Tattoos and Popular Culture: Cultural Representations in Ink 9781839092183, 9781839092152, 9781839092176, 1839092157, 1839092173

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TATTOOS AND POPULAR CULTURE

SocietyNow SocietyNow: short, informed books, explaining why our world is the way it is, now. The SocietyNow series provides readers with a definitive snapshot of the events, phenomena and issues that are defining our 21st century world. Written leading experts in their fields, and publishing as each subject is being contemplated across the globe, titles in the series offer a thoughtful, concise and rapid response to the major political and economic events and social and cultural trends of our time. SocietyNow makes the best of academic expertise accessible to a wider audience, to help readers untangle the complexities of each topic and make sense of our world the way it is, now. Poverty in Britain: Causes, Consequences and Myths Tracy Shildrick The Trump Phenomenon: How the Politics of Populism Won in 2016 Peter Kivisto Becoming Digital: Towards a Post-Internet Society Vincent Mosco Understanding Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union Graham Taylor Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them Katrin Tiidenberg Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online Crystal Abidin

Corbynism: A Critical Approach Matt Bolton The Smart City in a Digital World Vincent Mosco Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century Ellis Cashmore Reality Television: The TV Phenomenon that Changed the World Ruth A. Deller Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting Trine Syvertsen The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach Helen Jefferson Lenskyj

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TATTOOS AND POPULAR CULTURE Cultural Representations in Ink

BY

LEE BARRON Northumbria University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2020 Copyright © 2020 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-83909-218-3 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-83909-215-2 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-83909-217-6 (Epub)

CONTENTS Introduction

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1. Visible Ink: From Subculture to Mainstream Culture

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2. Tattoos in Film

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3. Tattooing and Reality TV

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4. Social Media and Digital Tattoo Communities

101

5. Tattoos and Popular Personalities: Inked Celebrities

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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INTRODUCTION

As the 21st century progresses, the practice of tattooing, the bodily process that ‘creates a large dermal wound embedded with particles of pigment and liquid ink’ (Farley, Van Hoover, & Rademeyer, 2019, p. 160), is arguably at its most culturally visible. Yet, the history of tattooing is one of the change and changing perceptions, not only in terms of the technology of bodily inscription (the evolution from hand-poked techniques to the use of the tattoo machine) but also in terms of why people acquired tattoos and who traditionally wore them. While tattooing is an ancient art, in recent history, they were almost exclusively associated with working class culture and signs of rebellion, subcultural groups and even deviance, from the 1960s (in the Western world, at least), attitudes began to progressively change. From this period, in terms of the nature of tattooing, the quality and artistic scope of designs and who began to acquire tattoos, the practice has changed, and perhaps radically, to the extent that tattoos are now arguably more culturally visible than they have ever been. In consequence, it is argued that tattoos are now a firm part of the mainstream social and cultural world, although perceptions of them still vary. As E. M. Dadlez states, some ‘tattoos are intended to shock or dismay – to reinforce one’s outlier or signal a failure of respectability’ (2015, p. 741, while, in Maurice Patterson’s view, tattoo ‘styles have increasingly become a matter of individual choice and custom design’

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(Patterson, 2018, p. 585). This latter view captures the essence and modern inheritance of what has been dubbed the ‘Tattoo Renaissance’, a process by which the class and gender boundaries of tattooing increasingly blurred, and tattooing became not simply body decoration, but a means by which to communicate an aspect of self and personal identity. As Alice Snape argues in Tattoo Street Style, in contemporary culture, it ‘is easy to be lured in by the mystery and the beauty of tattoo art, and almost impossible to escape it in this day and age’ (2018, p. 6). At one level, this perception can apply to the increased number of people evident in everyday life who wear tattoos. However, another way in which tattoos can be deemed to be ‘impossible to escape’ is the degree to which they are visible in popular cultural forms. For instance, tattoos have become an increasingly regular aspect of consumer culture with regard to advertising and fashion imagery and marketing (Møller, Kjeldgaard, & Bengtsson, 2013), but also within an array of popular cultural representations and forms. To again quote Alice Snape on the contemporary status and cultural presence of tattoos: Tattooing is now more popular than ever before. I still find it fascinating that a once-ancient tradition and rite of passage now branches out into almost every area of the mainstream. Tattoo art has made its way into high fashion magazines, the cosmetic field, magazines and newspapers. A–Z list celebrities are rocking tattoos like never before, and tattoos are everywhere on reality TV…Now with online apps such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tattoodo, members of the public have easy access to almost every artist’s updated portfolio. (2018, pp. 7–8) Tattoos and Popular Culture examines these popular cultural and media representations of tattooing and will not only explore

Introduction

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the ways in which they reflect but also contribute to the visibility of tattooing within contemporary culture. Accordingly, superhero films feature tattooed characters, such as Aquaman and Harley Quinn; television genres such as reality TV now show numerous tattoo-themed show; social media platforms enable people to view the work of artists across the world and upload images of their own designs and tattoos now routinely appear in advertising and brand promotion imagery, while celebrities wearing tattoos are now commonplace. With reference to contemporary celebrity culture, media figures like Post Malone are literally changing the face of tattooing. In this fashion, Tattoos and Popular Culture looks at representations and the communication of tattoos and tattoo cultures in relation to film, television, social media and celebrity culture and how they reflect, inform and influence contemporary tattoo culture and practices. While the history of tattooing stresses the development from the subcultural to the mainstream, the differing examples of media forms discussed will stress that there is an overlap between these differing stages. In this regard, the theme of subcultures constitutes a persistent thread throughout the book, as does the idea of tattoos constituting an alternative communal grouping. Hence, while tattooing has manifestly expanded beyond niche subcultures, the theme of tattoos representing otherness, rebellion and dissimilarity persists, especially within popular culture. Chapter 1 provides a foundational overview of the key elements within the history of tattooing, from its roots in ancient communicative and therapeutic practices to the tattoo as a cultural sign of status and as a rite of passage. A key issue covered in this chapter is the communicative nature of early tattooing practices, extending into the religious use of tattoos. Focussing on significant moments in tattooing history, the chapter examines the depiction of tattoos as signs of rebelliousness and otherness and as part of subcultural bodily styles. As such, the classic concept of subculture is an important part of

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the chapter, which is then compared with the later development of tattooing in terms of tattoos acting as modes of selfexpression and semiotic markers of identity. However, the chapter critically considers the ways in which the increased adoption of tattooing from the 1970s has produced a ‘tattoo community’, due to the commitment made by the tattooed to be marked for life. Finally, the chapter considers the dynamics of the generations driving the mainstreaming of tattooing, Millennials and Generation Z, which are not only at the forefront of using tattoos as biographical symbols but also which often look to popular culture for tattoo inspirations. Chapter 2 explores representations of tattoos in film and looks at the ways in which films present diverse approaches to tattooing that draw from differing aspects of tattoo culture and history. The chapter therefore discusses films that associate tattoos with otherness, rebellion, deviance and subcultural expressions. In this regard, tattoos form key visual aspects of characters in crime and action films, denoting alternative lifestyles and bodily aesthetics, and also stress distinctive subcultural identifies, from the tattooed Goth-styling of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to the central role that tattoos play in Romper Stomper, American History X and Skin. However, the chapter examines the ways in which tattoos communicate self and represent semiotic codes, themes central to Memento and Eastern Promises, and, with reference to the horror films Tattoo, The Tattooist, and Perfect Skin, explore the status of tattoos as an art form. Finally, the chapter looks at the ways in which tattoos are present within mainstream film, from Disney’s Moana to Marvel and DC superhero films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Venom, Black Panther, Aquaman, Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, films whose characters also inspire numerous fan tattoos. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between tattoos and television, but with the primary focus on reality TV. The chapter

Introduction

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discusses the development and key properties of the multifaceted genre and examines how the first major tattoo-themed reality TV shows, Miami Ink, not only documented the professional and personal lives of a number of tattoo artists but also played a role in enhancing the normalization of both tattooing and tattooists, meaning that perceptions of it as a ‘deviant’ practice were transformed, or at least mitigated, and revealing the nature of the ‘tattooing subculture’ to wider audiences. Furthermore, this form of reality TV enhancing the perception of tattoos serving as symbols of self-expression and personal history was significant as a substantial aspect of the narrative is devoted to client ‘tattoo stories’. The chapter examines the growth of tattoo-themed reality TV shows (LA Ink, London Ink, NY Ink, and Black Ink Crew), and also how as the genre of reality TV has progressively evolved into differing generic forms, so too have tattoo-themed shows. Here, the chapter examines more populist reality TV expressions that differ markedly from the ‘storytelling’ early variants. For example, competition-style reality TV formats have found tattoo-themed variants in the form of Ink Master, a series that pits a number of professional artists living together in a studio against each other to survive a series of challenges to produce an ultimate winner. Alternatively, there are a range of shows that depict tattooing as a source of entertainment and comedy, such as Tattoo Fixers, which deliberately showcase poor-quality tattoos, and often obscene or offensive designs, and which also provide comically exaggerated recreations of the original tattooing experience and peer reactions to the various examples of ‘nightmare ink’, in which tattoos serve as a form of media spectacle and as a form of entertainment. This idea is developed with regard to MTV’s Just Tattoo of Us, in which participants are given a tattoo that has been designed by friends, partners or family members, and which they do not see until the final reveal – with comedic and emotional reactions as the designs are invariably in poor taste.

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However, the chapter concludes with discussions of documentary styles of reality TV, such as Needles and Pins, which takes a global perspective to tattoo culture, with the onus of examining the more subcultural expressions of the practice. Chapter 4 explores tattoos in the context of social media platforms and centrally returns to the theme of a tattoo community discussed in Chapter 1 and considers Manuel Castells’ argument that the early 21st century of the Internet established ‘virtual communities’ that constituted new digital forms of sociability. Since Castells’ early commentary on this technological social behaviour, this debate has extended to the impact of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The chapter therefore examines the impact of social media on tattoo culture and how it has developed from the traditional tattoo convention and print magazines to how tattoo magazines such as Inked magazine have successfully remediatized with the interactive inkedmag.com site. The chapter also considers the ways in which, via the app-based platform Instagram, artists’ portfolios are digitally visible and client relations no longer geographically fixed. Furthermore, Instagram has had demonstrable influence on contemporary social actors’ attitudes towards tattooing and the environment of professional tattoo spaces, rendering them as more accessible for those who may have previously found them intimidating. More substantively, the chapter discusses social media–based tattoo spaces in which tattoo aficionados ‘digitally congregate’ to post images of their tattoos, react to the professional work of artists or comment on tattooing trends. These sites are interactive and enable users to post and comment, but they also constitute tattoo-themed ‘art worlds’ and digital tattoo heritage spaces. The chapter stresses the various ways in which social media is a key media expression for contemporary tattoo culture, which brings together the professional industry, commentary, visual user-created content

Introduction

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and digital virtual dialogue forums with which to engage with celebrity tattoo artists, such as Kat Von D. Chapter 5 is concerned with the visibility, influence and status of celebrities with tattoos. In the context of the ways in which celebrities are perceived as inspirational figures in terms of bodily styles and fashion trends, such perceptions extend to tattooing. While notable celebrities have sported tattoos in the past, such as Janis Joplin, the chapter looks at the ways in which the number of celebrities adorned with tattoos has markedly become more visible in 21st century popular culture. While subcultural expressions of tattooing have been, and continue to be, present with musical personalities from genres such as heavy metal and hip hop, tattooed celebrities from mainstream popular culture are now commonplace. Hence, from David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Tom Hardy to Adam Levine, Cardi B and Ruby Rose, images of tattooed celebrities are now commonplace in film, TV, music videos and promotional imagery, fashion advertising. The chapter stresses that Millennial and Gen Z performers have added tattoos to their fashion repertoire, with pop performers such as Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Halsey, Rita Ora, Drake, Dua Lipa, the KPop artists Jay Park, Ariana Grande, Halsey and Post Malone not simply having tattoos, but in many instances being heavily tattooed. While celebrities stress the symbolic and identityaffirming meanings of their tattoos within media discourses, in subcultural terms, mainstream pop performers now reflect the heavily tattooed bodily aesthetic associated with musical genres and cultures such as punk, heavy metal or hip hop. Furthermore, the popularization of hand, neck and facial tattoos, previously considered a taboo and stigmatizing bodily placement, is being driven by pop performers such as Post Malone, thus contributing to the normalizing, through extensive media representations, of traditionally socially censured bodily placements.

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1 VISIBLE INK: FROM SUBCULTURE TO MAINSTREAM CULTURE

TATTOO BEGINNINGS In her global survey of tattooing (encompassing) Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the Oceanic Islands, the United States, Canada, Latin America and Europe, Anna Felicity Friedman establishes the global embeddedness of tattooing as both a historical and modern bodily practice. As she states of contemporary tattooing, ‘it exists in nearly every country on the skins of a phenomenal array of people. Perhaps at no other time in history has this art form been so prevalent, both in terms of its geographical reach and the sheer number of people who wear tattoos’ (2015, p. 9). Moreover, humans have been wearing tattoos for a long time as the practice is ‘a primal art form’ (Wroblewski, 1981, p. 9). In terms of social and cultural history, as Jane Caplan (2000) states, in addition to scarification and branding, tattooing is one of the oldest and globally diffused irreversible body modification practices. This was confirmed by the discovery of an extensively tattooed mummi¨ fied body, (dating back to 3250 BCE) ‘Otzi’, the iceman, found

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beneath a glacier on the Austrian–Italian border, whose body ¨ sported 61 tattoo designs. The discovery of Otzi was significant because it established not only that the practice of tattooing is an ancient art but also that tattoos, from their very beginning, have contained designs, communicative functions and values (Deter-Wolf, Robitaille, Krutak, & Galliot, 2015). As such, archaeological discoveries have stressed that tattoos were never merely ornamental, but were often inscribed for symbolic reasons and distinctively practical purposes, such as medicinal outcomes and curative practices in the form of therapeutic tattooing (Krutak, 2019). With regard to ancient Egypt, Robert S. Bianchi explains that, while there were no explicit mentions of the practice of tattooing in their preserved histories, the ancient Egyptians practiced tattooing in the Middle Kingdom period, as revealed by excavated mummies. For example, the mummy of a woman named Amunet, who acted as a priestess for the goddess Hathor, displayed numerous tattoo designs consisting of abstract patterns of dots and dashes across her lower abdomen, thighs and arms. Furthermore, the practice in Egypt was itself an expression of cultural transmission and influence, as evidence stressed that the ‘Egyptian tattoo was imported from Nubia and developed during the course of the Middle Kingdom’ (1988, p. 24). In a more compelling set of discoveries, Ren´ee Friedman et al. discuss the discoveries on two naturally mummified bodies, a male and female, held in the British Museum dating from Egypt’s Predynastic Period, the era predating Egypt’s unification by its first pharaoh in the period of 3100 BCE. The male mummy displayed the tattooed images of two horned animals, while the female mummy revealed two S-shaped motifs likely to represent a sistrum (a ritual rattle), indicating that her tattoo designs were linked to ceremonial or ritual actions and ‘may have denoted status through magical empowerment or cult knowledge’ (2018, p. 121). The key significances of

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Friedman et al.’s research are that they confirm that tattooing is an ancient human cultural practice, but more significantly that humans consciously communicated via their body art and so utilized tattoos as a prehistoric form of visual language. In his classic study of later global tattoo cultures, W.D. Hambly stressed that many indigenous cultures employed tattoos as distinctive signs of status, social/tribal identity, magical powers and personal therapeutic functions. For instance, in Hindu traditions, tattoos were worn in order to be recognized in the afterlife, whereas in the Antarctic, tattoos communicated signs of goodness following death. In terms of social position, Hambly stressed that the moko designs of the Maori warriors’ tattoo markings signified ‘a sign of prowess in battle and advanced social status’ (1925, p. 32). In this sense, given the geometrical ornateness of the work, and the intricacy of the tattooing procedure (all done by hand), Hambly considered moko as the apex of excellence in the ‘evolution of the fine art of body marking’ (1925, p. 262). While the Western subjective quality of Hambly’s work has been questioned, in that his interpretations of the motivations underlying tribal tattoo practices was based upon his status as ‘an outsider looking in and providing for ritual actions that he cannot fully understand’ (Hardin, 1999, p. 86), the symbolic nature of such practices has been further recognized. From a sociological perspective, Bryan S. Turner (1991) examined the ‘premodern’ body as a site for the bodily display of a number of primary social factors and biographical moments in which social status was marked into the body via acts of scarification and tattooing. In this context, tattoos have been obtained due to the belief that they possess powerful healing powers (Connor, 2004); tattoos have acted as distinctive cultural markers, from serving as religious signifiers to confirm pilgrimages or be imposed as publicly visible and permanent signs of punishment for criminals (Huang, 2016). With regard

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to social ‘functions’, tattoos have been used by tribal groups to mark individuals ‘as members of a greater community’ (Hemingson, 2009, p. 9) and have acted as marks to indicate acts of bravery (Bitarello & Queiroz, 2014) and permanent symbolic markers in rites of passage (Benson, 2000). However, as Peter Gathercole argues, the wearing of elaborate facial tattoos within Maori culture did tend to be located within the highborn members of groups and so indicative of social status. However, the issue of personal choice was also a factor regarding the wearing of moko in that while some designs may have reflected distinctive tribal relationships, ‘it was certainly the case that individuals regarded their own moko as particular to themselves’ (1988, p. 172).

TATTOO INFLUENCES AND CULTURAL MARKERS This dynamic between tattoos representing viable bodily signs of group membership and individual bodily choices and self-representation is a factor that has become central to exploring the development and cultural proliferation of tattooing. Moreover, both of these factors exhibiting what Steven Connor argues are key elements of the practice of tattooing, within both an historical and contemporary sense, that the tattoo ‘turns the vulnerability of the body, its exposure to penetration, into a flaunted surface’ (2004, p. 63). With regard to the proliferation of tattooing within the Western world, the ‘standard’ historical account centred on the influence of the ‘flaunted surfaces’ of the tattooed bodies of the sailors on the voyages of Captain Cook to Tahiti between in the late-1760s and the early to mid-1770s. As Cook reflected within his journal in July 1769 of the people of Tahiti, ‘Both sexes paint their bodies, Tattow as it is called in their language, this is done by inlaying the colour of black under their skins in

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such a manner as to be indelible’ (in Th´evoz, 1984, pp. 39–40). A number of Cook’s sailors and officers obtained similar tattoos to commemorate their experiences, displaying them on their return, and the effect was intensified by the bringing to England of the heavily tattooed Tahitian, Omai, whose ‘appearance sparked a tattooing vogue among the English aristocracy’ (Fleming, 2000, p. 67). In this way, tattooing became a more visible bodily practice within British, and subsequently wider European culture. However, while certainly an element of the development of tattooing in the West, art historians such as Matt Lodder (2015) have stressed that the idea that tattoos were ‘rediscovered’ via the voyages of Captain Cook is an overstatement. Indeed, the idea that sailors needed to be introduced to the practice of tattooing overlooks the extensive tattooing cultures that eighteenth century seafarers already possessed, a practice that did not rely on copying Tahitian designs and bringing them back to Western ports. Similarly, as Juliet Fleming states in her study of Renaissance tattoo culture, prior to the Tahitian-derived term, there were numerous alternative English words for the practice preceding the mid-eighteenth century, such as ‘listing’, ‘rasing’, ‘pricking’ and ‘pouncing’. A key element in the early history of tattooing was the issue of religious condemnation of the practice of tattooing. As Fleming argues, the source of this religious prohibition was classically related to the line in Leviticus (19: 28), which commands ‘You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you’. Yet, in the New Testament, and Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the wearing of tattoos, if dedicated to Jesus, was an acceptable Christian practice. In this context, the wearing of religious tattoos did become a key aspect of expressing commitment to the Christian faith within the Medieval period, and pilgrims to Jerusalem would return with evidence that they had made the journey to the Holy Land. For example, as Hambly (1925) notes,

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Armenian Christians making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem would tattoo themselves with the date of their journey, in addition to their name or initials, and the Copts wore tattoos consisting of three lines or dots to represent the Holy Trinity (Tassie, 2003). As such, argues Fleming, throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth and 17th centuries, pilgrims wore tattoos that consisted of names such as Jesus, Mary, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem and symbols such as the Jerusalem Cross. Likewise, even though the Reformation ostensibly represented the end of the practice of pilgrimage, many worshippers from Protestant countries continued to make such journeys, and the majority received commemorative tattoos, ‘either at the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, or in Bethlehem, which seems to have been something of a tattoo centre’ (2000, p. 79). Therefore, the practice of tattooing was not exclusively related to the experience, body designs and modifications of Captain Cook’s sailors. TATTOO EVOLUTIONS: SPECTACLE, REBELLION, SUBCULTURE In Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art, Michael Atkinson presents a distinctive categorization of the differing periods of Western tattoo history. The first significant period in this history was that late eighteenth-to-mid-nineteenth century period in which sailors exposed to indigenous tattooing practices (and navy-based tattoo cultures), returned home ‘with cultural artefacts inscribed upon their bodies, [and so] tattoos began sneaking into mainstream European, and eventually North American figurations’ (2003, p. 33). However, following this period, tattooing became aligned with social spectacle, or what Atkinson refers to as the Carnival Era (1880s–1920s), as many heavily tattooed sailors found work with carnivals and circuses. This development additionally drove the increased demand for professional tattooists, such as Milton Hildebrandt, Tom Riley,

