Is Alex Honnold Marty Supreme? 

I have a purpose. If you think that it's some kind of blessing, it's not. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through. - Marty Mauser

In 2018, Alex Honnold climbed his way to fame with his documentary, Free Solo. This documentary won multiple awards and bellayed the rock-climbing scene into the mainstream.

That was a strange, fleeting year. I still remember how quickly rock-climbing took over the centre of my focus. I didn't even know it was that big of a thing, but the Free Solo documentary demonstrated how there was a population of passionate climbers who'd dedicated their lives to climbing. Alex Honnold was one of the crazy exceptions; one of the only climbers to tackle a treacherous rock face, El Capitan, that nobody had ever free soloed before. At least, not the path that he was taking.

It was really interesting to witness the world of rock-climbing because I had never even been aware of it before. The documentary showcased the mental hurdles a climber had to overcome in order to make any climb and the immense amount of training that goes into preparing for these climbs. Alex, in particular, stood out because of how much he was actually sacrificing to be able to do what he loved. It was his passion, climbing; so much so that it seeped into other aspects of his life, including his relationships. The documentary captured all of it, the bad, the good, the ultimate victory when he is finally able to accomplish his goals. Honnold made rock-climbing feel like an artform.

Then, Honnold disappeared. I mean, at least from my media awareness.

I might be the exception, though; I know that in the wake of the Honnold free-soloing craze, rock climbing actually became a big thing (not competitively but like #vanlife). The new trend was rock climbing and van-lifing it before settling down, although that might be specifically a niche Vancouver fad. Regardless, Honnold had his brief moment of fame and now was mostly out of the spotlight.

That is, until last week when he randomly resurfaced on my feed again.

Another treacherous climb? Taipei Tower? Live streaming on Netflix?

The first thought that came to my mind was why? I couldn't help but question the value of the feat. It was the same as when he dug his heels to conquer the El Capitan rock face. The whole documentary, crew, family, Sanni included, were all asking the very real question: why do this? Why risk his life? What was the achievement, really? Yet, through it all, Honnold stood his ground. He dug ten toes down; nothing, and I mean not even his family, could convince him otherwise. I'm pretty sure that, in the documentary, this became a source of contention between him and his wife (that, and her accidentally dropping the rappel and causing him to get seriously injured in the first place).

Arguably, at least with how I remember the documentary, the rationale for his stubbornness was that he wanted to overcome his injuries and prove his physical capabilities. It was his life's work, all the climbing and training, to be able to free climb one of the most treacherous walls. But what happens once that is achieved?

Apparently, Taipei Tower.

Now, I don't know if this was just me, but when I heard that Honnold's next goal was tackling a really tall tower (11th tallest in the world)... I felt indifferent. It sounded so anticlimactic, so devoid of the grandeur of tackling an unclimbable wall on the side of a cliff, or a mountain, or something. In Free Solo, it was Man v. Nature., Man v himself. Now we got, what? Man v. Manmade metal lego blocks?

Not to reduce the iconic architectural success that is the Taipei 101 Tower, but I couldn't help it, I started getting existential. Especially when Alex made it to the very top of the spiral and pumped his arms in the air in victory. All I could think was that inside, there was a staircase and elevator made for the very purpose of travelling from the bottom of the tower to the top.

I started thinking of Free Solo again, this time under a different lens. Something about Alex pursuing his dream struck a nerve this time around. Maybe it was because I recently caught a screening of Marty Supreme, and now the glorification of sports was all I could think about. It just felt so performative. The actual goal that needed to be conquered, the spectacle of it all; retrospectively, Alex stayed a part of my memory because he was weird, because he was willing to do anything it took in order to fulfill his goal of conquering El Capitan. The documentary never tried to paint him in another light. He was weird and that was what made him special. Could it be more blatant? Alex was giving Marty Mauser.

The thing about Marty Mauser is that he wants to be the best of the best ping-pong players. It's a fun, horrendously unapologetic take on the price of ambition, but also for a dream that is the size of the edge of a nail. I think it was the pen business tycoon who asked the right question: who cares about ping-pong? Marty delves into this whole spiel about how a hundred thousand people watch the table tennis competition and that it is the next big thing, you know, like all people do when trying to sell their self-importance. His ping-pong ball business idea also becomes this kind of end-all-be-all proposition, which yes, takes over his life and identity, but when you zoom out a bit, it loses any kind of prestige.

I felt the same way about Honnold. You know, years ago, through the documentary on his El Capitan endeavour, he sold rock-climbing as this ultra-important, life-changing experience. Now, watching him clamber up glass and metal, I felt like I was watching Marty's final battle against Endo. There was the personal comeuppance that Marty needed, for sure, but in the grand scheme of things, the challenge wasn't even real. It didn't end up meaning anything.

The only major difference, and maybe a huge factor as to why I couldn't take this climb as seriously as with Free Solo, is that Alex himself changed marketing tactics. I mean, he told The Independent that he did it for the "embarrassing amount" of money. Ironically, within the same interview, that embarrassing amount of money proved to be minuscule in the grand scheme of things (reminscient of Marty? I think so!).

What caught my attention was the way that Honnold posed his passion for climbing versus the spectacle of it. In many interviews, he talks about how ever since Free Solo, he'd done passion climbs, away from the camera. The money, for him, was payment for having an audience. His mentality, in my opinion, differentiates him the most from Marty, whose entire method was to garner an audience he didn't actually have. You could argue that Honnold's claim that he'd climb the tower for free just for himself adds to the authenticity of his pursuit. Maybe it makes him comparatively anti-capitalistic: he isn't here for business, he's here for himself. I think it's also important that he's got this whole environmental charity going as his side project. Unlike Marty, Honnold also exists outside of rock climbing (check out honnoldfoundation.org).

So, yeah, I watched snippets of the 95-minute climb; I read some of his interviews prior to the climb and afterwards; I saw his little fist pump on the spiral of the building, or the scary dragon part of the climb. I even read about his brain scan that determined that his amygdala functioned slightly less than normal, which could account for his lack of fear response. Why is that important? Not sure. Maybe it indicates a slight similarity as to why Marty and Alex seemingly function at a different level: Failure doesn't even enter their consciousness.

Okay, that might be a stretch. Nonetheless, I think there is something timely about the fact that these two pieces came out so closely together. This year, in particular, there's been an underlying shift towards pushing narratives that revitalize our hope, if not faith, in the system. By taking something that seems comparatively insignificant or valueless, like ping-pong or climbing a tower, and then selling it to the mass media as this huge spectacle, and then also capitalizing a shit-ton on it– I mean, that's the American Dream, isn't it?