by Jon Lackman | 5 November 2007 | Uncategorized
In the September 2007 Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Pamela Turton-Turner has contributed an article, “The Role of Ridicule in Naked Charity Calendars.” According to the author, there appeared at least 556 naked fundraising calendars between 1996 and 2007. One produced by “elderly women in a small Tasmanian village in 2002″ generated $100,000 in sales. The most successful one has so far pulled in over $2,000,000.
Why is it that small-time charity workers in remote regions around the world, rouse big-time publicity in their fundraising activities … and, in many instances, handsome financial rewards for causes through extraordinary fundraising success[?] … What is the logic of signification underpinning naked charity calendars? … I draw upon Kristeva’s (1982) psychoanalytic concept of abjection and Eco’s (1984) semiological theory of humour … to propose that interest is aroused in naked charity by the carnivalesque nature of the spectacle and cathartic effect. By that I mean that naked charity is both the object of curiosity and sanctioned as acceptable by the public, if non-classic (abjected) bodies present as strategic jokes within an erotic frame of reference … According to the philosopher Georges Bataille: ‘The Middle Ages gave eroticism its place in painting, but relegated it to hell’ … Bodies in naked charity calendars are sanctioned by conformity to several strictly defined criteria. They need to conform to rules which ridicule the body; ensure sanitization of abject topology of the body; demonstrate sacrificial logic; and present as sexually passive to reiterate objectified form.
The wages of transgression are steep: after unsuccessfully retailing their own naked charity calendar, “the East Grinstead Spinner and Weavers Guild [was] left reeling with a &15,000 debt, and 9,000 calendars for pulping … [U]nhappily for them … they displayed their nipples.”