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Bert Grimm and Charlie Wagner, a development intensified by the invention of the electric tattoo machine by Samuel O’Reilly in 1891. Additionally, this display of tattooed bodies effectively represented tattoos, as Stephan Oettermann argues, as forms of public entertainment and spectacle. Indeed, one such performer, Anelta Nerona, combined key elements of tattooed spectacle with entertainment in that she was ‘tattooed with celebrities such as Goethe, Schiller, Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Richard Wagner’ (2000, p. 207). Therefore, the links between tattooing and forms of media-style distraction have an extensive history. However, as the Carnival Era waned the interrelated subsequent periods in tattooing history, the Working-class Era (1920s–1950s) and the Rebel Era (1950–1970) gave tattooing a distinctive class and cultural set of perspectives. In a British context, in his classic study of nineteenth-century working-class labour patterns and the lives of the poor in London, Henry Mayhew identified tattooing as a distinctive working-class activity. As he noted in this regard, young men took ‘delight in tattooing their chests and arms with anchors and figures of different kinds’ (2006, p. 20), in addition to bearing the pain without flinching to impress peers. Aside from a brief aristocratic ‘craze’ for tattooing at the end of the nineteenth century (Bradley, 2000), as Atkinson argues, tattoos in North American cities (and in other part of the world) became increasingly associated with working-class life and culture. A primary reason for this was because tattoo parlours were predominantly located in ‘districts of the city characterized by poverty and crime’ (2003, p. 36). In this period, the aesthetics of the tattoo shop as a space adorned with walls of predesigned flash art was established, and, within an American context at least, the tattooing style known as ‘Traditional’ was established, comprising of cartoon characters, pinups, skulls, daggers, eagles, snakes, tigers and flags. Hence, the Working-class Era was significant in terms of the proliferation of tattooing, but at

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its heart was an intrinsic quality of ‘disrepute’, the practice of ‘tattoo fans’ that Albert Parry, in Tattoo: Secrets of a Strange Art (published in 1933), described as the ‘slum-dwellers, toughs, sailors, and other plebs’ (2006, p. 92). Such associations of tattoos with disreputability would see the Workingclass Era segue into the Rebel Era (1950––1970) in which tattoos took on symbolic values as signs of group membership, but, more importantly, permanent markers of dissatisfaction with, and frequently rejection of, wider social and cultural ‘respectable’ norms and values. As such, tattoos were considered by sections of society to represent distinctively threatening values. As Atkinson explains, following the Second World War, tattooing took on a pronounced aura of disreputability due to their association with specific nonconformist enclaves. Hence, As social groups brandished tattoos to advertise their collective discontent with society, the practice became popular among members of the social underbelly. Firmly entrenching cultural associations between tattoos and the fringe element in society, a full spectrum of social deviants adopted tattooing as a method of permanently expressing a politically charged disaffection with their cultural surroundings. (2003, p. 38) In this sense, tattoos became signs of street and motorcycle gang affiliations, whose visible tattoos marked them off from wider society and consciously signified rebellion against the established order. Moreover, media representations of such groups reinforced and culturally disseminated this perception, to inculcate within social actors the view that the wearing of tattoos automatically signified a criminal disposition on the part of the wearer. The result was, argues Atkinson, that in ‘the public eye, tattoos were (once again) the uncontested marker of

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the criminal, the outsider, the social miscreant’ (2003, p. 41). This idea of tattoos having an intrinsic connection with marginal, deviant or criminal groups was the central theme of the tattooist/academic Samuel Steward, whose classic book, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks, 1950–1965, centrally covered the key span of the Rebel Era. For Steward, reflecting from his dealings with tattoo clients, he proffered a range of motivations for people to be tattooed. These reasons ranged from the desire merely for bodily decoration, a body-focused narcissism (driven by the belief, often regretted, that tattoos would enhance physical beauty), the longing for exhibitionism, sadomasochism, the imitation of other tattooed social actors and addictive compulsion, where one tattoo leads to the persistent desire for more. In other instances, tattoos were sought to communicate sentimental messages (the names of mothers), Christian religious affiliations (tattoos of Christ on the cross, crowns of thorns or bleeding hearts) and expressions of patriotism or ethnic identities. Unsurprisingly, some clients undertook the process of tattooing in order to wear and display visible bodily signs of nonconformity and rebellion, tattoos that, in Steward’s view, represented signs of antisocial ‘rebels without a cause’ or ‘inarticulate revolt’ (1990, p. 65). In this context, tattoos were significant markers of gang affiliation, serving to communicate a sense of toughness in enduring the tattooing process as well as signifying their membership of a particular gang by permitting ‘their insignia to be engraved in their skin’ (Schiffmacher, 2005, p. 11). However, a further element within the apparent Rebel Era was that tattoos became distinctive in that the use of tattoos as markers of rebellion, or at least as visible bodily signs of the desire to separate from wider culture, notably occurred. As Atkinson argues, in addition to tattoos being worn as part of a separation from ‘respectable society’, this practice also became

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increasingly prevalent from the 1950s onwards in a number of youth subcultures, such as the Rockers, the Modernists (Mods), the Greasers and the Rockabilly movement. In Atkinson’s view, these youth groups added tattoos to their repertories of cultural artifacts (distinctive styles of dress and music) to engage in a countercultural rebellion against dominant social values, and middle-class bodily expectations and physical representations. In this context, therefore, the subcultural act of tattooing directly (and permanently) served to disrupt or outrage dominant middle-class ‘cultural understandings of corporeality’ (2003, p. 41) and bodily representation. The link between subcultures and tattooing is a significant one, in that other subcultures such as the Teddy Boys, Hippies and Punks also actively popularized tattooing as an increasing social practice throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, in tandem with employing tattoos ‘as a language of defiance against prevalent social norms’ (Camphausen, 1997, p. 11). For Ken Gelder, youth subcultures have habitually been read as ‘nonconformist and non-normative: different, dissenting, or (to use a term sometimes applied to subcultures by others) “deviant”’ (2007, p. 3)’. In terms of the classic articulations of subcultures, the interrelationship of a distinctive class attitude and the adoption of particular styles of dress and bodily comportment traditionally lies at the heart of subcultural studies. This was so because, as John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts, the key members of the foundational Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), argue within Resistance Through Rituals (originally published in 1976), subcultures ‘must exhibit a distinctive enough shape and structure to make them identifiably different from their “parent” culture’ (2006, p. 7). While the CCCS approach consisted of numerous academics and conceptual approaches, it broadly coalesced around issues of class, as informed by the neo-Marxist perspectives of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci. A key

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example of this approach was Phil Cohen’s analysis of the ways in which working-class groups responded to postwar British class transformations, the erosion of skilled labour into routine work, unemployment and spatial dislocations caused by the redevelopment of traditional working-class housing areas. In this context, the actions of distinctive youth groups served to counter these social incursions and erosion of life chances and opportunities. In this sense, subcultures, drawing upon distinctive aspects of culture, most notably fashion and popular music, were formed as a means of establishing some form of selfdirected control in the face of these seemingly all-pervasive social forces. An important issue within these practices is that they operated only in a microsocial context and that they served as ‘imaginary’ solutions to problems that were ultimately beyond their control and so engaged in acts of ‘self-liberation’: Thus the ‘Teddy Boy’ expropriation of an upper class style of dress ‘covers’ the gap between largely manual, unskilled, near-lumpen real careers and life chances, and the ‘all-dressed-up-and-nowhere-to-go’ experience of Saturday evening. Thus, in the expropriation and fetishisation of consumption and style itself, the ‘Mods’ cover for the gap between the never-ending-weekend and Monday’s resumption of boring, dead-end work’. (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, & Roberts, 2006, p. 37) As Bill Osgerby argues, in addition to the class conflict and ‘resistance’ nature of classic subcultures such as the Teddy Boys, Mods, Skinheads and Punks, an element within their practices was the use of fashion, which became loaded with symbolic values. In this context, the items drawn from fashion and popular culture by various subcultural groupings transformed subcultural styles in ‘texts’ imbued with semiotically

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based ‘subversive meaning’ (Osgerby, 2014, p. 11). A classic academic example of this approach was Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style, originally published in 1979 and consisting of an extensive case study of the Punk subculture. While underpinned by a neo-Marxist/critical theoretical foundation affiliated with the CCCS, Hebdige focused extensively on the objects used by subcultures that form the outward basis of their oppositional stances. As such, the cultural items embraced by subcultures ‘became signs of forbidden identity, sources of value’ (1998, p. 3). For Hebdige, style lies at the centre of subcultural configurations and acts as the primary way in which they commit a ‘crime against the natural order’ through subverting cultural objects (which can ostensibly be innocuous) and using them as statements of deviance against the norms and social expectations of the parent culture. Therefore, the ‘quiff’ hairstyle of the Teddy Boys, the Mod’s acquisition of the scooter and Italian styles of suits or the Punk’s use of safety pins signal a conscious refusal to adhere to mainstream cultural expectations. In this regard, [S]pectacular subcultures express forbidden contents (consciousness of class, consciousness of difference) in forbidden forms (transgressions of sartorial and behavioural codes, law breaking, etc.). They are profane articulations, and they are often and significantly defined as ‘unnatural’. (1998, pp. 91–92) From Hebdige’s perspective, subcultures are predicated upon acts of conspicuous consumption, and it is the distinctive and (as with the case of Punk) sometimes outrageous ways that fashion and products are used that demarcates the subculture from wider cultural formations. The key issue is that the styles of subcultures are utilized as signifying practices that contain

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meanings, to the extent that subcultures ‘are therefore expressive forms’ (1998, p. 132). With regard to Punk, in addition to the brightly coloured Mohawk hairstyles, leather and plastic jackets and trousers, torn T-shirts and Vivienne Westwood– inspired bondage apparel, body art, often of socially confrontational designs, such as ‘the display of swastika tattoos in highly visible places’ (Muggleton, 2004, p. 100) was a factor within the subcultural style repertoire. While the classic approaches to subcultures have been criticized on the grounds of uncritically imposing Marxist meanings and semiotic functions onto youth groups, which minimized considerations of gender and sexuality (Osgerby, 2014), Hebdige’s account of the ultimate cultural trajectory of many subcultures, given their primacy on distinctive styles, does intersect with how tattooing would arguably develop from the 1970s. Moreover, as Daniel Rosenblatt argues, Punk was an important part of the Tattoo Renaissance because it ‘drew different kinds of people to tattoos and influenced the designs that were prevalent’ (1997, p. 301). A salient aspect of Hebdige’s analysis is that, even though initially threatening to the social order, the fate of many subcultures is incorporation into mainstream culture. As such, items of fashion which may have been produced by subcultural groups through acts of bricolage (the bringing together of disparate cultural artifacts to create new styles) can become part of mass commodification, mainstream fashion and even couture. For example, Punk clothing and accessories were available for mailorder purchase by the summer of 1977, and in September 1977, Cosmopolitan reviewed Zandra Rhodes’ Punk-influenced fashion show, reporting that the models ‘smouldered beneath mountains of safety pins and plastic...and the accompanying article ended with an aphorism “To shock is chic” – which presaged the subculture’s imminent demise’ (1998, p. 96). In this context, as Hebdige states, youth ‘cultural styles may begin by issuing symbolic challenge, but they must inevitably end by

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establishing new sets of conventions’ (1998, p. 96). Arguably, the same process was also evident within tattooing culture from the 1970s as the Rebel Era evolved into the ‘Tattoo Renaissance’, a process by which tattooing increasingly became more difficult to be read as a subcultural practice.

THE ROAD TO RESPECTABILITY AND THE ‘TATTOO COMMUNITY’ With reference to the Working-class Era, Turner states that tattooing ‘was often part of an oppositional culture in which working-class males expressed their class solidarity or occupational solidarity through body marks’ (1999, p. 45). Nonetheless, this perception, and function of tattooing, would change because from the 1970s, tattooing itself changed, not only with regard to both tattoo artists and the tattooing industry, but also with regard to the demographic transformations in terms of those who elected to become tattooed. As Arnold Rubin argues, changes within tattooing practices in the 1960s (initially in the United States, but then more internationally) set in train a sweeping change within ‘tattoo culture’ that merited the term ‘Renaissance’ given the scope of the changes. In tune with the nature of the Working-class and Rebel Eras, Rubin states that tattooing (although not exclusively) was predominantly a process engaged in by young, male blue-collar social actors, as were the majority of tattoo artists. However, driven by the emergence of new (and ultimately iconic) artists such as Cliff Raven and Ed Hardy (who employed highly artistic approaches, such Japanese styles), tattooing practice increasingly moved away from the reliance on flash art, and tattooing conditions, such as increased levels of sanitation and the sterilization of tattooing instruments, began to improve. However, a key aspect of this was the major demographic shifts that characterized the Renaissance

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period, changes that ‘brought in a greater number of females and generally older, better educated, more affluent, and more artistically sophisticated clients’ (1988, p. 235). This development marked tattooing as a body art practice increasing used as a form of self-expression and self-concept, with a progressive onus on negotiating custom tattoo work rather than wearing predesigned flash that would adorn the bodies of many other tattooed people (Hewitt, 1997). On one level, the Tattoo Renaissance developed due to the technological and artistic developments that occurred within the industry (improvements in tattoo machinery, an increased number of ink pigments and more artists entering into the tattoo industry from art school backgrounds and so possessing more versatile skill sets). In the wake of such developments, as Benson argues, the motivation for many people to be tattooed was individually motivated, that the decision to receive a tattoo became one based upon reflection and planning in terms of what the tattoo design would be (which could be negotiated with creative artists). This was so because, rather than the result of a whim or peer pressure, the motivation to be tattooed represented a declaration of ‘meness’ (2000, p. 245). Tattooing, therefore, became a more personalized practice as designs were not merely decorations, but symbols of self-expression, reflecting, as Sanders (1988) defines it, as tattoo’s journey from deviance to art. Moreover, tattooing increasingly cut across class and gender lines as more woman and members of the middle classes embraced tattooing. Therefore, as Margo DeMello argues, within this period, tattooing ‘began, for the first time, to be connected with emerging issues like selfactualization, social and personal transformation’ (2000, p. 143) in addition to spiritual and personal growth and the tattoo as a modern expression of the rite of passage. Such perceptions of tattooing as middle-class statements of identity played a decisive part in ‘making tattoos increasingly safe’ (DeMello, 1995, p. 47). While stressing the ways in which tattoos

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decisively move away from any exclusive working-class/ underground context, DeMello, within her book, Bodies of Inscription, does argue that a distinctive tattoo community can, and has, been constituted, thus echoing the onus of subcultures as community-building behaviours (Clarke, 2006). Importantly, the establishment of a tattoo subculture is not based upon simply having tattoos but is far active than this. As DeMello states: It is said that tattooing involves a commitment as the mark made is for life. This is true. But to be a member of the tattoo community requires more than just getting a tattoo – it involves a commitment to learning about tattoos, to meeting other people with tattoos, and to living a lifestyle in which tattoos play an important role. (20–21) How tattooed social actors engage in this active creation of a lifestyle is via the consumption of tattoo media, primarily specialist tattoo magazines, but more proactively through participation at tattoo conventions, which are spaces in which those with the common interest in tattooing meet for a given time. Developing the importance of the tattoo convention as a site for community expression, Mindy Fenske describes conventions (which are internationally significant aspects of the tattoo industry) as ‘safe havens’ in which both tattoo artists from a number of countries and tattoo collectors ‘gather together to compare tattooing techniques and to show off their tattoos’ (2007, p. 46). Furthermore, because the tattoo convention is a site for the tattooing of social actors within the numerous pop-up studios fill convention venues, the internal space of the tattoo studio transformed into a shared public spectacle and the artistic techniques of live tattooing are appreciated and celebrated (Barron, 2017). As such, the convention provides tattooed social actors with the ‘opportunity to display their work, enlarge their

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collections, and associate with other tattoo enthusiasts in situations in which they are normal’ (Sanders & Vail, 2008, p. 60). For DeMello, the positive aspects of such participation derives from the ways in which tattooed people can experience a unique sense of ‘shared specialness’ as a result of this community-based engagement. This approach serves to give tattoo community building a distinctive subcultural quality because in engaging in these practices and immersing themselves deeper into tattooing ` culture, it enables them to ‘define themselves vis-a-vis nontattooed people and the dominant society in general’ (2000, p. 21). Therefore, through the consumption of tattoo media and tattoo-based social events, tattooed social actors discover others who are like them and who, in being tattooed and through exploring the ‘tattoo world’, are not like ‘everyone else’. Media texts, therefore, are central within this subcultural configuration as they enable readers to experience a tattoo-inspired feeling of community. Therefore, of the importance of these mediums, DeMello argues that The tattoo magazine, like the tattoo convention, caters to the tattooed people and creates for its readers a sense of communitas through its ability to make tattooed readers feel that they are both different from the mainstream society and part of something larger than themselves. Particularly in the magazines’ editorials and in their letters-to-the-editor sections, this feeling that tattooed people form a community of marginalized brothers/sisters is evident. (2000, p. 33) Certainly, tattoo magazines remain a significant part of tattoo media, as illustrated by prominent periodicals such as Inked magazine, Total Tattoo, Rebel Ink, Skin Deep, Tattoo Life, Urban Ink, Tattoo Society and Things and Ink. Moreover, DeMello flags

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the then-developing opportunities offered via the Internet for tattooed people to create communal spaces (an aspect of tattoorelated media returned to in Chapter 4). In Atkinson’s (2003) view, DeMello’s approach to the tattooed as a conspicuous subculture or defined community is not an accurate one within the 21st century. Alternatively, ‘tattoo enthusiasts’ do not constitute collective culture, but rather (drawing upon the sociological work of Norbert Elias) a figuration, a ‘structure of mutually oriented and dependent people’ linked together ‘through education, socialization, and socially generated reciprocal needs’ (2000, p. 481). In the wake of the Tattoo Renaissance, Atkinson argues that it is difficult to read tattoos as subcultural expressions of status frustration or as representing modes of symbolic resistance or acting as signs of antagonism to a dominant culture. Indeed, if the subcultural foundation of tattooing within the Rebel Era was that it constituted a bodily challenge against middle-class ‘corporeality’, then the proliferation of tattooing within the ‘parent culture’ inevitably erodes this function. As such, the application of subcultural meanings to tattooing is misleading as the motivations to be tattooed, and the meanings attributed to the act and the designs worn are diverse. Hence, tattoo ‘enthusiasts do share common understandings of tattoos, but not to the extent that one could decipher a specific subcultural perspective about the practice’ (2003, p. 96). Additionally, tattooing lacks the class basis that underpinned classic approaches to subcultural configurations, the basis of the CCCS approach. As such, unless focussing upon a specific group that does consciously employ tattooing, it becomes difficult to discern within the wider social and cultural context of tattooing as the practice lacks a cohesive sense of a collective and meaningful resistance to any perceived parent culture. Alternatively, the tattoo figuration takes the form of relationship chains that act to bring together individuals who have tattoos. These chains can range from the fundamental association between the tattoo artist and the client – the basis of becoming tattooed,

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spending time in tattoo studios, via influential peers who communicate a protattoo ethos, sitting with friends while they are tattooed and then becoming tattooed in turn or exposure to tattoothemed media (Atkinson, 2005). In this sense, contemporary tattoos do not constitute subcultures, as traditionally considered, but are the tattoo figuration: ‘interpersonal ties that bind seemingly isolated individuals together in social interchange’ (2003, p. 125). In subcultural terms, the ‘Tattoo Renaissance’ ensured that tattooing became progressively culturally visible. Indeed, the revitalization of tattooing has become an ongoing process. As Atkinson (2004) notes, the beginning of the 21st century arguably saw the initiation of the second tattoo Renaissance, in which the increasing cultural transmission and embrace of tattooing intensified. A prime agent within this process has been the increasing presence of tattooing within media representations, such as newspapers, magazines, television and advertising, which only served to disassociate tattooing from any core subcultural identity and attitude further. Hence, as one of Atkinson’s respondents within his ethnographic interviews ruefully reflected, ‘I see tattoos everywhere. You can’t turn on a TV without seeing someone who is tattooed. I know that not everyone is doing it, but I can’t help feeling more like everyone else now when I see everyone who has a tattoo’ (2003, p. 103). In this sense, the initial ‘Renaissance’ development sparked in the 1970s arguably has proven to be a succession of cultural waves with regard to the contemporary status of tattooing. In this sense, these movements have served to push tattooing further away from its historic equation with social marginality and collective, and distinct, subcultural identities and more towards a conception of tattoos that ‘are more often reflective of personal narrative and self-expression’ (Farley, Van Hoover, & Rademeyer, 2019). On the one hand, therefore, studies of contemporary tattooing (in the Western world, at least) confirm that it has ostensibly become a mainstream practice (Sagoe, Pallesen,

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& Andreassen, 2017), but on the other hand, continuities with key aspects from the history of tattooing arguably remain. Consequently, even though diverse social groups have elected to wear tattoos in recent years, empirical studies indicate that visible tattoos can still elicit forms of social stigma. These perceptions range from persistent associations of tattooing with deviant behaviour and attitudes to the view that tattoos signify signs of poor decision-making skills on the part individuals who elect to be tattooed (Dickson, Dukes, Smith, & Strapko, 2014; Zestcott, Tompkins, Kozak Williams, Livesay, & Chan, 2018). Additional studies also point to residual perceptions that tattooing can still have adverse repercussions in terms of employability, earnings capacity and career success. As such, some researchers suggest that in these contexts, the normative status of tattooing can be overestimated and that visible tattoos can result in employer discrimination (Ruffle & Wilson, 2019). There are also ongoing concerns with the health risks associated with tattooing in terms of microbiological contaminations, hazardous chemicals in ink pigments and infections during the healing process as tattooing has been defined as ‘a form of minor surgery performed without anesthesia’ (Renzoni et al., 2018, p. 127).

TATTOO SUBCULTURES AND THE SEMIOTIC SELF While invaluable in terms of understanding, an inevitable issue that arises when categorizing a social phenomenon like tattooing into discrete ‘eras’ is that the perception of monolithic periods can distract from overlaps in terms of tattoo culture overlaps. Atkinson (2003) certainly acknowledges the persistence of subcultural groups employing tattoos throughout the various stages of the tattoo Renaissance and the process of tattoo mainstreaming (such as Goths, Ravers and Riot grrrls). However, the link between subcultural expressions and tattoos

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has proven to be persistent, albeit in a differing from the political/style configurations of classic subcultural approaches. In this sense, later subcultural commentators (encompassing the ‘postsubculture’ approach) downplayed the importance of politics to instead foreground the centrality of consumption, lifestyle, leisure and fashion, in groupings marked by more fluid, limited membership (Haenfler, 2013). With regard to tattooing, the grouping dubbed the ‘Modern Primitives’, a ‘movement’ identified in the 1970s in American, and captured by Vivian Vale and Andrea Juno in Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual, originally published in 1989. Due to their revival of traditional body modifications such as multiple piercing, scarification and tattooing, Vale and Juno argue that, in the face of a world in which most individuals are powerless to influence, some social actors have remedied this state through enacting radical changes over the site that they can control: their own bodies. Thus, in a world in which even art has been commodified, ‘the last artistic territory resisting cooptation and commodification by Museum and Gallery remains the Human Body’ (2010, p. 5). For Atkinson, these ‘Neo Primitives’ can be seen to have used body modification to signal a protest against a culture increasingly defined by change and mutability. As Theresa M. Winge argues, Modern Primitives did not seek to authentically revive traditional tribal practices and combine ancient and modern technologies in their ritual approaches. In this sense, subcultural members ‘personalize the ritual to reflect their individual beliefs and can do so through the choice of body modification’ (2003, p. 127). In this sense, then, the specific approaches to body modifications engaged in by the Modern Primitives stands as a countercultural riposte to a culture dominated by mass production (Gelder, 2007). However, Lodder argues that the idea of a connected community of individuals engaging in such ‘primitive’ bodily practices, constituting a distinctive subculture, is erroneous.

