Lloyd2013

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Lloyd2013
BibType ARTICLE
Key Lloyd2013
Author(s) Mike Lloyd
Title ‘Sudoku with buttocks’: coupling images and captions in The Adventures of Naked Man
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Categorial Analysis, Images, Captions
Publisher
Year 2013
Language English
City
Month
Journal Visual Studies
Volume 28
Number 1
Pages 52–66
URL Link
DOI 10.1080/1472586X.2013.765212
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

The Adventures of Naked Man is a newspaper caption competition that began life in Melbourne in 1998, then moved to two New Zealand newspapers. The competition’s protagonist is the sole naked person in a cartoon-like drawing where, owing to some convenient object or body position, his penis is obscured from sight. Entrants to the competition submitted a caption to complete the drawing, and with the obscured penis as the understood focus, entrants mostly (but not always) used double entendre to make risqué humour. The sexual slant of the competition resulted in surprisingly little negative reaction, with the episodes continuing for many years, generating loyal followers. It is argued that part of the reason for the competition’s longevity is its Sudoku-like mental challenge, which involves ensuring tight connections between categorisations of people and the activities in which they can normatively be inferred to be engaged.

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