I didn't want people thinking it was the pictures that drew Chris to me, so I thought I'd better enter the great idea that really did catch his eye. I entered this as an extensive cut and paste in the nerve.com questionnaire format as one of my first personal ads.
Jordan & I came up with this idea in Ghana where we saw T-shirts with oddly decontextualized slogans like, "Dead Kennedys" "Hard Rock Cafe" "I was at So & So's Barmitzvah," "The Simpsons" etc. in situations which made us giggle uncomfortably; e.g., a Butthole Surfers T-shirt on someone trudging along barefoot in 100 degree weather balancing a bunch of dead chickens on their head.
The book would consist of a thoughtful introductory treatise on the journey made by T-shirts (and, by implication, textiles and manufacturing more generally) from 3rd World to 1st World and back. It would describe where and how the cotton was grown, the cloth made, T-shirts manufactured, assembled, something about the history of T-shirts as an advertising/self expression medium (the 1st world cultural context), and then how they end up back in 3rd world countries via charity programs (like Kiwanis International, which sends the stuff that people don't buy at its rummage sales to international church charities). Dwell on the painful irony of giving people back as charity what they've already made (book would be full of painful ironies), metaphor for extractive industries in general.
The rest of the book taken up with big glossy pictures of people wearing these T-shirts in these weird settings which would be very funny but since you had all this contextualizing you'd feel either guilty (because it's not funny!) or not guilty (because you know all that, you're so politically sophisticated that you *can* laugh, and you paid your dues by reading the intro.).
So as to attempt to mitigate the exploitation/objectification that is being done in the photos themselves could have some caption about the person's life, where they got the T-shirt and -- to add to the patronizing hilarity -- what they thought it meant! (plus, pay them $$ — I mean, $, or even more likely ¢). Could have total cost (labor, materials) of T-shirt, estimate how much had been paid for it over all, how much it cost in human terms (???? have some sort of lawyer sort that out who usually specializes in lawsuits where someone was killed and someone else needs to pay? what's the word for that kind of equation?).
Would give the profit to a political group doing watch dog work on textile factories, maquiladoras, Nike, whatever. Work would consist of traveling to a bunch of different countries taking these pictures, a little bit of research on the textile industry (which other people have already done, I'm sure, anyway). Include most of the major southern, Asian continents; Russia? Contrast somehow with the Japanese English language T-shirt phenomenon? Or anyway, explain. Would need a photographer and a writer to do it.
The other idea is just to have a website: inappropriatelycontextualizedtshirtsfromaroundthethirdworld.com -- or something like that -- maybe 3rdworldtshirts.com. Then ask for submissions from people who have travelled and taken pictures of these things already.
I honestly think I could get a book contract for this, or something.
Hi Mary: I think the legal term you were looking for is "wrongful death," but maybe Tim already told you that since I think you say this is an old great idea of yours. Still great, though. I would almost call it timeless.
I'd just like to report on my "scooping" -- which actually seems to have happened prior to my posting this, but NOT prior to my having had this idea and lured Chris into my trap with it. Anyway, PBS ran a movie called, T-Shirt Travels about the movement of 2nd hand clothes to the 3rd World. But - it doesn't talk about how they come from the 3rd world to begin with, I don't think. I haven't actually seen the movie yet - just looked at the website.