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Referring to Vale and Juno’s book, Lodder stresses that the foundations for the subcultural aspects of this approach derives from the sections based upon the writings of Fakir Musafar, but no social or cultural grouping called the Modern Primitives clearly existed prior to the publication of the book. In this context, Lodder argues that there ‘never has been a “movement” of Modern Primitives, driven by explicitly and avowedly “primitive” desires to seek a higher state of consciousness [through] direct manipulation of their own flesh’ (2011, p. 109). Yet, alternative subcultures do demonstrably employ tattoos as part of their symbolic tools, and there are clear continuities with the subcultural norms of the past. This is evident within Ross Haenfler’s study of the hardcore Punk movement known as the Straight Edge (sXe) movement, an enduring musical genre, developing on the East Coast of America in the early 1980s, based upon the repudiation of drugs, alcohol and tobacco and an advocacy for vegetarianism, veganism and animal rights. For Haenfler, a key element of the sXe movement is the fusion of music (linked to bands such as Minor Threat, AFI, 7 Seconds, Vegan Reich and Wake of Humanity) with the primacy of tattooing. In this context, tattoos represent visible and embodied signs of subcultural commitment, as one sXe interviewee stated: ‘Once you put the X on your hand, it’s not like a wedding ring. You can always take a wedding ring off, but you can’t wash the ink from your hands’ (2011, p. 42). As such, tattoos represent a permanent sign of commitment to the culture and both represent and communicate ‘a lasting bond to the community’ (2011, p. 42). The importance (and prevalence) of the tattoo mark to signify affiliation with the sXe movement also raises a further continuity with the classic approaches to subcultures and the arguments that are associated with the use of tattoos as ‘control’ mechanisms in the wake of societal and cultural flux: the primacy of semiotic functions and meanings.

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A key element of Hebdige’s analysis of the Punk subculture was the ways in which their adaptation reconstructed as personalized symbolic ‘shocking’ objects. As such, in addition to the often directly offensive (T-shirts covered in swear words and swastikas), the Punk style was principally through the violence of its ‘cut-up’ approach and transformation of everyday objects as a safety pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, lavatory chains or plastic bin liners to symbolically communicate the confrontational Punk ethos. As Hebdige acknowledges, it was doubtful whether many members of the subculture were ever aware that they were consciously engaged in semiotic practices, but this issue has become significant within the contemporary culture of tattooing. Hence, echoing the ‘me-ness’ motivation that has arguably characterized tattooing culture (or sections of it, at least) since the 1970s, Kyle Fruh and Emily Thomas argue that tattoos can, and are, utilized by social actors as a means by which to externalize aspects of their inner selves. In this sense, the voluntary altering of the body makes a tattoo a part of the body and so marks key aspects of biography and self into the body. Consequently, tattoos can make a decisive contribution to identity building and personal narratives, in that they offer a ‘chance to ink in some feature of your identity, fixing a point through past, present, and future’ (2012, p. 91). As such, while the Modern Primitive movement may never have really existed as a defined subculture, the motivation to engage in such body modification that Vale and Juno argue is an attempt to wrest some control over the body is a feature within readings of contemporary tattoo practices. For Fruh and Thomas, tattoos can serve to give an individual a definitive ‘anchoring’ effect and enable a social actor to preserve, or memorialize, significant life events or signs of identity. As they state, As years and miles add up, it becomes easy to feel adrift in your own life. A couple of anchors can keep you in

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touch with where you have been, commit you to being somewhere you want to be, and provide fixed points by reference to which to chart new voyages. This is the chief contribution tattoos can make to narrative personal identity, and one way of explaining how inking it can make you feel at home in your own skin. (2012, p. 91) Through ethnographic interviews with a number of tattooed individuals, Chris William Martin also approaches tattooing as a practice that creates narratives that can link skin and self. From his ethnographic research, respondents related their tattoo designs to issues such as gender, beauty, femininity, home and family, childhood memories, social acceptance and emotional memories, but also often striving to differentiate their bodies from prevailing social norms and expectations through body art. As such, Martin argues that tattoos are ‘never about only one form of expression or social connection, but in fact are deeply human forms of social expression which have changed, and continue to record lives in multiple and complex ways’ (2013, p. 14). For this reason, Martin argues that tattoos can be complex symbols of both self and social identities and can act as semiotic representations of both the individual and the culture that surrounds and influences the individual. Furthermore, Martin also reminds us that tattoos, although more mainstream than ever before, are not universal, because Not everyone can get tattooed. It is costly. It is painful. It is increasingly regulated by age and by shop practice. And it is also a permanent corporeal commitment which can impact the life not only of tattooees but also the people they will interact with in the future. (2013, p. 32)

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However, for those who do elect to be tattooed, Martin contends that tattooing is intrinsically about self and social expression. In this sense, tattoos can simultaneously reflect social influences (getting tattoos because it is a fashionable trend and omnipresent within popular culture) and as a designed mark of individual difference and uniqueness. Moreover, tattooing swims against the tide of our times. Martin explores this in his book, The Social Semiotics of Tattoos, which is influenced by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity, a social order based upon rapid change, unpredictability, cultural fluidity, volatility, constant uncertainty and flexibility and the loss of communal ties (Bauman, 2000, 2005, 2007). Against such unstable and unpredictable social forces, tattoos can serve as an anchor of stability. Moreover, this behaviour and attitude contains a trace of the subcultural stance against a wider, oppressive, social force, as Martin observes: Some enthusiasts take refuge in using their body to represent self-identity, cultural change and gendered resistance, artistic and emotional signifiers, and a trove of other meanings through their engagement in body art practices. Moreover, and perhaps more strikingly, I suggest this anchoring of self in tattoos is an act of rebellion against the superficiality of contemporary life and its ephemeral qualities. (2018, p. 2) With regard to examinations of the nature of 21st century youth cultures, Vitor S´ergio Ferreira defines them as microcultures, groupings that do not establish a collective sense of identity in the same way that traditional subcultural theorist argued that they did. With regard to the status and use of tattooing in microcultures, characterized by their fluid and unceremonious nature, Ferreira argues that

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[The] young people who practice body marking no longer use it to show stable and long-lasting commitment to collective identities. They do not see themselves as representing any group and do not consider themselves represented by their marked peers. Body marking no longer functions as a dramatic means of accessing certain subcultures, nor as a sign of fusionist identification with specific groups. Instead, marking the body with tattoos…is particularly valued as a privileged strategy of demonstrating individuality and uniqueness through the body, within various sociations, which the young people are part of. (2009, p. 291) In this sense, tattoos do not act as a subcultural ‘uniform’; instead, they become employed as what Ferreira calls an autobiographical sign, a tattooed statement of self. Therefore, tattoos serve to celebrate emotional and biographically key moments in an individual’s life. As such, and echoing Martin’s semiotic approach to tattooing, Ferreira states: In a highly fragmented and multi-faceted social context, extensive marking on a body acquires, for those who bear it, a value which is more personal than gregarious…The social knots tied in this type of body project have taken forms which no longer refer to exclusive social affiliations, but rather celebrations of personal difference, assumed and tacitly acknowledged among peers. These peers prefer the same social geography of imagery. (2009, p. 299)

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COMPETING CULTURES: TATTOOS AND THE MILLENNIAL/GEN Z BODY The issue of a widespread connection and desire for a tattooed ‘social geography of imagery’ is one that has resulted in the perception that tattooing is now a mainstream practice. This is an observation underscored by the data that stresses that Millennials (individuals born between 1981 and 1996) are the most tattooed generation (Mull, 2019) and this drive is set to ensure that the industry (in America, at least) will grow at an annualized rate of 7.7% throughout the 2020s (Craven McGinty, 2018). In assessing the popularity of tattooing in this generation, the issue of using tattoos as bodily expressions of identity and as anchors in a fast-moving world is paramount. In this sense, Millennials have embraced tattoos because they are constants, images that are impervious to both social and bodily change, especially for a generation immersed in rapidly transforming digital technologies (Anon, 2017). However, the centralities of digital technologies have yielded interesting implications for the nature of contemporary tattoo cultures and subcultural/microcultural configurations. In his assessment of the ‘death’ of subculture, James Gill (2017a) points to the ways in which music and image (a key aspect of classic subcultures) have diminished in the 21st century, a factor underscored by the onus of digital downloading and consumption of music over the traditional album purchase. In this regard, many listeners skip through musical genres rather than forming connections with any one favoured form. Yet, a key source of social commitment does exist, in the form of various fandoms, which do illicit communal connections (via digital technologies and platforms), and, as Gregg L. Witt and Derek E. Baird argue, young people engaging with such fandoms ‘get to collaborate with others while working to shape their own identities’ (2018, p. 31). Hence, it is no surprise fandoms serve

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as the inspiration for many tattoo designs, whereby cultural and media texts act as the inspirations for ‘autobiographical’ signs. Moreover, there are distinctive differences between Millennials and their younger counterparts, Generation Z (individuals born after 1997). For Witt and Baird, members of Generation Z are perceived to be more politically engaged than Millennials (especially with regard to environmental issues), connected to a myriad of online ‘communities’ and more financially conservative. Furthermore, there are differences regarding how the generational groups approach tattooing. Although presented in broad strokes, an Inked magazine feature entitled ‘Millennials Vs Generation Z’ (Witt & Baird, 2018, Anon, 2018a) stressed that Millennials opt for popular music nostalgia tattoos (dating from the early 2000s), such as My Chemical Romance, Blink 182 and Green Day logos, reinforced with wider images drawn from popular cultural nostalgia (Pok´emon, for example). Alternatively, then identityinforming tattoos obtained by Generation Z favour current images drawn from popular culture that are the sources of fervent fandom, in the form of animated series such as Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Teen Titans and Rick and Morty (which will of course become the nostalgia tattoos of tomorrow). Yet, what is a theme here is the primacy of media culture and tattooing, and in addition to the myriad of tattooing genres, the centrality of media-based tattoos and the fandom that inspires them, is a key aspect of modern tattooing. As such, the Marvel Universe and DC comic book and cinematic franchises have inspired numerous Iron Man, Wolverine, Deadpool, Spiderman, Groot, Superman, Batman or Thanos tattoos. Furthermore, the Joker, Harley Quinn, Black Widow, Aquaman, Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel characters inspire both comic book representations and photo realistic tattoos of Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot and Brie Larson

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as the respective characters, in addition to various Star Wars– based, Harry Potter or Pennywise designs. Popular television similarly inspires numerous tattoo designs, from Friends, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, and Game of Thrones to Stranger Things, Peaky Blinders and Baby Yoda from The Mandalorian. Popular music also motivates tattooees, from band logos to portraits of the likes of Post Malone, Taylor Swift, Cardi B and Kanye West. In this sense, tattoos arguably operate as barometers of popular culture, charting the mainstream and cult status of media texts. However, an interesting difference between Millennials and Generation Z is the view that there are some attitudinal differences towards the practice of tattooing. For example, a Thinkhouse piece entitled Youth and Tattoos reports that almost 40% of Millenials have a tattoo, while half have more than one tattoo, and 18% have more than six. Of this demographic, only 2% reported that they were opposed to tattoos. Alternatively, negative attitudes to tattooing among Generation Z cohorts were 10%, implying a more cautious or suspicious standpoint on obtaining tattoos. As one 22-yearold respondent stated: Part of being young is doing somethings your folks wouldn’t do. Rebelling, I guess. My da has a big tribal tattoo on his shoulder. He’s also an accountant. As a result, for me, tattoos just make me think of my da. I love him, but he’s not someone I’d go to for style tips, you know? (Anon, 2018b, Inkedmag.com). In this context, for some members of Generation Z, their source of cultural rebellion may well lie in not becoming tattooed, as it is the ‘parent culture’ that is the most extensively ‘inked’. As such, the issues of rebellion, the Tattoo Renaissance,

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with its semiotically inspired marks of identity, and the tension between tattooing enthusiasts being seen as a subcultural community or loosely linked and individualized figuration is an ongoing dynamic. Yet, the theme throughout this chapter is one of tattoos representing a mode of communication (from ancient marks of status, deviance and rebellion to ‘me-ness’ and pop cultural fandom) and many of the key aspects of tattoo history and conceptual approaches to tattoo culture can be found to be articulated in differing ways within media forms and texts. Indeed, within film, television, social media and digital spaces and celebrity culture, tattoos weave in and out of residual perceptions of deviance, normalization, fashion, community (and the active search for subcultural expressions within a mainstreamed tattoo world) and entertainment. Above all, popular culture has (in differing ways) extensively visualized tattooing practices and tattooed bodies (opening up the inner sanctum of the tattoo studio to reality TV scrutiny, for example) to an unprecedented degree. These representations range from tattoos as sublime identity-articulating art and celebrity-based fashion statements to regret-filled folly. Consequently, the latest 21st century wave of the process, dubbed the ‘Tattoo Renaissance’ that began in the late 1960s, is a fundamentally mediatized phenomenon.

2 TATTOOS IN FILM

The previous chapter examined key phases of the historic development of tattooing, with a demarcation between perceptions of tattooing as a rebellious, subcultural or even deviant practice and tattooing as a self-expressive or semiotic approach broadly being evident. In popular culture, film has proven to be a potent medium with regard to the visualization of tattooing, and the presentation of differing attitudes to, and representations of, tattoos. As such, in film, tattoos stand as objects of fear and threat, group and gang solidarity, selfexpression and cultural identity, anchors to a mode of being and expression or as symbols of entrapment, or bodily reminders of a lifestyle an individual seeks to escape. Furthermore, cinematic tattoos represent signs of empowerment, power and vengeance, and in some cases, symbols of horror. In this regard, tattoos are evident in a myriad of filmic genres, from crime, thrillers and drama, to horror, a Disney feature and superhero adventures. As discussed in Chapter 1, while many histories of tattoos present discrete periods of tattooing, with the onus on the progressive development from deviance to the mainstream,

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there are overlaps. Hence, looking at the popular cultural medium of film, this chapter will identify a number of films in which tattoos feature as key aspects of the narrative, character motivation and visual aesthetic. Accordingly, the chapter will illustrate how film represents a rich and varied source of popular cultural articulation of tattoo cultures.

TATTOOS AS SUBCULTURAL EXPRESSIONS With regard to the association of tattoos with perceptions of deviance, transgression and rebelliousness, crime dramas and thrillers have frequently employed tattoos as visual cues of otherness, if not threat. A classic example of this ethos is evident in The Night of the Hunter (1955), in which the villainous ‘preacher’, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), articulates his key Biblical story via his tattooed knuckles. In a plot that involves the ruthless Powell’s pursuit of two children who know the location of $10,000 stolen by their father, a key motif is the way in which he uses the words ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ written on his knuckles to retell the story of Cain and Abel. Hence, in ‘The Little Story of Right Hand, Left Hand’, Powell tells the tale of how, with the left hand, Cain struck the blow that laid Abel low, but, in making his hands wrestle, the right hand marked with Love triumphs. The association of tattoos and criminality is explicitly featured in Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood (1967), an adaptation of Truman Capote’s non-fiction classic, based upon the murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who were both prominently tattooed. The significance of tattoos is foregrounded in the scene in which Hickock (Scott Wilson) is goaded by Roy Church (John Gallaudet), a Kansas Bureau of Investigation Agent. Church questions the extent that his tiger head tattoo on his arm makes him feel ‘tough’, but also dismisses tattoos as the

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mark of the convict, to which Hickock retorts that everyone is tattooed because everyone belongs to some form of ‘club’ and draws status from such membership. The wearing of tattoos is also of significance in the classic prison drama, Papillon (1973). Telling the story of Henri Charri`ere (Steve McQueen), a safecracker unjustly given a life sentence, which is life imprisonment in the penal system in French Guiana, he is given the nickname of ‘Papillon’ because of the butterfly tattoo he has on his chest. A key scene in the film focuses upon Papillon tattooing a copy of the butterfly onto the body of a tribal elder who gives him sanctuary following his escape. Interestingly, the 2017 version sees Charlie Hunnam’s take on the character bearing numerous tattoos surrounding the iconic butterfly design. The issue of tattoos worn by prisoners is also central in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of the 1962 film, Cape Fear, although with a far more sinister function. The narrative concerns Max Cady (Robert De Niro), a convicted rapist sent to prison for 14 years, who stalks his defending lawyer and his family to exact retribution. Prior to his release, Cady is strip searched, revealing a multitude of tattoos across his body that include a huge crucifix that forms the Scales of Justice and the Biblical quotes ‘Vengeance is mine’, ‘My time is at hand’, ‘THE LORD IS THE AVENGER’ and ‘My time is not yet full come’. The extent of Cady’s tattooing prompts the character Lieutenant Elgort (Robert Mitchum) to state, ‘I don’t know whether to look at him or read him’. However, Cady’s tattoos act as communicative messages underscoring his obsessive and relentless drive for revenge upon his lawyer, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), an action that forms the basis of the narrative as Cady engages in a campaign of terror and violence. Unsurprisingly, tattoos representing ‘outsiders’ is a potent visual cue that acts to set apart characters from mainstream society, serving to flag key aspects of Atkinson’s (2003) Rebel

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Era of tattooing. Such representations include cult classics, such as Modesty Blaise’s (Monica Vitti) scorpion tattoo leg design (denoting her Scorpio star sign) in the spy spoof Modesty Blaise (1966); Snake Plissken’s (Kurt Russell) iconic cobra tattoo on his abdomen in Escape From New York (1981); and the bareknuckle boxer Mickey O’Neil (Brad Pitt) in Snatch (2000). Further examples include bank robber Seth Gecko’s (George Clooney) distinctive full arm and neck tribal tattoo design in the crime/horror film From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and superassassin John Wick’s religiously themed tattoos in the John Wick film series (2014–2019). Indeed, tattoos feature extensively in the John Wick films, especially in John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019), in which the underworld nature of the assassins is visually conveyed with numerous characters wearing an array of neck, hand and facial tattoos. Additionally, the films xXx (2002) and xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017) mix action with tattoos. Based on the adventures of the extensively tattooed extreme sports athlete, Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), recruited by the US government to carry out special missions vital to American security, Cage is famous for his daring feats of extreme sport skill, and his signature triple xXx tattoo, located on the back of his neck. Furthermore, in Fast and Furious 5–8 (2011–2017) and Fast and Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), Dwayne Johnson’s tattoos convey a strong visual element in the character of Shaw’s action persona and image. Yet, with reference to more meditative crime dramas, such as The Place Beyond The Pines (2012), in which motor cycle stunt rider turned bank robber, Luke’s (Ryan Gosling) expansively tattooed body (consisting of numerous small tattoos on his arms and neck, a large traditional American eagle on his chest and a galleon on his back, a Bible on one hand and, most strikingly, a dagger dripping blood on the side of his face) mark him as an ‘outsider’ to the life of his mother and child.

