words, discuss his overall philosophy about how grades factor into the greater climbing experience.
The fact that Ondra thought Chilam-Bilam was probably only 9a+ and much easier than Chaxi-Raxi, but posted both routes on his scorecard as 9b is just one example in which the “Ondra-is-the-most-courageous-person-in-the-world-in-terms-of-honest-grading” argument seems less than all encompassing, in my opinion. Certainly, Ondra has repeated more 9a’s than anyone else in the world, and therefore he has a better idea of what 9a means than anyone else—but just calling something soft or hard on his scorecard, or adjusting the grade by a letter or two, is cool … but is it really all that different from what most people on 8a.nu do?
Anyway, I get the sense that Ondra probably does care deeply about grades—but to what degree? I’m still not sure. I hope that one day someone makes a documentary about Ondra that allows him the freedom to speak openly about this and many other climbing-related issues.
Another point I want to quickly address is that I saw a couple of comments, including on this blog, that criticize me for criticizing Adam for his tantrums, but then not criticizing Sharma for screaming while on a route. Clearly (do I even really need to explain this?) there is a big difference between letting out a try-hard scream while on route and pitching a five-minute shrieking fit every single time you fall.
One response—which I find disturbing, personally—that I’ve heard to my article is the sentiment that to be a really good climber, to be operating on Adam’s level, you need to be so emotionally invested that when you fall, it’s not only understandable but completely acceptable to throw these apocalyptic wobblers. I don’t agree with this, and I think that Ondra is perhaps setting a bad example here.
But again, just to be clear, in no way was I saying it’s not OK to throw wobblers when you fall. I wrote: “I’m not opposed to people throwing wobblers … Releasing pent-up energy is a good thing … Caring deeply about your project [that you curse] when you fall is a good thing because it means you are alive and you feel.”
However, I also don’t think that climbers should be held to different standards just because one person is onsighting 5.14c and the other person is hang-dogging 5.10. If you went out climbing with someone who is “only” a 5.10 or V1 climber, and they had Ondra-style cursing/screaming fits after every time they fell, you wouldn’t praise this person for their commitment and passion to the sport. You wouldn’t laud them for being an inspiring climber. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even go climbing with them.
I understand that Ondra is only 18, and he is still a kid, but I think it’s worth giving him a little nudge (perhaps done a little more gently than I did last week) that says you can still be dedicated to climbing, you can still try really hard, you can still push the boundaries of the sport and you can also be an emotional adult. In fact, that may just make him a better climber in the long run.
That said, I want to make one thing very clear, which I regretfully didn’t make clear last week: I would MUCH rather see Ondra wobble, be a loud character and make John McEnroe look like an unemotional robot then see him become, in climbing videos, another sponsored zombie who sounds like he has been given ambien and told to read some kind of company script that talks about the harmony and spirituality experienced while climbing.
I love Ondra’s fire and I respond to it positively, for the most part. Still, I stand by my original article which was merely an attempt to at least breach the subject of launching titanic wobblers after every sport-climbing fall (the most common of climbing experiences)—especially as these fits, more than anything, were the only “words” we really saw come out of Ondra’s mouth in “The Wizard’s Apprentice.” It’s my opinion that toning it down a bit might not be such a bad thing, and if I’m the only person who seems willing to say that to climbing’s Wonder Kid, then so be it.
