Imagine..and “Center for Leisure and Culture Services” at INT presents a seminar with Brian Wheeller.
HUMOUR AT THE SEASIDE: NO LAUGHING MATTER?DONALD McGILL: KING OF THE SAUCY SEASIDE POSTCARD.
Brian Wheeller holds degrees in Economics, in Applied Economics, in the Economic Impacts of Tourism, and in American Studies. His doctorate on Critiquing Eco/Ego/Sustainable Tourism contextualises the debate within the wider arena of tourism planning and management, policy and practice. In addition, his interests have evolved and broadened over the years, his current research revolving around the links between travel, tourism and popular culture - in particular literature, art, photography, film, music - and their relevance to contemporary tourism thinking. His research also embraces humour, image and use of the visual in tourism and tourism education.
He has considerable experience, nationally and internationally, of auditing, validating, examining and initiating an array of tourism programmes. And of acting as external examiner for around 30 PhD candidates. He is also fortunate, and appreciative, in having been invited as keynote speaker at a number of international conferences.
Brian is Associate Professor of Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands: Adjunct Professor of Tourism, University of Tasmania, Australia: Visiting Professor of Tourism at the University of Plymouth: Honorary Professor of Tourism at the University of Wales: Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University and at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. And is a Fellow of the Association for Tourism in Higher Education.
HUMOUR AT THE SEASIDE: NO LAUGHING MATTER?
DONALD McGILL: KING OF THE SAUCY SEASIDE POSTCARD.
For millions, the risqué, saucy seaside postcard was once an integral part of the holiday routine. But no more. Postcards have, to a large extent, been superseded by technology. And, many would argue, by changing tastes. The saucy seaside postcard is of another time. Or is it? From pier revue to peer re-view, the paper explores the legacy of Donald McGill – the undisputed doyen of the genre.
The past master of the pithy innuendo and double-entendre, he was the King of Seaside Saucy Postcard. And well might he wear his crown. Although his kingdom was extensive, the seaside was his true domain. It was there in the heady atmosphere of the hustle and bustle of the milling crowds that McGill’s medium worked its magic. And it was there, in the realm of the raucous, that sales of his cards burgeoned as the visiting hordes took to his humour with gusto. With sales of over 300 million cards, it is the sheer volume, the extraordinary proliferation of his work that astounds.
Primarily for a British audience, the saucy seaside postcard has no real equivalent elsewhere. And it is, too, essentially English humour we are looking at here, captured and contextualised in time and space – itself, in turn, epitomising the English seaside resort of a by-gone era. “McGill’s cards had a suggestive sense of vulgarity about them which has ever since been associated with the English seaside and typifies an aspect of English life and humour” (Staff, 1979, p73). Perhaps no single resort is more so evocatively captured by, nor representative of, McGill’s work as Blackpool of the late 1940’s, and 1950’s.
Although an initial, cursory glance at content may suggest historical/spatial parochialism, actually the presentation explores the (underrated) significance of McGill to the study, at a macro level, of today’s humour (and tourism). Deploying McGill’s life and work as exemplar, and contextualised within the passing of time, parallels are drawn with evolving attitudes to ‘acceptable’ holiday experiences. The focus is on the concomitant class perspectives of high culture/ low culture and the inherent divides therein: how we choose to ‘judge’ others - the traveller/tourist: travel/mass tourism divide; and the hypocritical class values that underpin, or rather undermine, much of today’s thinking on tourism planning, notably the charade of ego/eco/sustainable tourism.
The absurdities of censorship, as applied to McGill in the 1950s, are touched on. And the presentation concludes with a brief ‘visit’ to the small, but exquisite, McGill museum opened in the summer of 2010, on the Isle of Wight, UK.
I have always believed that as academics we should eschew the absurd notions of objectivity, declare our respective interests and proceed enthusiastically. Here, looking at McGill, is no exception. Indeed, he is the perfect subject with which to embrace another long held belief of mine….the power of the visual. The emphasis on combining the ‘personal’ with this ‘visual’ translates into the deployment of narrative and extensive use of eclectic images in the presentation of this paper, one which assesses McGill’s relevance to the study, and analysis, of contemporary tourism.
Staff, F (1979) The Picture Postcard and its Origins,
London, Lutterworth Press
Please register to : alh.ioa@cbs.dk no later than 07th of May.
The seminar is free of charge and for everyone who might be interested - academics or practitioners alike.
Imagine.. is a research centre at Copenhagen Business School. imagine.. conducts research on the experience economy and organization of creativity in firms, projects and networks.
Please contact Ane Lindgren Hassing for further information alh.ioa@cbs.dk