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With regard to tattoos and outsiders, Stieg Larsson’s superlative computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, dubbed by Margot Mifflin as ‘the first famously inked literary heroine’ (Mifflin, 2013, p. 101) and by Kirsten Møllegaard as ‘the ominously tattooed mystery woman’ (2016, p. 347), very rapidly transferred this status into film. Originally appearing in his Millennium trilogy of novels (2005–2007), and subsequently extended in David Lagercrantz’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2015), The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (2017) and The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019), Salander has also developed into a major cinematic icon, with an equally iconic tattoo. Salander has appeared in five films, and been portrayed by three different actors: Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2009); Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011); and Claire Foy in The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018). In terms of comportment, Robert Young and Lynne McDonald-Smith (2011) argue that Salander communicates a distinctive subcultural style that combines aspects of rock, punk, industrial and goth related to her wearing of black clothing, biker boots and dyed black hair. However, it is her nine tattoos and her six body piercings that comprise the key elements of her visual manner, and her identity, which are ‘deliberately designed to alienate and maintain distance’ (Peacock, 2013, p. 23). Her largest motif is the black dragon on her back (a stark design that runs down one side of her body in Mara and Foy’s iteration of the character, but which forms a full back piece in Rapace’s portrayal of Salander), but other designs have an important identity-communicating significance. As Rachel Rodgers and Eric Bui state, Salander’s tattoos are central to her story, and represent her sense of individual identity as well as group membership:

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For instance, Salander has a small wasp tattoo on her neck that symbolizes her pseudonym as a hacker. She is known as ‘wasp’ among the hacker community, within which she is respected as one of the best hackers in the world. This high status within the hacker community is in sharp contrast with her realworld social identity: a single woman who has no contact with her remaining immediate family member, is reputed to have a psychiatric disturbance, and is under legal guardianship. Salander’s wasp tattoo serves as a coded message of her other identity. (2011, pp. 32–33) Tattoos, therefore, represent a key aspect of her identity, image and mode of expression for Salander. For example, in Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, following her rape by her state-appointed guardian, Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), Salander gets an ankle tattoo, the pain of which signifies her survival, and plan for revenge. The key significance of tattooing in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that tattoos form such a powerful aspect of Salander’s sense of self and image, but the tattoo machine also acts as her weapon or of vengeance against Bjurman. Having incapacitated him and shown him the video footage of her rape, she tattoos the words ‘I Am A Rapist Pig’ across his abdomen and chest, and she warns that if he does not meet her demands for financial freedom, and if he has further contact with women, she will release the footage to the authorities. Furthermore, she later reveals that, thanks to her hacking prowess, she is monitoring his online searches for tattoo removal studios, and commands him to cease and wear the tattoo. Significantly, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which takes place some three years following The Girl Who Kicked the

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Hornets’ Nest, reveals that Salander has added to her tattoo collection with a more extensive neck design and a tattoo on her collarbone (and she encounters a murderous organization known as The Spiders, whose fidelity is marked with a tattooed spider tattoo). In looking at alternative styles of films that combine action and crime, such as Machete (2010) and Machete Kills (2013), which features Danny Trejo as the eponymous and violent hero, whose body art consists of Trejo’s own tattoos. Also, Sylvester Stallone’s bodily muscular aesthetic has included tattooed characters in crime/action films such as Get Carter (2000), The Expendables series (2010–2014) and Bullet to the Head (2012). Of these films, Bullet to the Head is of particular interest as the theme of tattooing is a consistent component of the plot. For example, Stallone’s character, the tattooed hitman, James Bonomo, sports Stallone’s own real-life upper body tattoos (in playing the villain, Keegan, Jason Momoa’s half sleeve tribal band tattoo is also visible as part of the character). Furthermore, tattoos are a component of the film’s narrative, such as the female witness that Bonomo allows to escape as she wears a cat tattoo, a motif sported by his daughter, Lisa (Sarah Shahi), who is a tattoo artist. What is interesting with regard to the extensively tattooed Lisa character is that her tattoo studio also serves as a medical facility for her father’s injured criminal acquaintances (due to her completing a year at medical school). In terms of setting, Lisa’s studio evokes the classic tattoo environment, with ‘numerous sheets of “flash” covering the available wall space’ (Sanders, 1988, p. 222). This depiction of the studio is also evident in the tattoo studio owned by Tool (Mickey Rourke) in The Expendables, with the addition of numerous motorcycles, one of which forms the tattoo bench, on which Stallone’s character of Barney Ross has his skull and crow back piece design completed before heading into the team’s next

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adventure. Therefore, while modern tattoo studios are typically described as clinical and professional spaces (Modesti, 2008), the parlour retains its hidden qualities within such representations, especially when related to rebellious or criminal cultures, a motif also central to the film Blood Father (2016). The narrative of Blood Father concerns the newly paroled John Link (Mel Gibson) working as a tattoo artist from his trailer. In addition to the film showing Link working on clients and practicing sketches for forthcoming designs, he is proven to possess an intimate knowledge of differing tattoo styles and, most importantly, what they signify. The plot concerns Link’s daughter, Lydia (Erin Moriarty), escaping from the gang of her boyfriend, Jonah (Diego Luna), following her accidental shooting of him during a raid on a ‘stash house’ in which he has placed an abundance of crime-related money. Seeking out her father, who wears numerous tattoos, including a childhood portrait of Lydia on his forearm, the two go on the run to escape reprisals. Throughout the film, it becomes evident that Link lives within a world surrounded by tattoos, his practice as an artist, his own tattoos and those of the prison community that he reaches out to for help and information. Furthermore, when encountering the gang members who attempt to return Lydia to Jonah, Link ‘reads’ their tattoos, identifying precisely which affiliation they belong to, a factor especially evident with regard to the fearsome ‘Cleaner’ (Raoul Max Trujillo), whose distinctive forehead, eye, face and neck tattoos identify him a Sicario, a hired killer for a Mexican drug cartel. However, a key element in the film is the inference that the lifestyle that Link represents has been appropriated by mainstream popular culture. This sentiment is evident within the scenes in which Link and Lydia seek refuge with Link’s friend, Tom ‘Preacher’ Harris (Michael Parks), and articulated when a number of bikers join

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a celebration. Speaking with Lydia, Preacher argues that her father and the bikers are the ‘last of the survivors’ within a culture that simply buys up the subversives, and ‘turns the rebels into fashion trends’. In this sense, the tattooed bodies of the characters in Blood Father arguably represent the residual traces of a subcultural rebel era that is giving way to the mainstream. Significantly, as Link dies following a shoot-out with the Cleaner, the camera lingers on his upper arm tattoo that reads ‘Lost Soul’, a statement of self that has been transformed through his redemption in saving Lydia. In such films, tattoos act as expressions of self and otherness, but often also as powerful symbols of group identity. Hence, they represent powerful symbols of belonging and group solidarity, and serve as what Hebdige calls symbolic challenges to mainstream society. A powerful example of these representational strategies is evident in the New Zealand film, Once Were Warriors (1994). While films such as The Seekers (1954) and The Piano (1993) deal (albeit with differing levels of historical accuracy) with representations of moko from the nineteenthcentury colonialist experience, Once Were Warriors charts the lives of indigenous New Zealanders against a backdrop of urban deprivation, domestic and sexual abuse, and gang violence. With regard to tattoos, the film evokes the tradition of moko as a means of cultural reclamation, a practice suppressed in 1907 by European colonists, and as a practice adopted within New Zealand gang culture (Shelton, 2020). Seeking acceptance with the Brothers, Nig (Julian Arahanga) first undergoes a violent initiation rite whereby various members of the gang beat him, but having proven himself, Nig undergoes traditional moko tattooing on one side of his face, symbolizing both traditional Maori culture, and the tattoos worn by every member of the gang. Alternatively, the Australian drama Romper Stomper (1992) centres upon the activities of a gang of skinheads, led by Hando (Russell Crowe). Within this film, the

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classic attempt by subcultures such as the British skinheads to collectivize as a means of reclaiming, albeit ‘magically’, some sense of lost community is realized in the gang’s battles in Melbourne with youths from the Vietnamese community to reclaim their ‘lost territory’. In terms of style, the skinhead gang utilize Nazi regalia in their apparel, but tattoos are a central aspect of their aesthetic, a factor that is visually represented through Hando’s striking black skeletal arm and hand sleeve, and the large British/English flag and crucifix design he wears on his chest. The use of tattoos as signs of threat and subversion are also central to Tim Roth’s violent skinhead character, Trevor, in Made in Britain (1982), whose tattoos represent his defiant and unrepentant antiauthority stance (including his own name, done in ‘scratcher’ style across the back of his head). However, the symbolic nature and power of tattoos within a skinhead subcultural context is central in American History X (1998). American History X tells the story of brothers Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) and Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong), who are recruited into a neo-Nazi skinhead gang, the D.O.C. (the Disciples of Christ), by Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach), a white supremacist, following the murder of their father. Based in Venice Beach, California, the D.O.C.’s aesthetic is Nazi-dominated, ranging from Danny’s bedroom, emblazoned with Nazi flags, emblems and portraits of Adolph Hitler, to the D.O.C. cross tattoo that each member has (including SS facial tattoos). With reference to neo-Nazi biker gangs, Ennio E. Piano argues that the member of such an organization must: [Embrace] a lifestyle that separates him from – and stigmatizes him in the face of – society. He must dress, talk, act like an outlaw: wear easily identifiable clothes with the insignia of the club, cover his body

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with tattoos representing Nazi and Whitesupremacist symbolism, and behave outrageously, violently, and unpredictably in the presence of members of mainstream society. (2018, p. 371) Derek perfectly reflects this ethos, with his tattoos consisting of a large black swastika tattoo he wears on his chest, in addition to an Iron Cross, a German Army Eagle motif, barbed wire and the words ‘White Power’. The film moves between the past and the present, detailing Derek’s rallying of the D.O.C. gang, an attack on a Korean convenience store and his killing of two African-Americans in the process of stealing his car, for which he is sentenced to three years in prison for manslaughter. As Mary Kosut argues, human bodies carry signage as characteristics such as ethnicity or gender and act as what Erving Goffman terms ‘sign vehicles’. In addition to birth-given sign vehicles, individuals add to them with signs conferred from wider culture, which include temporary signs such as cosmetics or clothing, or permanent sign vehicles created through tattooing. As Kosut states: An important characteristic of the tattoo as a form of communication is that it largely ‘speaks’ through non-verbal transmission. It is seen (or read) by oneself and if placed in a visible location, it may also be read by others. (2000, p. 80) On arriving in prison, Derek consciously uses his tattooed body to act as a ‘flag’, a sign vehicle that serves to visually communicate his ideological affiliation and so connect with neo-Nazi inmates, who all bear similar tattoo designs, and so

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secure protection against African-American and Hispanic prison groups. Significantly, during a flashback scene within the family home, Derek uses his swastika tattoo as a threatening symbol towards Murray (Elliott Gould), a Jewish teacher who is dating his mother. The crux of the film’s story is Derek’s redemption and ultimate rejection of the skinhead gang and its neo-Nazi ideology, primarily based upon his friendship with Lamont (Guy Torry), an African-American who ultimately protects Derek from rival gangs. On his release, having grown out his hair as the first step towards rejecting and abandoning the D.O.C. movement, Derek attempts to divert Danny away from their influence, ideas and violent racist actions. However, there is a crucial scene in which, following a shower, Derek gazes at the swastika tattoo on his chest in the mirror, recognizing that the sign vehicle of his now-rejected extremist ideology is inscribed into his skin. As Fruh and Thomas state, a key motivation for people to be tattooed is frequently the desire to ‘externalize some aspect of their inner lives, or as a way of marking or remembering significant events in their histories’ (2012, p. 83). However, Derek’s tattoos, given their extremist political nature, will only serve as symbols of continual stigmatization, which, related to its Greek roots, historically represented ‘a mark of infamy’ or a ‘physical mark denoting shame or disgrace’ (Larsen, Patterson, & Markham 2014, p. 672). Hence, for Derek, his Nazi and white supremacist tattoos serve as a constant bodily reminder of a history associated with violence, hate and, in Danny’s case, ultimate tragedy. Still, the externalization of extremist subcultural identity and stigmatizing tattoos is not necessarily a permanent bodily state or status, a factor central to the film, Skin (2018). Based on true events, Skin is concerned with the life of Bryon ‘Babs’ Widner (Jamie Bell), a formerly homeless teen taken in by Fred ‘Hammer’ Krager (Bill Camp) and Shareen (Vera

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Farmiga), who head the Vinlanders Social Club, a violent neoNazi/White Supremacist group. Akin to American History X’s D.O.C., the Vinlanders Social Club engage in attacks (including murder) on non-white ethnic groups in the attempt to ‘re-create through the “mob’’’ (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson, & Roberts, 2006, p. 80) an apparent declining culture. Tattoos are integral to the group, with numerous Nazi/German military symbols in addition to Nordic images, with many members sporting extensive facial tattooing, and most prominently, Bryon (who is a tattoo artist). For Kosut, tattoos represent ‘visual phenomena that often evoke powerful responses – ranging from curiosity and admiration to disgust and fear’ (2000, p. 82). Bryon’s tattoos evoke all of these responses, from Iggy (Colbi Gannett), the young daughter of Julie (Danielle Macdonald), whom Bryon forms a relationship with, and ultimately marries, who has no fear, to the admiration of his fellow Vinlanders. Moreover, Bryon’s facial tattoos, which include a straight razor, the name of the gang, tribal-style designs and a large black arrow that covers one eye and much of his forehead, brings him to the attention of Mike Colter (Daryle Jenkins), of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Colter specializes in rehabilitating neoNazis, and getting them to work with the FBI to arrest their movements for racially motivated acts of violence. In this way, like American History X, Skin is a story of redemption and the rejection of racism and aggression. However, a key difference lies in the way in which Bryon breaks with his past. As part of his deal with the FBI for testifying against the Vinlanders Social Club, Bryon undergoes extensive laser removal treatment for his facial and hand tattoos, on the grounds that they will make him visible for reprisals by the movement. In this sense, the film deals with tattoo stigma in a number of ways. With reference to the social psychology of Goffman, Zestcott et al. stress that stigma is a characteristic that ‘devalues an individual, reducing them “from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one”’

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(2018, p. 8). The perception of tattoos acting as symbols of stigmatizing devaluation is progressively recognized by Bryon as his relationships with Julie and Mike grows, to the extent that at one point Bryon attempts to chemically burn off his facial tattoos, a self-administered procedure that is unsuccessful. Subsequently, the film shows a number of scenes that depict the laser removal process, and graphically evoke the excruciating pain that Bryon feels as the tattoos are treated, and ultimately removed. The film depicts how Bryon undergoes 612 days of treatment to be able to remove the signs of his gang life and reject the white supremacist ideology. However, a key aspect of the tattoos is the revelation that they each symbolize acts of violence committed by the gang – that they are inscribed Vinlanders Social Club ‘trophies’. This aspect is a key element in his negotiations with the FBI, who require Bryon to ‘decode’ his tattoos in order to prosecute the Vinlanders, revealing that the tattoos are not simply images, but a secret visual language of the subcultural group.

TATTOOS AS THE SEMIOTIC COMMUNICATION OF SELF The theme of tattoos acting as symbolic images that disclose ‘me-ness’ and act to disclose a sense of self-narrative are strikingly presented in Memento (2000). While ostensibly a crime thriller, Memento consists of an elliptical narrative structure (with two storylines moving in chronological and reverse order) that explores the issue of memory, certainty and personal narrative. Centred on the character Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), an insurance investigator, who, as the result of receiving a head injury during a home invasion, cannot form new memories and so he can only experience short-term

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memory awareness. The attackers raped and murdered Leonard’s wife, and so he seeks revenge on the key assailant, a man he believes to be ‘John G’. Given that Leonard’s memory continually wipes clean, he navigates through the world using a series of Polaroid photographs on which he writes notes that identify people, places and possessions. Yet, the key way in which Leonard retains knowledge of his investigation and clues is through his practice of tattooing what he feels to be vital information and directives onto his body. This becomes his memory system, as he explains: ‘If you have a piece of information which is vital, write it on your body instead of a piece of paper. It can be the answer. It’s just a permanent way of keeping a note’. Leonard’s tattooing practices consist of self-inscriptions, using a needle taped to a bio pen, and utilizing the pen ink, and clue lists tattooed by professional artists. Through this method, Leonard’s body contains numerous words, numbers and ‘facts’. However, as his partner, ex-policeman John ‘Teddy’ Gemmell (Joe Pantoliano), reveals, Leonard’s tattoo codes are a self-narrative that drive an unsolvable puzzle; they located his wife’s rapist who he had killed months before (an event Leonard has forgotten). In essence, Leonard has constructed a series of loops in which he continually seeks out and identifies new ‘John Gs’, murders them in an act of ‘vengeance’, and then forgets. From this point, Leonard (with Teddy’s help, as he was the investigating officer following the attack) instantly restarts his investigation, all the while adding to his body of tattooed clues, ‘facts’ and directives that map out his (constructed) personal history and motivational drive. As Kosut argues, as ‘historical reference points or aidesmemoire, tattoos permanently illustrate biographical stories’ (2000, p. 96), even if, as with Leonard, they act as phantasmagorical sign vehicles of identity. The subject of tattoos acting as ‘scars that speak’ (Benson, 2000, p. 252) is central to Eastern Promises (2007), which deals

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with the centrality of tattoos to the Vory v Zakone, the Russian mafia, and the Russian prison tattoo tradition. In terms of plot, Eastern Promises is a London-based crime drama that concerns the activities of Russian crime boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), and their driver, Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen). A British-Russian midwife, Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), encounters the gang, particularly Nikolai, through delivering the baby of the teenage Tatiana, who dies in childbirth, and Anna seeks a family contact for the child as a card for Semyon’s Trans-Siberian Restaurant is found in her effects. This sets off a train of events that leads to Semyon’s arrest as the rapist of Tatiana, forced into prostitution within one of his brothels, but as the nature of the criminals becomes revealed, so too does the centrality of tattoos within their culture. This aspect of the film is established early in the narrative, following the brutal murder of one of the gang, Soyka (Aleksander Mikic). When his body is discovered on the banks of the Thames, his prison tattoos are ‘read’ by the police officer, Yuri (Donald Sumpter), who identifies him as a Captain from his insignia designs and states, ‘In Russian prisons, your life story is written on your body in tattoos. You don’t have tattoos, you don’t exist’. In this regard, Eastern Promises clearly evokes the nature of Russian prison tattooing, and its associations with the Vory v Zakone. As Kristina Sundberg and Ulrika Kjellman argue, in this culture the tattoo acts as a ‘document’ of an individual’s identity, their experiences, status and criminal actions. As they state: Among Russian/Soviet prisoners, tattoos have long played a significant role as evidence of the individual’s criminal orientation and personal characteristics. For example, a tattoo of a spider web with a spider walking up or down indicates the prisoner’s desire to leave or not to leave criminal life

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behind; a tattoo of a knife ‘through the neck’ indicates that the prisoner committed murder in prison, while little bells around the ankles mean he has served his sentence in full. (2018, p. 18) In their extensive studies of Russian prison tattoos, Danzig Baldaev, Alexei Plutser-Sarno and Sergei Vasiliev stress that such tattooed bodies represent linguistic objects, with the key to successfully ‘reading’ them passed on through oral tradition and culture. This is so because tattoo designs consist of encoded information that is obscure for the uninitiated, and so conveys secret symbolic communications through allegorical images. Hence, This is a language that is both highly socialised and politicised. A thief’s tattooed body is like a ‘depiction’ of a full-dress uniform, covered with regalia, decorations and badges of rank and distinction…In effect, these tattoos embody a thief’s complete ‘service record’, his entire biography. (2009, p. 27) Nikolai’s tattoos form the main canvas of attention in this regard in Eastern Promises, which for the most part are represented by the designs on his hands and fingers. Nevertheless, the perception of such tattooing as representing the ‘tattooed body as an archive’ (Sundberg & Kjellman, 2018, p. 20) is captured in the scene in which Nikolai is presented to various high-ranking members of the Vory v Zakone for promotion to the rank of Captain, which consists of the tattooing of two stars on either side of his upper chest. In this scene, Nikolai presents his near-naked body to the group, who clearly read his distinctive crime biography through his tattoo designs covering

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his arms, legs, chest, back and feet, which communicate that he is a convicted thief, whose criminal career began at the age of 15. However, the semiotic nature of Nikolai’s tattoos raise further issues in relation to how they are read. Firstly, his promotion is a ruse by Semyon to have him murdered by Soyka’s revenge-seeking brothers in place of Kirill (who ordered the killing). This results in a scene set within a bathhouse in which Nikolai is positioned to be recognized as Kirill due to the wearing of the star tattoos, eliciting a brutal knife fight in which the naked Nikolai demonstrates that much of his body bears crime-based tattoos. Secondly, the twist of the film is that Nikolai is an undercover Russian police officer, sent to infiltrate the Vory v Zakone. Therefore, as Timothy Holland states, the tattoos represent ‘biographical fiction’, and operating ‘as both armour and a decoy, the fables written on Nikolai’s skin, which are legitimized by the authors who inscribed them, promise the truth to those capable of “reading” him’ (2017, p. 146). The aesthetic power of Russian prison tattoos is also a potent visual aspect of Nikolai Itchenko (Marton Csokas) in The Equalizer (2014), as his heavily tattooed body displays the possession of Captain’s stars, and a knife below the neck motif, which signifies that he has killed. However, while, as Benson argues, tattoos can act as ‘a way of “reclaiming” the body for the self’ (2000, p. 249), films such as Eastern Promises and Memento demonstrate this ethos with regard to the power of tattoos, and their ability to aid the invention of a self.

TATTOOS IN FANTASY AND HORROR Regarding films that fall into the genres of fantasy and horror, the theme of tattooing as a means of self-creation and selfnarrative has a number of potent examples. For instance,

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tattoos ‘speaking’ are the narrative focus and conceptual theme of The Illustrated Man (1969), which (based on the short story collection by Ray Bradbury) is set in the Carnival Era of the early 1930s, in which Carl (Rod Steiger) seeks revenge on Felicia (Claire Bloom), who covered his body with vibrant tattoo designs. The conceit of the film is that Carl’s tattoos animate to tell stories of future events to those who view them. Tattoos represent distinctive aspects of self within contemporary science fiction and fantasy films, such as Divergent (2014), based upon Veronica Roth’s Young Adult (YA) novel series. Charting a future world that divides its population into differing factions (Dauntless, Abnegation, Candour, Erudite and Amity), tattoos play a significant role. For example, the character of Four (Theo James) wears an elaborate tattoo on his back that unites all of the factions, while Tris (Shailene Woodley) is tattooed with three ravens on her collarbone to represent her family, and Tori (Maggie Q), who is a tattoo artist, wears a hawk design to signify the overcoming of personal fears. Staying with YA adaptations, the film version of Stephenie Meyer’s novel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) based upon Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) romance with the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattison), sees Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) symbolize his joining of the Quileute Tribe wolf pack (sworn enemies of the vampires) with the tribal tattoo that all members wear. While in Waterworld (1995), the key to survival is found in a tattoo on Enola’s (Tina Majorino) back that represents a cryptic map showing the route to the only dry land left on the planet. In other instances tattoos in fantasy style films represent idiosyncratic visual aspects of fearsomeness, such as Viper’s (Lee-Anne Liebenberg) distinctive facial tattoos in the futuristic adventure Doomsday (2008). And tattoos form the distinctive aesthetic of the dragon-killer, Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), in Reign of Fire (2002), which is

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similarly reflected with regard to Caine Wise’s (Channing Tatum) ornate arm tattoo (and neck design), which is part of his genetically enhanced alien hunter persona in Jupiter Ascending (2015). Tattoos also serve as iconic character symbols, as is the case with Dr Frank-N-Furter’s (Tim Curry) bleeding heart/dagger/BOSS and 4711 tattoo designs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). However, tattoos can have a practical function, as in the supernatural drama, Constantine (2005), in which John Constantine’s (Keanu Reeves) mystical forearm tattoo designs have the power to summon demons when placed together. Alternatively, tattoos are an aspect of control and ownership, as in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), in which when Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is captured by the tyrannical Immortan Joe (Hugh KeaysByrne) and has his body and health data forcibly tattooed on his back, part of which identifies him as having organs suitable for extraction. In more horror-oriented films, tattoos are foregrounded as signs of alternative culture, as in The Wizard of Gore (2007), in which Montag the Magnificent’s (Crispin Glover) on-stage magic act ends in murder and mutilation. Visible tattoos are a part of the ‘subcultural’ audiences’ visual style, but the film is notable in that all of the victims of Montag are played by members of the alternative beauty website, the Suicide Girls, which exclusively showcases tattooed and pierced models. However, the transformative power of tattoos is a key aspect of Red Dragon (2002), adapted from Thomas Harris’ novel, in which the killer, Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes) wears a large tattoo design of a dragon, inspired by the art of William Blake, which symbolizes his ‘becoming’ into a new entity (the belief that drives his murderous actions). This element is further visually stressed in the TV series, Hannibal (2013–2015), whereby Dolarhyde (Richard Armitage) imagines the dragon tattoo moving and coiling around his body,

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truly becoming a part of his self and symbolizing his transformation. The idea of tattoos and self-identity is also an aspect of The Green Inferno (2013). Framed as an homage to the 1980s cannibal horror films (such as Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox), The Green Inferno follows the activities of a group of environmental activists who travel to the Amazon rainforest to protest against a petrochemical company engaged in forest clearance, but who are captured by a cannibalistic tribe when their plane crash-lands in the jungle. One of the group, Samantha (Magda Apanowicz) sports a number of tattoos, and on seeing a jaguar declares that the animal will be the inspiration for her next tattoo (with the scene serving as a gently satirical commentary on the Millennial practice of inscribing life experiences into the skin through tattoos). However, Samantha’s tattoos soon become the focus of horror when the failure of her escape bid is revealed to the group through a number of the tribe’s children wearing tattooed patches of her skin. However, there are other horror films in which tattoos as an art form are key components of the narratives. For example, The Tattooist (2007) explores both the nature of traditional Samoan tattooing and the expropriation of such traditions by Western practitioners. The film is based upon an American tattoo artist, Jake Sawyer (Jason Behr), whose speciality is healing tattoos drawn from various global tattooing cultures. While attending a Tattoo Expo, Sawyer sees Sina (Mia Blake) and follows her to an area of the Expo in which a traditional Samoan pe’a tattooing ceremony is being performed by tattooists from New Zealand. The pe’a is an ancient tradition in which men receive a tattoo from mid-torso to knees (women receive the malu), which is used contemporaneously to celebrate Samoan roots (Dance, 2019). Clandestinely looking on at the tattooing ceremony, with the use of the traditional hammer and chisel tapping technique,

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Jake steals a chisel from a display cabinet for use in his own practice. Commenting on the Western embrace of ‘tribal’ tattoo designs and techniques, Turner argues that: Traditional Maori or Japanese signs are woven into global consumerism, where they are endlessly modernized, producing a complex hybridization of signs and messages. Globalization has produced a melange of tattoos which are ironically self-referential and repetitive, and the very hybridity of tattoo genres playfully questions the authenticity of these commercial body marks. (1999, p. 40) Sawyer’s lack of authenticity is tragically revealed when the father of a gravely ill boy, whose ‘healing’ tattoo failed to save his life, confronts Sawyer and pushes him to the ground, in which Sawyer cuts his palm with the tattoo chisel. This scene both reveals the cynical lack of authenticity that Sawyer has for the differing tattoo traditions he expropriates, but it also sets the supernatural part of the plot in train. On feeling guilty for his act of theft, Sawyer travels to Auckland in New Zealand to return the chisel. On arrival, he seeks out a previous employer, and starts work in the Bedlam tattoo studio, from where he tattoos a number of clients, and seeks out Sina to return the tool. Yet, Sawyer’s hand wound does not heal, and even oozes ink. Furthermore, he catches sights of a ghostly figure in mirrors, and constantly hears a tapping sound. More horrifically, each of Sawyer’s clients die, as their tattoos continually expand to the point that they copiously bleed black tattoo ink. The crux of the film revolves around Sawyer attempting to find a solution to the phenomenon as he has also tattooed Sina, and her tattoo begins to enlarge. The stealing of the chisel is what is responsible as it contains the vengeful spirit of Lomi (Ian Vincent), whose

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pe’a became infected due to the inadequate practice of Mr. Va’a (David Fane), who would not take Lomi to the hospital as it would have shamed him. Therefore, Lomi, who Va’a claimed to have fled because he could not ensure the pain of the pe’a, bringing disgrace on his family, becomes the spectral Tattooist, who continues the tattooing process begun by Sawyer. Thus, while a horror film, the narrative is also centrally concerned with the tradition of the pe’a, from Va’a ritually cutting off his tattooed skin in the wake of his confession (which restores honour to Lomi and his family, and ends his supernatural tattooing), to the nature of Western attitudes to the practice. As the pe’a artist states to Sawyer, ‘I have worked for years to try to make people see tatau for what it is, but there’s always people like you who think you can come in and take without asking’. Significantly, having learned the lesson of expropriation, the film ends with Sawyer completing the design the Tattooist produced in his own specialism, giving Sina a backpiece that represents a hybrid of Samoan and western tattoo styles. The figure of the tattoo artist, and the status of tattooing as an art, finds expression in a number of films, often with associations of tattooing with deviance. A key example is Tattoo (1981), which explores the tattoo as a form of body modification, but also as horror and symbol of control. Based upon the tattoo artist Karl Kinsky (Bruce Dern), who has a full Japanese body design as a result of being stationed in Japan when in the army, he runs a tattoo shop in Hoboken, New York. Kinsky is hired to draw temporary tattoos on fashion models for a photo shoot and becomes attracted to one of the models, Maddy (Maud Adams). In becoming sexually obsessed with Maddy, Kinsky kidnaps her and begins to tattoo her body, to inscribe what he calls ‘the mark’, and progressively cover her skin with floral designs to ultimately match his own tattoo-covered self. As Mascia-Lees and Sharpe argue, Tattoo echoes Junichiro Tanizaki’s novella, The

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Tattooer, in which a Japanese tattooist forcibly tattoos a huge black widow spider onto the back of a geisha. Yet, while the geisha’s reaction to her tattoo is one of acceptance, Maddy, on first seeing her ‘new self’ in a mirror, experiences ‘the tattoo as worse than death’ (1992, p. 152), ultimately, and symbolically, stabbing Kinsky with his tattoo machine. As Steven Allen (2013) states of Tattoo, the act of tattooing is represented as a mode of sadistic domination, in which the tattoo machine becomes a phallic substitute, and power is exercised through the permanence of the tattoos, a theme also central to the British film, Perfect Skin (2018). Akin to Tattoo, Perfect Skin is the story of an obsessed tattoo artist, Bob Reid (Richard Brake), whose London-based tattoo parlour, Perfect Skin, becomes the location for his own drive to create the ultimate tattoo designs. The film concerns Katia (Natalia Kostrzewa), an unemployed Polish au pair who meets up with her friend Lucy (Jo Woodcock). Lucy has a number of tattoos done by Bob and introduces Katia to him, who openly admires her skin and considers her to be a ‘blank canvas’. On meeting Bob in a bar, Katia returns to his studio, where he drugs her, and then imprisons her in a cage in the building’s basement. From here, Bob repeatedly drugs Katia in order to tattoo extensive designs across her body, cuffing her hands so that she cannot scratch and ruin the work. The motivation for Bob’s actions are rooted in his progressive Parkinson’s disease, which is causing hand tremors that will soon end his tattooing career, and Katia effectively is to be his ultimate tattooed canvas. Hence, over the course of two months, he covers her arms, legs and upper body with a variety of designs, and most strikingly, he shaves her head and covers it with a large snake design, webs, petals and a snake down the side of her face (and he fixes two metal horns to her head). Largely a psychological thriller, Perfect Skin slides into horror when Bob murders Lucy, dismembers her body and

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tattoos her head and torso. A significant aspect of the narrative is that, while reacting with horror and anger, screaming, ‘What have you done to me? This is my body!’ when she first sees her tattooed body, she becomes intrigued by the symbolism of the designs, which Bob explains. Moreover, Bob tattoos a perfect likeness of the image of Katia’s deceased brother (kept in a locket she constantly wears), that emotionally moves her. In this sense, Katia’s reactions to her tattoos are complex, and she asks to read the books that explore and explain the symbolism of tattoos, but she still plans and realizes her escape, killing Bob with a piece of broken glass and leaving the basement, the last shot showing a radically transformed body. While ostensibly a film dealing with the horror of a body forcibly, and permanently, altered by the actions of another, Perfect Skin identifies the distinctive (and debated) nature of tattooing with regard to artistic production. This is especially evident when Bob, reflecting upon the nature of his actions as her inscribed skin is increasingly covered, states to Katia, ‘Now it’s not just a tattoo, it’s a piece of art’. However, the German film, Tattoo (2002), places the issue of tattooing as an art form at the centre of its macabre narrative. Tattoo opens with the scene of Lynn Wilson (Christiane Scheda), staggering on a road at night with a large patch of skin removed from her back, before being struck by a vehicle and killed. Lynn’s death is investigated by detective Minks (Christian Redl) who recruits newly graduated officer Marc Schrader (August Diehl) as his partner. Initially, the film appears to be a Se7en-style serial killer drama involving an unknown assailant who murders victims and then removes tattooed skin as trophies. But, as the narrative develops, it becomes more complex, with the tattoo as an artistic artefact becoming a central component of the story. In discussing debates concerning the artistic status of tattoos, Kosut argues

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that a key part of the Tattoo Renaissance was the entry of professionally trained artists into the industry, which would reinforce the ‘idea that some tattoos are indeed art, rather than craft or commonplace bodily decoration’ (2014, p. 146). However, as D. Angus Vail stresses, the distinction developed between ‘tattoo art’ and ‘tattoos’, a contrast based upon the distinctive aesthetic elements in each style. Hence, while many tattoos are small and stylistically limited, ‘artistic’ tattoos ‘are commonly large, often colourful, and frequently connected to one another. The overall visual effect of an artistic collection is similar to clothing because it “covers” large sections of skin’ (1999, p. 326). This latter description of tattoos is what drives the narrative of Tattoo, as the film is centrally about individuals who collect prized tattooed skin. In terms of representation, the film does present a dichotomous approach to tattooing, in that the day-to-day practice is associated with the underground (the one studio depicted in the film is not a clinical environment, and the artist is giving a tattoo to an under-aged boy) and differs markedly from the world of elite artists. The arrival of Lynn’s college friend, Maya Kroner (Nadeshda Brennicke) reveals that the missing tattoo from Lynn’s back was the work of a famed Japanese artist, Hori Hiromitsu, who only tattooed 12 people and then committed suicide. Hence, all of those who wear the now rare Hiromitsu designs are being murdered for their now valuable skin. Therefore, the status of tattoos as art is central to the film, as the mystery of the narrative concerns the existence of a tattoo trade market. As such, the film features characters who sell patches of their skin containing requested tattoos, but the enigmatic and unseen character ‘Irezumi’, a major collector, kills for their desired art, seeking to acquire the complete Hiromitsu collection. The detectives learn of the tattoo collector world through the lawyer Frank Schoubya (Johan Leysen), who acts as a broker for Irezumi, but who is also an

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avid collector, as revealed by his gallery space filled with framed tattooed skins and a full bodysuit. With regard to the aesthetic status of tattoos, Schoubya, on seeing Lynn’s tattooed skin, declares that it is the ‘pinnacle of tattoo art, perhaps of all art’, reflecting Howard Becker’s view that ‘art is what people treat as art’ (Vail, 1999, p. 325). However, Maya reveals that she wears a previously unknown thirteenth Hiromitsu design, a full body tattoo of Japanese-style waves, and is used as bait to bring Irezumi out into the open. Yet, the twist at the climax of the film is that Maya obtains Lynn’s tattoo and is revealed to be Irezumi, with the last image of her in a restaurant appraising a waiter’s ornamental tattoo on his arm. However, the final sequence of the film depicts Schrader undergoing the traditional Japanese tattoo process and obtaining the same design as Maya, with the intention of using himself within the illicit tattoo trade as a means by which to continue the pursuit of Irezumi. Hence, Tattoo, while often graphically violent, consistently represents the tattoo as a form of art, indeed, an art form so potent that some will sell their skins, while others will kill for them.

TATTOOS IN THE MAINSTREAM Looking at tattoos in the popular cultural medium of film, many of the key elements of the cultural and social development of the practice find representation. Hence, tattoos represent communicative mediums, self-expression, rebellion, marks of deviance and threat, and often reflect the underground ethos that arguably defined them. Yet, the cultural understanding of tattoos is that, from the 1970s and accelerating in the 2000s, they have unequivocally undergone a mainstreaming in terms of social and cultural visibility, and

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this is equally evident with regard to filmic representations. For example, one of the most memorable comedic moments in the popular film, The Hangover Part 2 (2011) is the revelation of Stu’s (Ed Helms) large Mike Tyson–style facial tattoo, acquired during a drunken night in Bangkok that disastrously includes a trip to a tattoo studio. Tattoos are also a central feature in Pete Davidson’s semi-autobiographical comedydrama, The King of Staten Island (2020), in which his own tattoo collection is extensively featured. However, a clear indication of such mainstream representation is the presence of tattoos in Disney’s Moana (2016). Derived from Polynesian mythology, the story of the film is based upon Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) leaving her island to seek out the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), who stole the heart of the goddess, Te Fiti, an action that has resulted in a progressive environmental devastation affecting all of the islands. The film features Polynesian tattoos in a number of ways, firstly the islanders wear the pe’a and malu, and Maui is not only comprehensively tattooed, but his tattoos have magical abilities. For instance, Maui’s tattoos constantly animate not only to convey his history but also to provide commentary on current events and actions. Thus, in the ultimate expression of tattoos expressing me-ness, Maui wears a tattooed image of himself, which constantly ‘speaks’ to him through acting out scenarios, most significantly, acting as his conscience when he does not wish to help Moana in her quest. It is ultimately revealed that Maui’s tattoos magically appear on his body when he earns them, and with the return of the heart, the image of Moana becomes his latest inscribed image. As such, tattoos play an important aesthetic, cultural and narrative role within Moana, and bring tattoos to the cinematic tradition of Disney, although Captain Jack Sparrow does have a tattoo in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, based on the Disney theme park.

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With regard to alternative mainstream cinematic ‘universes’, tattoos are present in the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), as represented by the Death Eaters’ skull and snake motifs, and tattoos have also become increasingly evident in the superhero genre. An early example is evident in Marvel’s Blade series (1998–2004), in which a key aspect of the half-vampire Blade’s (Wesley Snipes) image includes the distinctive tribal-style tattoos on his shoulders and neck. Furthermore, in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Drax’s (Dave Bautista) body is heavily tattooed, with the designs that tell the story of his life history, while the central character of Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) in Venom (2018) includes Hardy’s own tattoos. Furthermore, tattoos are a salient part of the aesthetic in Black Panther (2018), as most strikingly illustrated with reference to the Wakandan peacekeeping force, the Dora Milaje, and General Okoye’s (Danai Gurira) ornate head tattoo design. In DC’s superhero films, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman character displays extensive tattoos across his arms and body based upon traditional Polynesian designs (including the actor’s own forearm design) in both Justice League (2017) and Aquaman (2018). However, tattoos are a significant and persistent feature in the ensemble adventure, Suicide Squad (2016), in which a number of characters are tattooed. For example, characters such as Monster T (Common) has a number of head designs, while Diablo (Jay Hernandez) wears numerous gang-style body and facial tattoos, with his face fashioned in the likeness of a skull with a prominent scythe design on his forehead. Furthermore, the film’s version of The Joker (Jared Leto) is heavily tattooed, with motifs such as smiles on his arm and hand, a skull jester, a knife through the Batman symbol, multiple Ha Ha Has written on his forearms and chest, facial tattoos, and the word ‘JOKER’ emblazoned across his upper abdomen. Additionally, the Joker’s partner in

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crime, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) has a number of distinctive tattoos, such as: a diamond jester pattern on her right arm, ‘Property of the Joker’ on her left shoulder, and the word ‘Rotten’ written along her jawline and a black heart on her cheek, designs also evident in Cathy Yan’s Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020). As Leanne Butkovic states of the history of the Harley Quinn character: The Suicide Squad Harley Quinn was the first overtly tattooed Harley Quinn, maybe a nod to our culture simply becoming more tolerant of visible tattoos on women, but also suggesting that tattoos are for delinquents. (Notice how the vast majority of superheroes are ink-free while their antagonists have been tattooed a hundred times over?). (2020: Thrillist.com) Tattoos in the superhero genre, therefore, still tend towards the classic ‘rebel’ and ‘outsider’ status. Hence, tattoos in film represent key elements of the history of tattoos, from the representation of the tattoo as a symbol of otherness, group and cultural solidarity, and a distinctive bodily art form, to the self-communicative potential and nature of tattoo designs. Furthermore, given the importance of fandom as a modern subcultural mode, it is not surprising to note that popular cultural icons like Harley Quinn have in turn inspired numerous fan tattoos.

3 TATTOOING AND REALITY TV

If tattoos have featured in various films, then it is no surprise that they have also been discernible in television, one of the most historically prominent mediums of popular culture (Storey, 2010). For example, in the episode of the popular 1970s American television crime series, Starsky & Hutch (1975–1979), entitled ‘Texas Longhorn’ (1975), the detectives track a rapist and murderer, who is identifiable by the distinctive tattoos, consisting of rows of fishes on the inside of both of his forearms. In the course of their investigation, the detectives visit a tattoo studio for information on the design, where they learn that the design confirms that the killer is a sailor who acquired the tattoos in the South China Seas. In a change of pace from a US action-filled cop show, the episode of Tales of the Unexpected entitled ‘Skin’ (1980) is a dramatization of a Roald Dahl short story that begins with an impoverished former tattoo artist, Drioli (Derek Jacobi) discovering that his old artist friend, Soutine (Boris Isarov), is now famous and his works command great fortunes. A flashback to 1913 reveals that having taught Soutine the rudiments of tattooing, Drioli has Soutine paint a portrait of his wife on his back and then tattoo over the painting, immortalising the art onto his

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skin forever. In revealing his art to a gallery owner, there is a bidding battle to buy the tattoo. Ultimately, Drioli is made an offer by a hotelier to live in luxury in Cannes for the rest of his life, with the proviso that he constantly displays the priceless Soutine artwork. Yet, in a macabre twist, the detached artwork is then seen being offered for sale in Argentina, and it is revealed that the hotel does not exist. A salient aspect of Skin is not simply the tattoo-based plot concept, but the interesting depiction of early tattoo-machine-based techniques, and, most significantly, the debate as to whether tattooing constitutes an art form (which Soutine ultimately accedes is indeed the case). In other television examples, in amongst the conspiracy theories and alien activities, The X-Files episode ‘Never Again’ (1997) features a plot in which a man’s Bettie Page–style pin-up tattoo seemingly speaks to him (voiced by Jodie Foster) and commands him to commit murder. But the episode is also significant in that Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) obtains an Ouroboros tattoo on her back in the course of her investigation. While in Brimstone (1998–1999), Ezekiel Stone (Peter Horton) is charged by the Devil (John Glover) to recapture 113 evil souls that have escaped from Hell, with Stone’s body, bearing 113 tattoos that symbolize each soul (which progressively disappear as each soul is returned to Hell). Although as Derek John Roberts (2012) suggests, 1990s television culture, from situation comedies to crime dramas, often had the tendency to represent tattoos as either impediments to respectable employment or as stereotyped signifiers of criminality. In the context of twenty-first-century popular television, tattoos have arguably become multifaceted in terms of representation and tattoo depictions. For example, while the prison drama Orange is the New Black (2013–2019) incorporates a number of tattooed female characters (and features the practice of prison tattooing), the crime series Prison Break (2005–2009) takes a different, and far more high concept approach to the subject.

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Based upon an elaborate plot of a man unjustly sent to Death Row, his brother gets himself incarcerated in the same prison in order to stage a daring and intricate escape. The conceit of the show is that, given his profession as a structural engineer, the central character of Michael Schofield (Wentworth Miller) has a tattoo that consists of a coded layout of the prison and key information central to the escape plan. This issue of coding is also at the heart of the action-drama, Blindspot (2015–), the story of an amnesic, Jane Doe (Jamie Alexander), who is abandoned in Times Square in a bag, naked, revealing that her body is covered in cryptic tattoos, the significance of which she has no memory of acquiring. In terms of narrative and plot, the tattoos are progressively revealed to be clues to who she is and to her previous life. Tattoos also feature extensively in the crime drama Sons of Anarchy (2008–2014), centred upon the activities of a California-based motorcycle club involved in both legal and illegal business activities, evoking a contemporary ‘rebel’ perception of the tattoo as the marker of ‘the outsider’ (Atkinson, 2003, p. 41). In this show, the gang’s tattoo insignia of the Grim Reaper also acts as a mark of gang solidarity and identity (and is worn by many fans of the show). Furthermore, modern historical dramas have also significantly featured depictions of tattooing, such as the gang-solidarity tattooing practice in the 1938-set Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020), and Taboo (2017), set in 1814, and which focuses upon the character of James Keziah Delaney (Tom Hardy), who returns to England following 12 years in Africa, an experience marked into Delaney’s skin in the form of tribal tattoo designs. And, going back further into history, Vikings (2013-) features a number of Norse characters who are extensively tattooed, but most strikingly the central character, Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), whose ornate head tattoos are a key part of the aesthetic of the character (and who has inspired many fans to acquire Ragnar tattoo portraits).

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However, while tattoos are present in differing ways in fictional television, a key concentration of representations of tattooing in contemporary popular culture has been within what is dubbed reality TV. This is a multifaceted genre that Ruth A. Deller describes as representing ‘arguably the defining television format of the twenty-first century’ (2020, p. 11), and reality TV has played a significant role in the representation of tattooing.

REALITY TV: A GENRE OF MANY FORMS In the view of Jonathan Bignell (2005), reality TV gets its designator from its focus upon representations of reality in the form of unscripted interactions, rather than being based upon a fictional narrative. As such, while some scenarios presented in reality TV shows may be artificial (the settings, studio environments, etc.), they are distinguished in their use of nonactors or professional entertainers (Andrejevic, 2004). However, the provenance of reality TV is an interesting one from an historical perspective, as Michel Essany states: Depending on who you ask, reality television is either the newest trend in contemporary programming or the oldest format of the entire broadcast medium. To a degree, however, both perspectives are accurate. Reality television has existed since the advent of television itself, yet only recently has the genre emerged as the preeminent programming format of the modern era. The 1948 debut of Candid Camera is often hailed as the epic birth of reality television [that] cleverly placed real people in contrived situations to elicit humorous but otherwise harmless reactions. (2008, p. 17)

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As Laurie Ouellette and James Hay assert, the genre’s defining trait is capturing how ‘ordinary’ people engage with challenges and the behaviours of others to the extent that reality TV ‘invests the minutiae of everyday life with dramatic importance’ (2008, p. 4). However, this has evolved into numerous formats and approaches to the capturing of ‘reality’ in a televisual form, such as the PBS series, An American Family, broadcast in 1973, which charted a family’s reaction and coping strategies with the repercussions of divorce. Furthermore, in the 1990s, ‘docusoaps’ like Airline (1998–2007) represented narratives that filmed the lives of a number of individuals with differing roles, but within the context of a narrative and sustained set of interactions within a real-life professional context. By the end of the 1990s, reality TV would radically evolve and become a major presence within twenty-first-century media culture. As Sue Holmes and Deborah Jermyn state, as it rose to media prominence, reality TV would actually begin to ‘move away from an attempt to “capture” “a life lived” to the televisual arenas of formatted environments in which the more traditional observational rhetoric of documentary jostle for space with the discourses of display and performance’ (2004, p. 5). The major development in this direction was the popularity of the globally syndicated reality TV–based gameshow, Big Brother, in which a number of contestants were confined within an enclosed Big Brother House under 24-hour camera surveillance. The key to its success, according to Nick Couldry, was its intrinsic quality of the mixture of ‘artificial entertainment and human reality’ (2003, p. 106), or, as Misha Kavka stresses, Big Brother initiated ‘the introduction of fabricated competitive environments to reality TV’ (2012, p. 3). Certainly, this style of format has proven to be influential, to the extent that it has inspired subsequent (and highly successful) shows of this type that bring people together in enclosed environment set-ups, such as The Bachelor (2002–present), Temptation Island (2001–

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present) and Love Island (2015–present). In other instances, the docusoap has evolved into ‘pre-planned but mostly unscripted programming with non-professional actors in non-fictional scenarios’ (Deery, 2015, p. 3). Prominent examples of these which follow the lives, loves and numerous interpersonal conflicts of particular groups include Keeping Up With The Kardashians (2007–present), The Real Housewives series (2006–present), Made in Chelsea (2011–present), or Vanderpump Rules (2013–present), all of which showcase mediated acts of selfdisclosure (Tal-Or and Hershman-Shitrit, 2015). As Misha Kavka and Brenda R. Weber assert, reality TV shows involve real people, but within the context of ‘the labour of self-performance as marketable product’ (2017, p. 4). Consequently, reality TV rarely presents any form of pure televisual v´erit´e, but rather combines everyday filmed scenarios with elements of artifice, or what June Deery calls stated actuality, whereby reality TV events ‘take place in a real time and place, but there will be different mixes of contrivance and spontaneity before, during, and after filming’ (2015, p. 29). Furthermore, the genre of reality TV is something of an umbrella concept as it covers a number of differing formats and reality-based trends. As Essany contends, reality TV ranges from Documentary Reality, to Romance Reality, and what he calls Professional Reality, the latter of which focuses upon ‘the daily performance of a particular occupation’ (2008, p. 10), and which would include the tattooing-based series, Miami Ink.

THE TATTOOIST, THE STUDIO AND THE CLIENT: TELEVISING TATTOOING AND MEDIATING INK STORIES First broadcast in 2005, Miami Ink would run until 2008, and represented a distinctive addition to the subgenre of alternative

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profession-style reality TV shows that were popular in the 2000s (covering occupations as diverse as pawnbrokers, car repo teams, deep-sea fishing crews, storage unit bidders and bounty hunters). Furthermore, given the perception that the beginning of the twenty-first century represented a new phase of the Tattoo Renaissance (Atkinson, 2003), the new focus upon tattooing from the perspective of reality TV was a significant one, especially with regard to the growing perception that tattooing was becoming increasingly mainstreamed and normalized as a bodily practice. The opening up of both tattoo studios and tattoo culture to reality TV scrutiny constituted a significant development in terms of revealing what is arguably the heart of tattooing: the tattoo studio. As Sanders states, the tattoo studio has been chiefly associated with anxiety, especially for those with little experience of tattooing, in which the ‘novice client possesses, at best, minimal knowledge of what the tattooing process entails’ (2008, p. 119). Tattoo studios have had a long-standing reputation as secretive environments that have a unique atmosphere due to the constant buzzing sound of tattoo machines, and the striking aroma of cleaning products, which can render the tattoo studio as an inviting, exciting or even intimidating space for those unaccustomed with the process (Modesti, 2008; Barron, 2017). Reality TV, then, revealed exactly what happens behind the studio doors, the relationship between the artist and the client (Atkinson’s nexus of the figuration), and the motivations for individuals to become tattooed. In this regard, Real Time’s Miami Ink would be the trail-blazing mediation of the tattooing world, setting up a platform for other (and diverse) reality TV formats that followed. Miami Ink (2005–2008) charts the opening of a tattoo studio, in Miami, its development as a business, relationship with clients and the work of its artists. Co-owned by Ami James and Chris Nuñez, ´ and joined by the tattoos artists Chris

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Garver, Darren Brass, Katherine Von Drachenberg (Kat Von D) and Yojiro (Yoji) Harada, Ami James’ apprentice, the series examines the practice of tattooing, and the interrelationship of the differing artists. As such, the early episodes present biographies of each artist, and their particular specialisms (Japanese, portraits, Black and grey, etc.). In terms of the series opening up the nature of tattooing, the technical aspects of the practice are clearly both visualized and explained by the artists. For instance, Ami James talks through the preparation needed to tattoo a client (preparing the stencil, selecting the appropriate needles, shaders, ink choices, etc.) in addition to explaining the sterilization process. Furthermore, the series showed close-ups of the act of tattooing, clearly depicting how the artist applies the outline to the design, then the colouring and shading. In this regard, it is significant that the first episode of Miami Ink has a distinctively documentary feel as it focuses on the biographies of the artists, and, crucially in terms of mediating not simply the reality of the tattoo studio and its culture, but shows, in detail, the act of tattooing. For example, the series revealed how an artist can successfully undo a design gone wrong (as with the case of a client whose script in Italian turned out to be misspelled). In terms of the interactions between the artists, a further significant insight is that of the representation of the role and status of the tattoo apprentice within the studio. This aspect of the series focuses on the relationship between Ami James and Yoji, and is often the source of humour within the series as Yoji is often the victim of pranks. However, the issue of the status of the apprentice, the artist-in-training, is a crucial aspect of the tattoo industry, albeit, usually consisting of everything ‘that everyone else doesn’t want to do’ (Garlick, 2012, p. 39). This is a factor that Miami Ink charts (given that Yoji has a family to support), and so a key dynamic of the series is Yoji’s desire to begin tattooing professionally (which

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he ultimately does). Yet, this aspect of the narrative is important because, as Ami James states to the camera, the apprentice period is a crucial moment in the training of a tattoo artist, and the often tough challenging that Yoji experiences is a reflection of James’ own relationship with his mentor. In this sense, then, the traditional ‘craft’ component and history of tattooing is a key feature of the revelatory nature of the series, and contributes to the ‘tattoo education’ that the viewer gains. Still, while key aspects of the tattoo industry and the dayto-day workings of the tattoo studio are an important factor in Miami Ink, the primary focus is, unsurprisingly, on the act of tattooing, but also on the motivations of the client to be tattooed. This latter aspect represents the dominant trope within the episodes, and forms the enduring leitmotif that runs throughout the entire series. In this regard, Miami Ink serves to reinforce the post-1970s transformation in tattooing, as the issue of ‘tattoo stories’ is central to the format. In this sense, clients enter into the studio and explain what design they wish to have; however, the majority of prospective clients then explain what the motivation for the design is, usually through a combination of speaking with the chosen artist and directto-camera testimonies. Consequently, the dominant trope with regard to tattoo motivation is that the design is not merely aesthetic, but serves a symbolic purpose, and possesses communicative value. In her analysis of reality TV and Miami Ink, Louise Woodstock stresses the ways in which the ‘tattoo stories’ are framed in terms of onscreen interaction, but the monologue segments, in which the client and the artist reflect upon the tattoo design and the personal narrative that informs it, establishes a potent sense of intimacy. Accordingly, the tattoo is never simply an aesthetically motivated act (a design chosen simply because the client likes it), but becomes an emotional

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process, with the completed tattoo representing a form of empowerment and personal closure (with each episode typically featuring five to six tattoos). As such, the reason why clients seek to be tattooed are linked to a range of personal issues, such as bereavement, illness, personal misfortune, or the overcoming of addictions. In this context, Woodstock argues, the tattooing processes represented in Miami Ink act as therapeutically motivated narratives of the self, whereby: Each interaction between tattoo artists and client becomes an opportunity to tell a story about transforming significant life experiences into affirmations of individual identity and familial loyalty. At the heart of this exchange sits the tattoo itself, saturated with symbolism. Time and time again, both artists and clients endow tattoos with transformative power and consider them expressive marks of both inner self and the social bonds that unite the self and loved ones. (2014, p. 781) Therefore, Miami Ink’s representational strategy foregrounds the contemporary perception of tattoos possessing a distinctive sense of ‘communicative value’ (Doss and Ebesu Hubbard, 2009) and the ability to act as ‘a signifier of a new life trajectory, a fresh beginning for the person’ (Atkinson, 2003, p. 187). If the Tattoo Renaissance arguably enabled the tattoo to enable the wearer to achieve a custom-designed expression of ‘me-ness’, tattoo-themed Reality TV shows such as Miami Ink demonstrate this mode of personalized and individualized symbolic communication through tattoos. For this reason, the tattoos represented within Miami Ink serve, Woodstock argues, as ‘visual, personal moral guideposts, reminding the individual of what matters most’ (2014, p. 793).

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Furthermore, this sentiment is similarly expressed by the artists in the series, as Ami James states of this ‘therapeutic’ relationship, ‘It feels good to know that our art helps people move beyond their tragedies in their lives’. Of course, like many reality TV shows, Miami Ink is not a documentary, and underlining the central tattoo story focus of the series are a number of human dramas that affect the ‘cast’ of the show and which reflect the ‘reality soap’ quality that the series has, with its ‘mix of observational-style documentary and soap opera elements’ (Hill, 2005, p. 9). In Miami Ink, these range from family issues and health factors (Chris Garver’s chronic back problems, caused by years of tattooing), to the various personality clashes and conflicts that feature throughout the episodes, most notably Ami James’ volatile relationships with ´ Chris Nuñez and Kat Von D, the latter of which resulted in Von D leaving the studio. The ‘docusoap’ mix of human drama and the symbolic, personalized nature of tattooing would be a factor much more pronounced in Miami Ink’s successor show, NY Ink (2011–2013). Here, Ami James relocates to New York City to open a new tattoo studio, Wooster St. Social Club, recruiting a new array of artists consisting of: Tim Henricks, Tommy Montoya, Chris Torres, Megan Massacre and James’ new apprentice, Billy DeCola. The initial drama of the series consists of James stressing that the operational costs of a studio located in New York are considerably higher than in Miami, and so the studio will need a consistently high turnover of clients. Akin to Miami Ink, the majority of the featured tattoos are presented in terms of symbolic/ personalized/emotional client stories, and which again is represented through a combination of the client speaking to the artist and directly to the screen in a separate testimonial segment. The personal motivations range from commemorations for deceased parents, grandparents and children, family

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tributes, traumatic life experiences and life journeys (such as gender transition). However, the studio also features celebrity tattooees, such as the hip-hop artist Method Man, and Corey Taylor, the lead singer from the metal band Slipknot – both of whom acquired tattoos with personal, symbolic meanings. Hence, NY Ink consolidates the perception of the tattoo as a symbol of self. However, the series also foregrounds key ways in which reality TV veers into dramality, as the level of personal conflict is pervasive and multifaceted within the narrative. As Deery argues, a key component in reality TV narratives is that ‘TV producers anticipate drama, find drama, heighten drama, or induce drama’ (2015, p. 35). In this context, much of the conflict-inspired drama within NY Ink stems from the artist Chris Torres, whose self-confessedly aggressive demeanour brings him into conflict with a number of the studio personnel. This ranges from fights with the shop manager, Jessica Gahring, the floor manager, Robear Chinosi and Ami James, to the point that James and Torres engage in an MMA-style fight in the gym located in the shop’s basement to settle their differences. However, a serious issue that is part of the drama/ conflict dynamic featuring Torres is what is seen within the studio as his problematic behaviour and attitudes towards the studio’s only female artist, Megan Massacre. Indeed, on arrival at the studio, Torres assumes that she is not an artist, but one of the support staff. This flags an issue that has been historically endemic within the industry with regard to the status of female artists, but which has become a major aspect of change with an increasing number of art-trained female artists entering the industry (Yuen Thompson, 2015). Massacre discusses this issue in her book, The Art of the Tattoo, with regard to the treatment and attitudes she experienced within the tattoo industry, but also in a wider social context in the early 2000s. As she states of her apprentice years:

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At this time, being young and female in a heavily male-dominated industry, it wasn’t always easy to get respect at tattoo studios. There were also times when clients refused to get tattooed by me simply because I was a woman. Publicly some people treated me negatively as well about being heavily tattooed. I remember being out maybe grocery shopping or going about my normal day, and passersby would just walk up to me, feeling compelled to share their distaste for the way I looked. That’s why I was so surprised when tattooing appeared on TV. (2019, pp. 8–10) Massacre also recounts the TLC network offer to appear on NY Ink, for which she did face some industry criticism in terms of commercializing tattooing, and she acknowledges that tattoo-based reality TV is playing a role in the wider mainstreaming of tattooing. However, her behind-the-scenes reflections also flags the nature of reality TV, whereby the format, while not fiction, must, as Deery argues, adopt some conventions of fiction, such as stories and characters. In this sense, argues Hill, a key element of reality TV is the ‘play-off between performance and authenticity’ and sense of ‘roleplaying’ (2005, p. 52) that is an endemic feature of many formats, in which there is a production negotiation between participants and producers. Hence, while participants in reality TV are not professional entertainers, and work without scripts, they are nevertheless, engaged in processes of performativity and, as John Corner (2002) describes, effectively performing the real. Therefore, in the context of reality TV shows such as Miami Ink and NY Ink, while the focus is intrinsically upon the act and craft of tattooing in each

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episode, it is not simply in the context of a documentary style as each ‘character’ must be engaging to the viewer, a factor confirmed by Megan Massacre. As she reflects on her initial experiences with the television crew in the studio: While I was confident in my tattooing, I’d never had cameras inches away from me recording my every line before – it made me super nervous, and it was obvious. The producers told me if I didn’t step my game up, I was at risk of being cut from the show. [Following a two-week break] I was going to turn this situation around and not let it frighten me or get me down. I was going to enjoy it the best I could and be the best version of myself that I could be. (2019, p. 17) The issue of the craft of tattooing, its culture and performativity would serve as the key connective matrix for the first wave of tattoo-themed reality TV shows, and sometimes to their detriment. For instance, LA Ink (2007–2011), charted Kat Von D’s establishment of her own custom studio in Los Angeles following her departure from the Miami Ink studio. Having assembled her team, consisting of the artists Kim Saigh, Hannah Aitchison, Corey Miller and shop manager Pixie Acia, LA Ink similarly serves to exclusively focus on tattoo clients whose design ideas reflect personal issues and stories, and for whom the tattoo serves as a marker of transformation. For example, as Kim Saigh remarks after having worked on a client, ‘People always seem to get a tattoo when they are going through a change’, while Corey Miller asks his client, just before applying the needle, ‘What’s the meaning of this tattoo, anyway?’ Consequently, reality TV shows like Miami Ink, LA Ink and NY Ink explicitly foreground the perception of tattoos as signs of self-expression,

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identity and personal uniqueness (Tiggemann and Golder, 2006). However, there is an especial, and consistent, focus on what Laura Buss and Karen Hodges call ‘pain transformed into beauty’ regarding the tattoo stories, whereby a painful life incident is transformed ‘through the beauty created on the skin’ (2017, p. 20). Furthermore, such shows have played, argues Woodstock, a significant role in the cultural mainstreaming and normalization of tattooing in that they reject tattoo associations of deviancy by ‘depicting tattooing, tattoo artists, and the people who get tattoos as regular folks’ (2014, p. 782). Yet, the balance between reality and entertainment is sometimes a precarious one within tattoo-themed reality shows. While the early series of LA Ink follow the studiocreation/client story tropes of Miami Ink, with the abrupt departure of Saigh and Aitchison from Season 2, the ‘soap’ aspects become progressively more dominant in the series. Consequently, studio feuds, interpersonal conflicts, romantic relationships and ‘comedy’ moments (mainly provided by the non-tattooist cast members, Mike ‘Rooftop’ Escamilla and Arianna) progressively vie for attention amidst the technical representations of tattooing. Tattoo-themed shows clearly reflect what Hill argues is the nature of the reality TV, in that it is a televisual genre ‘located in border territories, between information and entertainment, documentary and drama’ (Hill, 2005, p. 2). Accordingly, other examples follow this representational model, such as Bondi Ink Tattoo Crew (2015–2017), built around the premise of the tattoo artist, Mike Diamond, being brought into manage the Bondi Ink studio in Australia, and featuring artist conflicts and other business/personalityfocused dramas, but with even more extensive client testimonies based upon health issues and bereavement. Similarly, MTV’s Black Ink Crew (2013-), focusing upon Ceaser Emanuel’s tattoo shop in Harlem, New York, features client

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stories and relationship issues, combined with entrepreneurial initiatives as artists extend their artworks into branded fashion lines, and which has establishing two related series: Black Ink Crew: Chicago (2015-) and Black Ink Crew: Compton (2019-). Also, Tattoo Girls (2017), based upon an all-female tattoo studio in Springfield, Missouri, also routinely mixes a focus on tattoo work on clients with personal issues, conflicts and dramas. However, while London Ink (2007–2009) follows the established path of other city-based tattoo shows in terms of showing the setting up of a new studio, there are key differences. Run by Louis Molloy (who designed and tattooed David Beckham’s famous guardian angel back tattoo), who recruits the artists Nikole Lowe, Dan Gold and Phil Kyle, London Ink places much less onus on client backstories (indeed, Molloy states that he doesn’t want to hear them). In this regard, while still involving issues of conflict (notably between Molloy and Gold, whereby Molloy seeks to minimize Gold’s verbal interactions with clients in order to speed up the tattooing process), London Ink predominantly focuses on the working practices of tattoo artists, and stresses the technical and practical challenges that tattoo artists face. As a result, the series examines the negotiation process that occurs between artists and clients (which is shown to be sometimes a frustrating experience for the artist), and while some designs have a symbolic nature, many are based simply on aesthetic appeal. The series also examines the issue of pain in relation to the act of tattooing, aftercare procedures, and illustrates how tattoo apprentices gain entry to the studio and a tattoo training education. This latter point is significant, as the first question Louis Molloy asks each applicant is whether they have been to art school, or had formal artistic training, and the ‘interview’ consists of a series of drawing tests. As such, the primacy of

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a versatile artistic performance and ability is an intrinsic factor in the skill set of a modern tattooist. Consequently, London Ink is perhaps the best example of a tattoo-themed series that veers the closest to the documentary stream in reality TV; however, further examples dynamically combine the artistic and technical aspects of professionally tattooing with high drama, soap opera intrigues and competition.

COMPETITIVE TATTOO REALITY TV: INK MASTER Reality TV contains a number of differing formats, and as the ‘genre’ successfully proliferated from the early 2000s, amidst the lifestyle shows/reality dramas, eccentric professions and dating shows, the reality game or competition format has become highly successful (Tsay-Vogel & Krakowiak, 2016). These shows were/are based upon specific professional skill sets, such as MasterChef (2005 – present), in which a number of chefs compete before a professional panel of judges, with one contestant eliminated each week, until a winner is announced. This format has inspired a number reality TV shows based upon professional activities as diverse as fashion design, baking, tailoring, pottery and blacksmithing/knifemaking, which now represent what can be defined as the ‘competition’ or ‘game doc’ (Deery, 2015) style of reality TV. Moreover, the professional practice of tattooing is also part of this subgenre in the form of Ink Master (2012-present). The series is hosted by the extensively tattooed former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction guitarist, Dave Nav´ arro, and judged by the tattoo artists Chris Nuñez and (until 2019) Oliver Peck, with periodic guest judges (including on one occasion the actor Hugh Jackson, judging tattoo portraits of himself as the Wolverine character). In terms of format, Ink

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Master constitutes something of a reality TV hybrid form as it combines the tattooing craft-focus of the likes of Miami Ink/LA Ink/NY Ink, with the professional competition format, but also with an element of Big Brother. Hence, a number of professional tattoo artists live within a large studio setting and compete in a weekly series of artistic and tattooing challenges, with one artist eliminated each week, until the winning competitor is crowned the Ink Master. This outcome, in addition to the coveted Ink Master title, also results in a $100,000 cash prize and an extensive profile feature in Inked magazine for the winner. Each episode consists of the Flash Challenge and the Elimination Challenge. The Flash Challenge can involve tattooing, but it is predominantly art-based and is tied to technical aspects of tattooing (detail, creativity, accuracy, dimension, for example), so competitors must engage in timed challenges, such as making art from dice, coloured bricks, packing tape, plexiglass and cups filled with coloured water. The crucial importance of the Flash Challenge is that the winner gets to assign the Human Canvases in the all-important Elimination Challenge, in which the contestants must complete a tattoo in a style (often incorporating a key technique) in six hours. On this level, Ink Master works in a similar way to other race-against-the-clock professional competition shows. The key challenge of the series is that artists must produce work in a variety of tattoo styles (Traditional, Japanese, Black and Grey, Portraits, New School, Pixels, Watercolours, Geometric, BioMechanical), in addition to displaying an artistic element featured in the Flash Challenge (finesse, contouring, negative space, detail, adaptability). Therefore, Ink Master represents an extensive representation of differing tattooing styles, professional practices and technical approaches. However, the ‘educational’ insights into tattoo practice are also interspersed with key reality TV–themed tropes.

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Deery argues that a key element of reality TV is that, while taking place in a real time and place, and with nonentertainers, there is nevertheless a strong seam of ‘dramality’ within the genre. In this sense, reality TV ‘adopts some conventions of fiction – shaping (but not wholly composing) stories and characters, encouraging melodrama, employing emotive music, cliffhangers, dramatic irony, red herrings, and so on’ (2015, p. 27). So, while Ink Master is a ‘gamedoc’ in form, it contains a strong degree of dramality. At one level, this arises from the ‘artificial competitive events’ central to formats such as Big Brother (Bratich, 2007, p. 14). In terms of construction, Ink Master incorporates this ethos in the Flash Challenges, and extends it to the enclosed living conditions of the competitors, in which they leave their professional and private lives to compete on the series. While fundamental to drama, the concepts of antagonists and protagonists is central to the Ink Master narrative, as a significant focus of the series involves the various human conflicts that arise between the artists. Consequently, in addition to the actual acts of tattooing that form the basis of the competition, the show centres on the various strategies and ‘gameplay’ that competitors engage in to outperform, or place adverse psychological pressure on their rivals in order to increase their chances of gaining the coveted title of Ink Master. As a result, there are numerous arguments and acts of antisocial behaviours played out, in addition to the formation of distinctive alliances intended to influence the elimination of other competitors and secure places in the final. Part of this process involves competitors verbally undermining rival tattoo work, and taking visible pleasure in negative critiques of work made by the judges. In other instances, competitors engage in arguments and even physical confrontations with other competitors (and even with judges, on occasion), which maximises the drama and entertainment value.

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A key element of the fusion of spectacle and conflict comes in the form of Ink Master’s unique feature: the use of tattooees as Human Canvases within the Elimination Challenge. This is significant because, unlike a failed cake or brittle knife (as in The Great British Bake-off or Forged in Fire), all of the tattoo designs presented for judgement are permanently inscribed into the skins of the canvases. Moreover, the nature of the show demands that difficult body parts are tattooed, which includes heads and necks. Indeed, a key source of conflict in the series is that the peer-group of canvases convene together to agree on which canvas has the ‘worst tattoo’ of each episode, a factor that the participant cannot remedy given the permanence of the work. Therefore, the competitive aspect of the series is at its height within the judging section, whereby tattoos are subject to scrutiny and meticulous professional and artistic evaluation. In this context, those designs judged to be weak, problematic or simply disastrous are censured in great detail, much to the visible pleasure of fellow competitors who smile in their enjoyment of the discomfort (and likelihood of elimination) of the critiqued artist. Furthermore, the combative aspect of Ink Master has become an increasingly inherent component in the series, with the format actively incorporating drama. In this fashion, further iterations of the series have included Ink Master: Master vs. Apprentice (Season 6) and Ink Master: Battle of the Sexes (season 12), while spin-offs include Ink Master: Redemption, in which artists face human canvases who received critically derided designs, whereby the artist can ‘atone’ and redeem their professional reputation by providing an aesthetically satisfying tattoo. Additionally, the series has continually brought back contestants to compete against their ‘rivals’, and head up artist teams, such as the rivalry between Cleen Rock One and Christian Buckingham. The spin-off series, Ink Master: Grudge Match, also reflects

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this ethos as it brings together two artists who clashed during their tenure on the show, and so they ‘settle their score’ through tattooing a winning design on a human canvas. Finally, Ink Master: Angels featured the female artists from Season 8, Ryan Ashley Malarkey, Kelly Doty, Nikki Simpson and Gia Rose challenging various artists across America, with the chance of a winning artist to secure a place on Ink Master.

BAD INK: TATTOOS AND TELEVISUAL SHOCK VALUE In assessing the role of spectacle within a media landscape, Guy Debord stated that the ‘spectacle is the chief product of presentday society’ (1995, p. 16). At one level, the tattoo-themed reality TV shows discussed so far have rendered the culture and practice of tattooing into spectacles, with regard to the craft of tattooing, and the motivation of individuals to be tattooed. Hence, within these shows, the tattoo design lies at their heart, and the semiotic significance of the design is frequently a paramount factor. On the one hand, tattoo-themed reality TV has reinforced the fundamental aspects of the Tattoo Renaissance, but on the other hand, alternative tattoo-themed reality TV shows present a very different image of tattooing, and, most significantly, the motivations to become tattooed. In this context, TV shows such as Tattoo Nightmares (2012–2015), America’s Worst Tattoos (2012–2014), Bad Ink (2013–2014) and Tattoo Fixers (2015-present) focus on poor quality tattoo work and the artistic skills needed to provide effective cover-up tattoos. The dominant tone of these shows is that of the comedic, in which the original tattoos shown on the screen range from those of a poor artistic quality, to disastrous design choices. However, while the onus is firmly on the comedic (often featuring exaggerated re-enactments of clients getting the

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‘nightmare tattoo’), these shows foreground two competing approaches to tattoo culture: the causal approach that some people have to acquiring them, and the skill it takes to successfully cover them up with better designs. For Hemingson, a cover-up tattoo is a challenge as they are by their very nature compromises. This is because the artistic freedom available to the tattooist is limited by issues such as the placement, size and the colour of the original design, to the point that often ‘the only thing that covers up black is even more black’ (2009, p. 30). However, as Megan Massacre (who featured in America’s Worst Tattoos) argues, the coverup can have a potent symbolic effect on a person’s sense of identity, as she states of her experience in covering up problematic designs: Being able to cover up people’s bad tattoos and transform them into things of beauty wasn’t just helping with aesthetics. It was helping people, whether it was giving them confidence again, or changing a bad memory. (2019, p. 20) In Rachel C. Falkenstern’s view, tattoos can be regarded as symbols that remind the wearer of a specific moment in time, and even if some are regretted, they still represent ‘mementos of past experiences’ (2012, p. 100). Nevertheless, the cover-up shows stress that regretted tattoos do also inspire identity problems for their wearers, from feelings of embarrassment to distress, as the British TV series, Tattoo Fixers, frequently illustrates. Set in a London-based pop-up tattoo studio, Tattoo Fixers features the work of a number of tattoo artists, originally consisting of Sketch Porter, Jay Hutton and Louisa Hopper (in addition to Paisley Billings, the studio manager), the show has

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added artists such as Alice Perrin, Glen Carloss and Uzzi and Pash Canby. The underscoring ethos of the series is that these artists have a specific ability to transform tattoo ‘disasterpieces into masterpieces’ and ‘to change some of Britain’s worst tattoos into walking walks of art’. In terms of format, each episode typically features six clients who come to the studio with a bad tattoo that needs to be covered up. Each client tells the story of how they acquired the tattoo, usually with them engaging in a filmed re-enactment of the events, but shot in an exaggerated and comedic style. From here, the client reveals the tattoo and gives an idea of what they would like as an alternative design (often only providing a vague brief – animals, nature, skulls, mandalas, flowers), and three of the artists draw their take on the brief and offer the designs to the client, who must choose one and then be tattooed by that ‘winning’ artist. In terms of tone, many of the tattoos are offensive (and often obscene) and invariably feature sexual imagery or slogans, poor taste imagery or jokes, profanity, or eccentric designs (portraits of soap opera actors, for example). Many tattoos are acquired on holidays as the result of inebriated dares, bets and peersolidarity statements, so in this sense, many tattoos do have stories, but they seldom have any profound symbolic significance other than as a visual reminder of a moment. While many of the designs are ill-considered and so reflect a causal approach to being tattooed (unlike the tone of Miami Ink, etc.), the issue of identity is still a factor within the show. As Falkenstern reflects, ‘being tattooed has changed not only how the world views me but also, interrelatedly, my perspective of the world and my perspective of myself’ (2012, pp. 99–100), and many clients reflect this ethos, too. This is especially the case with regard to crass and offensive designs that no longer fit with a client’s current lifestyle, especially when they have had children, which renders the designs as problematic and no longer fitting with their current social self, status and

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personality. In this regard, the ‘reveal’ sections of each episode, in which the client sees the cover-up design for the first time, frequently elicits strong emotional responses. Commenting on the phenomena of tattoo regret, Eric Madfis and Tammi Arford assert that people who express regret with tattoos (and seek their removal) are frequently ‘motivated to have their tattoos removed to dissociate from the past and improve their selfidentity’ (2013, p. 549), and this is a factor that is central to Tattoo Fixers. In this respect, the show represents a distinctive take on the reality TV subgenre of ‘makeover television’, epitomized by shows such as The Swan (2004–2005), The Biggest Loser (2004–2016), Queer Eye (2003–2007), or Revenge Body with Khlo´e Kardashian (2017 - present). This brand of reality TV focuses upon actively transforming the bodies of participants, and by extension their self and peer perception (Heller, 2007). Consequently, Tattoo Fixers similarly delivers lifechanging bodily transformations that help individuals to overcome issues of embarrassment or anxiety caused by offensive tattoo designs acquired in their youth (for example, one client refused to visit doctors due to the offensive tattoo they wore on their body). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tattoo Fixers garnered negative reactions and responses from members of the professional tattoo industry, with criticisms ranging from poor quality tattoo work, to a lack of understanding of the complexity and skill-levels required to execute effective coverup tattoos (Brennan, 2016). However, a much stronger professional reaction has faced MTV’s Just Tattoo of Us (2017-present), which effectively reverses the thematic trajectory of Tattoo Fixers. Initially hosted by the reality TV personalities Charlotte Crosby (of Geordie Shore fame) and Stephen Bear (who featured in MTV’s Ex on the Beach), but with a multitude of later guest co-hosts following Bear’s departure (such as Lateysha Grace, Josh Ritchie, Charlotte Dawson, Joey Essex,

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Chloe Ferry and Matty T), Just Tattoo of Us places the onus of tattooing firmly on the comedic, and the shocking. In terms of format, couples, friends, siblings, or parents and children each design a tattoo for the other, which is developed, and ultimately tattooed by a professional artist in the TV studio. Each tattoooee does not see the completed tattoo until the ‘Reveal’, in which they wear opaque ‘Fear Goggles’, which are removed at the end of a countdown, or, as Crosby describes it: ‘You don’t get to see it until it is on your body forever’. The issue of permanence is an important factor in Just Tattoo of Us, as the premise of the show implies a distinctive casualness towards tattooing on the part of contestants, who are overwhelmingly from the Millennial and Generation Z age demographics. This is especially evident as a key element that runs throughout the series is that of the participants ‘stitching each other up’ with deliberately bad, or often offensive, tattoo designs, with little to no consideration of the perpetuity of the tattoo. The key moment in each episode is when the participants remove the Fear Goggles (cued by dramatic, tension-building music) and look at the designs in a mirror, with the reactions frequently being emotional. As one participant exclaims, ‘Is that some sort of joke? It’s just a joke. That’s there for life’. In other instances, participants react with anger at an offensive tattoo design (often hurling the Fear Goggles at their ‘tattoo partner’) prior to storming off the set. In this sense, the show balances outrageousness with the drama aspect endemic to many reality TV shows, but underscored with the status of the tattoo as a symbol of comedy and provocation. In this regard, many participants appreciate the humour, no matter how ridiculous or offensive the design is, as one participant states, ‘It is bad, but it’s a game’. However, not all participants seek to shock, and there are designs that are aesthetically effective, in addition to representing romantic messages or symbols of

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friendship and even marriage proposals via tattoo. Nonetheless, the majority of tattoos produced in the show are of the spectacle variety that elicits expletive-filled initial reactions or laughter at the absurdity or crassness of the tattoos. Once the tattoos are revealed, each participant is asked to reveal the story behind the design, which vary from personal jokes and embarrassing life events, to ‘tattoo messages’ to influence behaviour changes (a mother having a wristwatch tattooed on her daughter to improve her poor punctuality, for example). Yet, the dominant issue in Just Tattoo of Us is one in which tattoos are used as jokes and symbols of humiliation, or as deliberate ‘stich-ups’ that are the product of ‘people with no fear of consequence or responsibility’ (Golby, 2019 the Guardian.com) with regard to the permanence of their inked statements. However, from an ethical and professional perspective, Just Tattoo of Us has been criticised by British tattoo artists. As Kevin Paul, notable for his tattoo work on Ed Sheeran, states: The show on MTV is absolutely diabolical. They’re destroying people’s bodies. They’re leaving them with horrendous tattoos that mentally effect them for the rest of their lives. They’re stuck with these things and if they try to get rid of them they’ve got to go through years worth of pain getting them removed and a lot of expense, for the sake of what? A million people laughing at them on TV. It’s disgraceful that that’s been allowed on TV. (Wetherill, 2018: dailystar.co.uk) Yet, the series has proven to be highly successful, with numerous series, and MTV have produced an American version hosted by Jersey Shore star Nicole Polizzi and actor Nico Tortorella.

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TATTOO STORIES AND SUBCULTURAL TRACES While the motivating stories featured in Just Tattoo of Us serve as the means by which to create comedic and shocking tattoos, MTV also have a version of the format that is very different, in the form of Positive Inking (2019 - present). While the concept is similar – a person speaks of a significant life issue interpreted by an artist into a tattoo design, which the tattooee only sees on completion – the tone is radically different to that of MTV’s more abrasive and anarchic reality TV counterpart. In Positive Inking, the onus is on tattoos acting as what Chris W. Martin calls ‘emotional signifiers’ (2018, p. 2), as each participant tells a personal story based upon a life event (to the artist and in cutaways directly to the camera) that are linked to illnesses, life-changing accidents and traumas involving professional experiences (firefighters, for example). Given that the tagline for the series is, ‘Every tattoo has a personal story’, tattoos act as symbols of healing, inspiration, closure and body positivity in the form of aesthetically, symbolically effective and gratifying tattoo designs. This ethos is also evident in the US series, Hero Ink (2019-present), focusing upon Prison Break Tattoos, a studio situated in Houston, Texas, and owned by BK Klev, a 25-year veteran of the Houston police department. The concept of the series is based upon the tattoos that first responders (police officers and law enforcement personnel, firefighters, Emergency Medical Responders and members of the military) receive to commemorate an incident experienced in the line of duty. Tattooed by the artists Robbie Caron, Janice Danger, Tony Four Fingers, Zoey Taylor and Rich Verdino, all ex-first responders, each client narrates the story behind the tattoo (officers shot or stabbed in the line of duty, tributes to partners, fire recues, surviving armed sieges), with the

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verbal testimonies enhanced with body-cam footage, news coverage and personal photographs. In this context, the tattoos commemorate traumatic events, but also anchor professional statuses and relationships. In Mifflin’s view, reality TV shows such as Miami Ink and LA Ink ‘normalized tattooing and reduced the rebellious stereotypes associated with it’ (2013, p. 111), a factor reinforced by Ami James’ reflections on the impact of his studio in Miami, ‘That shop changed how people perceived tattoo culture. People started getting tattooed because of what happened in that shop’ (Gomez, 2018). Moreover, James reunited with Darren Brass, Chris Garver, Tommy Montoya and Chris Nuñez, for The Tattoo Shop (2018), an innovative docuseries for Facebook Watch that pared away the drama aspects of the human conflict components of tattoo-themed reality TV to focus much more extensively on the technical craft of tattooing. Consequently, in its differing forms, reality TV that is based upon tattooing has proven to be a significant factor in both the heightened visibility of tattooing in popular culture (and beyond), and as a force in further mainstreaming tattooing. However, there are tattoo-based reality TV shows that correspond with what Essany calls Documentary Reality, the ‘truest form of reality television…which almost entirely eliminates a conscious entertainment perspective from the production process’ (2008, p. 5). For instance, Tattoo Age (2017–2018) consists of documentary profiles of noted artists such as: Ed Hardy, Robert Ryan, Chris Trevino, Annette LaRue, Thom DeVita, Bert Krak, Mary Joy Scott, Chris Garver, Taki and Horitomo, Dr Woo and Valerie Vargas. Also representing the documentary reality approach, Viceland’s Needles and Pins (2017) turns the focus away from the mainstream and back into the subcultural values, expressions, and status of tattooing. Fronted by the London-based tattoo artist, Grace Neutral, Needles and Pins acknowledges the

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mainstream perception that tattooing has in the twenty-first century and explores how it is difficult to see it as an act of radical self-expression given its apparent normalization and social and cultural pervasiveness. However, in taking a global perspective, Neutral stresses that she ‘wanted to share some of the cultures and techniques that helped evolve the art’ (in Kaviani, 2017: the 4th Wall.org) and to illustrate that tattooing is not entirely mainstreamed, as there remain differing national and cultural attitudes to the practice. Within a UK context, Neutral interviews the iconic British artist, Lal Hardy, who stresses that the Internet has removed the classical secrecy of the tattooing world, and especially the studio. Moreover, she seeks out contemporary expressions of the Skinhead subculture, whose members employ Traditionalstyle tattoos that express the original, non-racist expression of the culture (focusing on an appreciation of Reggae), whereby tattoos, as one respondent states, shows ‘your true identity, your true self’. Moreover, Neutral’s travels to New Zealand see her interact with artists who are engaging in traditional moko techniques to reclaim the practice (once outlawed during European colonialism) and employ traditional tools (with needles carved from boar tusks). In Los Angeles, Neutral examines Chicano styles and tattooing culture, traditionally associated with Chicano communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, and traditionally stressing a range of signifiers, from Christian devotion, and gang affiliation, to individualistic values and community solidarity (Govenor, 1988). Meeting a number of prominent Chicano artists who maintain a tradition of making tattoo machines from a variety of common appliances (for some artists these skills were honed while in prison), Neutral seeks to examine and present an ‘authentic’ tattoo culture that is rooted in traditions of street life, family and enduring religious iconography. This is

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especially significant in its comparison with Las Vegas, a city that has 24-hour tattoo studios, wedding chapel and tattoo shop combos and tattoo establishments situated within major casinos. However, from such visible and mainstreamed culture, Neutral’s travels to Japan and South Korea reveal that tattooing is an underground activity. For instance, in Japan, regardless of the rich tattooing history and heritage of Irezumi, the government has issued an edict that only licenced medical practitioners can engage in tattooing, and non-licenced artists can face fines or arrest. Furthermore, with the enduring association of tattooing with the Yakuza gang/organized crime culture, tattooed individuals are often detained and questioned by police. As such, tattoos, irrespective of new Anime-driven trends, are not widely accepted in mainstream Japanese culture. A similar association between tattooing and gang culture is also prevalent in South Korea, and still possesses a rebellious nature given the older generation’s rejection of the practice. As such, at one point Neutral is informed by an elderly man that in Korean culture, ‘she would find it difficult to get married’ given her extensively tattooed body. However, it is significant that a source of changing attitudes is being driven from within popular culture by successful K-Pop stars such as Jay Park, whose extensive tattoo collection is ensuring that tattooing is becoming a visible part of South Korean media (although his tattoos are sometimes blurred out in some television performances). In this sense, a distinctive ‘young tattoo revolution’ is slowly, but progressively developing in South Korean culture, in part driven by tattooed celebrities. The major issues that arise from Grace Neutral’s international tattoo journeys is to remind the viewer that beyond the mainstream tattoo culture of the Western world, tattooing is not universally normalized, and that the tattooed can still be considered to be outsiders. Thus, undergoing tattooing can

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constitute a spiritual act on the one hand, but also an act of defiant self-expression on the other. Moreover, in each episode Neutral asks for a small tattoo design from the artists that she meets, enabling her to commemorate her global tattoo journey and capture the essence of tattoos as representing bodily ‘snapshots in time’ (MacNaughton, 2011, p. 73). Therefore, reality TV, in differing ways and with divergent thematic and tonal approaches, has proven to be a significant twenty-first-century popular cultural expression of tattooing and tattoo culture, opening up the tattoo studio to wider scrutiny, stressing the symbolic value of tattoos, but also illustrating the decidedly casual and unsymbolic properties of some tattoos. Furthermore, television representations also crucially remind us that tattoo culture is not internationally uniform, and that wearing ink can still be, and is, a defiantly rebellious act of embodied self-expression.

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4 SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL TATTOO COMMUNITIES

If the prevalence and plethora of reality TV shows dedicated (albeit with very divergent formats and stylistic approaches) to tattooing has created bodies of viewers, the issue of tattoo collectives (frequently allied to such TV shows) is arguably at its most potent and concentrated within digital online spaces and, most specifically, social media platforms. At one level, these spaces can be clearly be read to represent distinctive, and globally diffused technological expressions of Atkinson’s tattoo figuration approach to tattooed collectives. In this sense, the relationship chains forged between the tattooed are established not through studio-based interactions, but via digital ‘ties that bind seemingly isolated individuals together in social interchange’ (2003, p. 125). However, the issue of Internet forums and social media sites representing potent expressions of virtual communal spaces is a compelling one, with a rich sociological and technological underpinning. In this regard, the understanding of tattooed social actors forming a distinctive communal form arguably finds contemporary revival in relation to the ways in which tattooing is active in digital platforms. As such, these

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platforms represent virtual, and interactive, meeting points for globally dispersed tattoo enthusiasts and serve as a further showcase for the cultural visibility of 21st century tattooing.

TATTOO COMMUNITY REVISITED The idea of a discernible tattoo community identified by DeMello in relation to tattoo magazines and tattoo conventions are issues that have also been developed by later tattoo commentators, such as Beverly Yuen Thompson. With regard to the significance of the tattoo convention, Yuen Thompson argues that prior to mid-1970s, there was no authentic ‘tattoo community’ that could be said to exist beyond individual tattoo shops. Nevertheless, this began to change with the first assembly of tattooists, organised by the artist Eddie Funk, at the National Tattoo Club of the World, in 1974. Subsequently, tattoo conventions became an increasingly established aspect of the industry as they served as vital meeting points for both tattooists, tattoo collectors, tattoo enthusiasts and aspiring artists, and they enabled artists to ‘work on new clients otherwise inaccessible geographically’ (2015, p. 143). Certainly, conventions have become a central feature in the contemporary tattoo industry, and wider tattoo culture, and many have become established as major perennial events, including The Amsterdam Tattoo Convention, the Golden State Tattoo Expo, The Milano Tattoo Convention, the Titanic Tattoo Convention, Belfast and The Great British Tattoo Show. Tattoo conventions act as venues in which tattoo artists and tattoo enthusiasts interact, but they also attract media attention in terms of print, broadcast and digital news coverage, in addition to offering the opportunity of featuring in leading tattoo magazines (which often sponsor conventions). Therefore, conventions serve as potent

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environments for tattoo artists not only to engage in work but also for their work to come to the attention of fellow artists, the public, the media and core tattoo publications. For Yuen Thompson, the idea of a tattoo community developed centrally through conventions, but also magazines, which rose to prominence with the publication of Tattoo Magazine in 1984, one of the first key tattoo publications, followed by the publication of many more titles throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In terms of editorial and stylistic approach: All of these tattoo magazines have a similar formula. They feature articles on tattoo artists, presenting their artwork, location, and history in the industry. Articles feature major tattoo conventions and pictures from events. And of course, the bulk of the magazines are filled with pictures of tattoos. (2015, p. 148) These aspects, argues DeMello, are key to the sentiment generated by tattoo magazines, in which they establish feelings of ‘communitas’ for tattooed social actors, but also play an intrinsic role with regard to informing wider cultural perspectives on tattooing. In this sense, tattoo magazines have remained relatively unchanged, and the issue of education, information and interpolation is central to how they work as tattoo-based texts. With regard to interpolation style, magazines routinely begin with an address by the editor(s) who discusses a contemporary aspect of tattoo culture, but in an informal, direct way to the reader. Additionally, magazines feature interviews with artists and cover models, reader profiles, convention reports, genre and style developments, tattoo of the month (usually selected from the featured convention), tattooed celebrity interviews, and sections that feature select tattoo work sent to the magazines (Skin Deep’s Skin Shots, for

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example). At one level, tattoo magazines are significant in that they represent an example of tattoo media, in which tattooing is critically examined and communicated, and key aspects of the industry, the culture and tattooed social actors, are engaged with. Furthermore, they are a longstanding and fundamental media dedicated to tattoo discourses. In terms of their role within a perceptible ‘tattoo community’, DeMello refers to Benedict Anderson’s classic concept of the imagined community to stress the foundation of a distinctive tattoothemed communal group. As such, nonvillage community (towns and cities) are inevitably imagined communities because the members do not, and cannot, know each other, and so must imagine their communal connections to others in relation to some attribute (kinship, class position, citizenship). In this context, DeMello stresses that communities ‘like the tattoo community provide a model for just such an understanding, in that they do not even possess the quality of spatial boundedness that nations, cities, or neighbourhoods have’ (2000, 40). A community based upon the wearing of tattoos is predicted on individual choice rather than more traditional communal factors (occupation, religion, ethnicity), and is based upon a sense of shared identity as tattooed social actors. Therefore: Tattoo conventions…are spaces in which a sense of identity is shared and community is celebrated on an annual or semi-annual basis. That shared identity is achieved on a more regular basis through creating and consuming community-produced texts like magazines, World Wide Web sites, or Internet newsgroups. Here, individuals feel a sense of community by reading about others whose values and beliefs they share. (2000, p. 41)

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At one level, the sense of a tattoo-based perception of identity being reinforced within a culture in which tattooing ‘is not socially sanctioned’ (2000, p. 42) has changed in many ways since the original publication of Bodies of Inscription, and that tattooing is now a far more mainstream practice. Moreover, the perception that tattooing in the 21st century is a totally normalized bodily practice is subject to question. A key issue central to the various waves of the Tattoo Renaissance was the decisive moving away of tattooing from a masculine practice, to one by which women actively used (and use) tattoos as ‘emblems of empowerment’ (Mifflin, 2013, p. 4) to signify feminist identities and register rebellion against gendered norms. Yet, commentators have argued that there have been differential cultural expectations and attitudes with regard to gender and tattooing. This has ranged from expectations of feminine tattoo designs (floral designs, butterflies, dolphins, moons) and an onus on concealability (Atkinson, 2002) to the enduring attitude that visible tattoos on women result in sexual stereotyping (Leader, 2017). As Yuen Thompson’s work potently stresses, there are differences in terms of social relations to lightly (or discreetly) or heavily tattooed social actors, a factor especially heightened with regard to extensively tattooed women, who can be judged to be subverting conventions of femininity. For example, as Charlotte Dann and Jane Callaghan (2019) argue, tattoo styles or bodily placements judged to be out of fashion can have negative connotations. In this instance, they cite the ‘tramp stamp’ tattoo, designs placed on the lower part of a woman’s back, which, although once a popular trend, have become the object of ridicule, and with further associations with promiscuous behaviour. As they observe, there is no equivalent derogatory term for tattoos on the bodies of men. In this sense, while tattoos have, and are, argued to represent symbols and acts of feminist rebellion against bodily gendered

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expectations, the heavily tattooed can still elicit unwanted staring, comments and the unsolicited touching of tattoos. However, this aspect of overt tattooing can, reinforcing DeMello’s conception of self-identified differences between the tattooed and the nontattooed, form the basis of collective recognition, wherein ‘when tattooed people encounter each other on the street and have an interaction over their tattoos, the interaction is different’ (2015, p. 155). The conception of communal feelings between tattooed social actors is a pervasive one, and resources such as tattoo conventions and tattoo magazines act as focal points for the expression of professional/industry developments, striking and innovative examples of tattoo work and the extensive mediation of tattooed bodies. However, while DeMello focuses extensively on the communal role that conventions and tattoo magazines play as sources of communal solidarity and communication, her references to the impact of Internet and online forums have proven to be both significant and prescient. This is because the brief references (owing to the time of her writing) to the contribution that the still nascent World Wide Web sites could play in establishing a clear a sense of community for tattooed social actors have become a dynamic locus of engagement with tattoo culture, especially with the proliferation of social media platforms.

THE CONCEPT OF THE ONLINE COMMUNITY The online spaces that DeMello refers to as connective sites for the meeting of tattoo enthusiast constitute the developments initiated during what Nancy K. Baym (2010) calls the ‘textual Internet’ of the 1980s. The textual Internet was characterized by Multiuser-Domains (MUDs), whereby, via online chat rooms, role play was undertaken within

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collectively created imaginative alternative worlds (Wertheim, 1999). These geographically diffused ‘virtual’ meeting places were then radically developed with the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his team in 1991, which connected hypertext technology to the Internet and ultimately ‘formed the basis of a new type of networked communication’ (Dijck, 2013). The impact of this conception of computerbased networked communication of the Internet lead some commentators to see the potential that such networks had to create new forms of social configurations in the form of virtual communities. One of the earliest proponents of this approach was Howard Rheingold, who had been actively engaged with online computer-mediated communications since the mid1980s with the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link’). Within WELL, people from across the world would log-in to engage in conversations and messages and forge deep friendships. For Rheingold, virtual communities are ‘social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace’ (1994, p. 5). As Manuel Castells argues in The Internet Galaxy (2001), the emergence of the Internet as a new communication medium was rapidly embroiled in conflicting assessments about the rise of new patterns of social interaction in the wake of the technology. On the one hand, the formation of virtual communities, primarily based on online communication, was interpreted as the culmination of an historical process of separation between locality and sociability that was longstanding anyway. And so with the increasing fragmentation of society, new patterns, based upon distinctive, and selective, aspects of social relations that could replace territorially bound forms of human interaction developed. Yet, on the other hand, critics feared that the increasing impact of the

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Internet would lead to growing social isolation, and even contribute to the progressive breakdown of social communication (Turkle, 2011). Nevertheless, for supporters, the Internet’s contribution to new forms of community was a positive development that was ‘different, but not necessarily inferior to, previous forms of social interaction’ (Castells, 2001, p. 125). In this sense, such groupings possess a shared sense of purpose, interest and involve a reciprocal sharing of information and services to constitute the status of an online community (Preece, 2000). For Castells, these social groupings technically constitute an expression of ‘networked individualism’, associations that are created by individuals on the basis of specific predilections, knowledge and backgrounds (Siapera, 2018). The important aspect of the concept of networked individualism is that it is a social formation, and does not describe a collection of isolated individuals: Rather, ‘individuals build their networks, online and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects…On-line networks, when they stabilize in their practice, may build communities, virtual communities, different from physical communities, but not necessarily less intense or less effective in binding and mobilizing…In other instances, these online networks become forms of specialized communities, that is, forms of sociability constructed around specific interests. (Castells, 2001, pp. 131–132) This early 21st century development reflects the burgeoning tattoo-related online communal activity cited by DeMello. In terms of the nature of these groupings, they reflect the links established between subcultures and online networks, in which the Internet acts ‘as a means of communicating with

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“like-minded” others, while at the same time asserting their insider knowledge and authority’ (Bennett, 2005, pp. 169–170). As DeMello argues, early online forums such as rec.arts.bodyart (RAB) accord closely with this description as it served as a forum for tattooed (and pierced) individuals to come together and, ‘like the tattoo convention, provide another space in which community is realized’ (2000, pp. 37–38). The identification of online forums constituting distinctive social spaces developed rapidly throughout the 2000s, an expansion facilitated and driven by the creation of what would be termed Web 2.0. As Christian Fuchs (2017) argues, the term Web 2.0 (devised in 2005 by the publisher Tim O’Reilly) described key developments in Internet technologies predicated upon participation, user experience and the status of the user as contributor, namely, social media. Social media sites consisted (and consist) of ‘networked information services designed to support in-depth social interaction, community formation, collaborative opportunities and collaborative work’ (2017, p. 38). Ranging from early platforms such as Friendster, Myspace and Bebo to Facebook, Reddit, Renren, YouTube, Twitter, Sina Weibo, WeChat, Line, Pinterest, TikTok and the app-based platform Instagram, social media has become an intrinsic digital presence in contemporary culture. Moreover, social media enables ‘anyone to develop and display their creativity, to empathize with others and to find connection, communication and communion’ (Meikle, 2016, p. 9). This latter conception of the nature of social media is shared by other commentators, such as Wendy K. Bendoni, who argues that such media networks ‘provide a social platform for like-minded individuals to congregate and create communities in the virtual world’ (2017, p. 58). Indeed, as Keith N. Hampton and Barry Wellman argue, features such as Facebook’s ‘friends’ lists instil persistent and pervasive community networks that are meaningful and flexible as they

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‘provide opportunities for partial commitments to different social milieus’ (2018, p. 648). Likewise, post Web 2.0, social media platforms also represent addendums to print media forms that add crucial interactive and communal forms, by which print formats become opened up to participatory functions that communicates culture and enables direct user involvement (Fuchs, 2014).

DIGITAL REMEDIATION: THE TATTOO MAGAZINE AND THE TATTOO STUDIO In her assessment of fashion magazines and fashion media, Agn`es Rocamora examines how new media forms transform established mediums, often drastically developing them, but still retaining key aspects of the traditional formats. As such, contemporary digital media has, inevitably, developed (and sometimes replaced) long-established print media forms in a process called ‘remediation’, a progression ‘whereby both new and old media represent and refashion each other’ (2012, p. 101). As stated earlier, the tattoo magazine, since the mid-1980s, has been both a significant source of contact to instil and reflect a sense of a distinctive ‘tattoo community’, in addition to representing a prominent form of tattoobased media. In DeMello’s assessment of print forms, she argues that media texts on tattooing, in addition to helping to cement a palpable ‘tattoo community’, are also intrinsic to that community (and wider readers) in that, especially in magazine formats, they act to ‘define the discourse surrounding tattooing’ (2000, p. 32). Contemporaneously, tattoo magazines in print form continue to fulfil this purpose, but they have also engaged dynamically with the process of remediation to have additional digital forms present within prominent social media platforms, such as Inked magazine.

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First published in 2004, Inked combines tattoo coverage and tattoo lifestyle features with stories and coverage related to culture and style (including music, fashion, art and sports). In terms of print format, Inked features interviews with tattoo artists and cover models, but also a frequent focus on tattooed celebrities (including Kat Von D, Travis Barker, Amber Rose, Skylar Grey, Tove Lo, Adam Levine, Dave Navarro, Ronda Rousey and Post Malone). Furthermore, highlighting the ‘community’ aspect that DeMello argues is a prime function of the tattoo magazine, Inked also includes an editorial address, but also direct inputs from readers in the forms of a letters page and the ‘Inkedstagam’ section that features selected photographs submitted by heavily tattooed readers and tattoo models. However, while there are ‘interactive’ aspects of the Inked print form, the communal quality is intensified with the digital version of the magazine. One digital format of Inked is the magazine’s official website, www.inkedmag.com. A key aspect of this platform is that it acts as a closely aligned digital version of the print magazine, in that many of the prominent features on the homepage mirror those of the current print magazine (features, interviews, etc.). However, it does have additional news features drawn from the tattoo world (the latest celebrity tattoos, for example), tattoo convention reports, profiles of specific tattoo styles or ‘bad tattoo’ visual galleries. Furthermore, the site contains popular culture news (film releases, celebrity stories, red carpet events tied to tattoo culture), and, from a business perspective, the site serves as a means by which readers can financially subscribe to the magazine, in both print and digital forms, and purchase back copies of the magazine. In this context, the www.inkedmag.com site is a clearly remediated form of the print magazine, but the communal qualities that the magazine offers are intensified with Inked magazine’s official social media page on the Facebook platform.

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The initial factor relating to Inked’s Facebook page is that it has a section entitled ‘Community’, within which there are options for followers to invite their Facebook Friends and to link to the www.inkedmag.com official site. In terms of the scale of the ‘community’, this section clearly numbers how many users have elected to click the Like/Follow options (11,937,953 and 11,362,908, respectively, as of the time of writing). Additionally, a banner statement at the top of the page reads: ‘We are Inked’ simultaneously serves as a statement of identity for the magazine/site, but also serves as a descriptor that encompasses the tattooed bodily identity of many followers. With regard to content, the Facebook platform, like the official website, includes articles featured in current and recent issues of the print magazine. However, it also serves as an ecommerce platform as it contains a number of features that advertise official merchandise, mainly consisting of clothing items (beanie hats, t-shirts, branded jewellery, etc.), with links to the magazine’s online shop for immediate purchasing. As one would expect, there are features on artists and tattoo models, and reports on prominent tattoo conventions, but the site also contains a number of tattoo-themed sections. For example, there are clickable images that explore specific tattoo styles and genres (blackand-grey, for example) as produced by respected tattoo artists. Additionally, there are features that highlight tattoorelated information, such as visual charts of human bodies with the most painful tattoo spots marked out as well as the posting of images geared to inspire follower debates (examples of heavy tattooed bodies, striking design choices or facial tattooing). In other instances, there are features that are included for purely entertainment purposes (cats as pin-ups photo slideshows, for example). Furthermore, the site includes numerous videos of subjects such as tattoos being applied, major tattoo events, and artist, tattoo model and

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celebrity interviews. In this sense, then, if the magazine readership, as DeMello argues, represents a space for community meeting, then the Inked Facebook site reflects this, but with a crucial addition: the pervasive, real-time, interactivity that followers of the site have with the various features. Subsequently, the tattoo community aspect of a social media platform such as Inked magazine is arguably enhanced due to its inherent participatory nature. While the print form of Inked magazine is ‘interactive’ in the sense that there is editorial address and some degree of readers’ voices being present in letters sections and photographic features, these elements are, by their very nature, both limited and abstract. However, the social media iteration of the magazine reflects the nature of social media, based upon the theme of ‘digitized conversation’ (whether in the form of the actual posting of words, or of images) in a convergent, participatory media form. As Henry Jenkins states, online digital technologies and platforms contrast sharply with traditional media forms, based on a form of ‘passive media spectatorship’ that has now increasingly given way to media forms in which participants engage with content, but also with other users (2008, p. 3). As such, each feature and image in the Inked magazine Facebook site contains numerous user responses. In many instances, these are simply ‘Likes’ with regard to the image (and example of a particular tattoo artist’s work, for example), or a simple short written supportive statement. However, a crucial aspect is that postings on the site frequently lead to debates and differing opinions. For instance, with regard to a photograph of a woman with a large, vibrantly coloured tattoo design one side of her head and face, the design elicits a variety of responses. Comments in this regard range from dislike and rejection (commenting on the placement, the quality of the art and the potential barriers to future

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employment that such as prominent and permanently visible may pose) to admiration of the art, but with caveats that they themselves would not have a tattoo in that placement. Furthermore, other users simply express their critical views through posting humorous memes that act as visual indicators of ridicule and rejection of the tattoo and its placement. With DeMello’s idea of a media-based ‘tattoo community’ still in mind, the Inked magazine Facebook site is significant in that users will frequently respond to features through the posting of images of their own tattoos, which can then become the subject of wider user debate and response. The key issue here is that the Inked magazine Facebook site is ostensibly a ‘corporate’ space as it is the official page of a magazine published by Quadra Media LLC (which also publishes Rebel Ink and Freshly INKED). However, it is widely populated with comments, likes and self-posted images by users (in addition to commentators alerting other users to particular features and tattoo imagery). Consequently, the social media space of Inked magazine cogently reflects the contemporary process of spreadable media. As conceptualized by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, spreadability is the driving aspect of a digital media culture, in which content is transposed as it enters different networks and niche online communities. Accordingly, as ‘material spreads, it gets remade: either literally through various forms of sampling and remixing, or figuratively, via its insertion into ongoing conversations and across various platforms’ (2013, p. 27). In this context, digital spreadability enables users to shape media environments, disperse material, commentary and imagery, a result of ‘shifts in the nature of technologies which make it easier to produce, upload, download, appropriate, remix, recirculate, and embed content’ (2013, p. 298). This issue of convergence, what Jenkins describes as ‘the flow of content across multiple media

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platforms’ (2008, p. 2) is central to the nature of Inked magazine, in which traditional print and a range of media sites actively share content, and engages in a similar process of shareability (with content shared from print, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the official website). For example, the inkedmag.com site shares tattoo images drawn from a number of Instagram pages that displays particular user-posted images of a noteworthy aspect of tattoo culture, such as the now substantial number of people with portrait tattoos of the music star, Billie Eilish, who rose to fame in 2019. However, the issue of shareability within a site such as the Inked magazine Facebook page, with the constant sharing of tattoo artists’ work, is also indicative of the ways in which social media has decisively remediated the tattoo studio.

THE DIGITAL STUDIO Reflecting upon his ethnographic research into the culture of tattooing in the United States, conducted in the 1980s, Clinton R. Sanders spent much of his data-collecting time in a commercial tattoo shop in which many of the clients ‘generally chose tattoo designs from the numerous sheets of “flash” covering the available wall space’ (1988, p. 222). Similarly, as part of his conception of a tattoo figuration, Atkinson also acknowledges the traditional value of the shop as a primary site in connecting with fellow tattoo enthusiasts, achieved through ‘hanging out in tattoo studios and displaying one’s ‘work’ to heavily tattooed others’ (2003, p. 118). In this sense, for much of the professional history of tattooing, the tattoo studio represented the most fundamental communicative platform for a particular artist, or group of artists. Hence, as Atkinson further elaborates, not only was the studio the ultimate (and intimate) expression of the figuration, the

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relationship between the tattooist and the client, it also communicated the work and style of an artist, from flash designs on the walls to the printed portfolios freely available for scrutiny in the studio. Therefore, the most direct way to see a prospective artists’ work was through physically seeing their tattoo work on clients, or through coming into contact with 2-D representations of their designs. Yet, the Facebook site Tattoo Social (previously Tattoo Drop) is an artist-based space in which various tattooists upload examples of their designs, providing a professionally focused site for portfolio sharing and user commentary on tattoo work. A crucial corollary of this digital ‘relationship’ is that it enhances trust between the client and the artist as the client has a clear expectation of the style of tattoo that they will receive. In this context, social media has changed this traditional process, and dramatically extended the degree to which prospective clients can see artists’ styles and examples of work. Indeed, as Taylor Bryant (2018) contends, social media platforms, especially Instagram, have fundamentally transformed tattoo culture. In Bryant’s view, social media has revolutionized the relationship between the tattoo artist and the client as it has altered the spatial dynamic. This is so because clients are not limited to working with artists in their immediate geographical area, as they can receive updates of city visits (or guest spots at other studios) posted on artists’ personal social media sites. Furthermore, the now-pervasive use of social media in the tattooing industry is another factor making tattooing more accessible to more social actors. In this sense, prospective clients can follow an artist and evaluate their work over an extended period of time (and from a distance) before committing to ultimately deciding to make contact and book an appointment for a tattoo by that artist. Consequently, the traditional artists’ portfolio is now a digitized social media– communicated artefact and crucial business resource for

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studios (Barron, 2017). Moreover, these digital portfolios are updated by artists on a continual basis, hence the practice of artists using mobiles to photograph completed tattoos for instant posting to social media pages, is a key part of contemporary tattoo practice. Likewise, many artists take additional mobile videoed clips of completed tattoos that are initially obscured by soap and then dramatically revealed – footage that is frequently shared by wider tattoo-based social media sites. As Bryant argues, the impact of social media platforms has been dramatic, and is driven by the digitally immersed Millennial and Generation Z demographics, with the result that artists report that an increasing number of clients are coming through Instagram. Moreover, the social media connection is a reciprocal one because, Instagram is a feedback-driven platform, for customers, it acts as something of a Yelp for tattoo artists. For artists, it’s another way for them to promote themselves and build their community. It also allows customers to get to know the artist better. (Bryant, 2018) Yet, there is one primary negative outcome in response to the extensive displaying of tattoo work across social media sites, and that is the impact on the originality of tattoo designs. One of the key consequences of the Tattoo Renaissance was the growing accessibility of personalized custom tattoo work, and the diminishment of flash art, that was very likely to adorn the bodies of numerous other tattoo enthusiasts, and to be essentially the exact the same motif. In this context, the key aspect of post 1970s tattoo culture was the desire to use, via original and personalized tattoo designs, aspects of self-definition and so symbolically enable a tattooed person to feel ‘different’ (Sanders & Vail, 2008, p. 51). Yet, as Bryant notes, one person’s unique

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and highly individualized custom work, due to its presence on social media, can be, via a screenshot, brought to an artist and so then end up being tattooed onto the body of another social actor. Ironically, therefore, while social media has (and continues to have) a transformative effect on the tattoo industry, and tattoo culture, it has, unexpectedly, transformed many tattoos, no matter how initially innovative, original and bespoke to one particular person and their biography, into a digital (and digitally accessible) form of flash art. However, there are artists who do not see this as a negative outcome. For example, as the tattoo artist, Cris Cleen, states of his practice and attitude to design choice: I have a book of flash that customers can pick anything they like from. I do this because that is what tattoos are: they are designs that all people are worthy of wearing. That’s the whole appeal for me, ever since I got my first tattoo. Tattoos are ideas that we all relate to…Getting something just for you – that no one else can have – is elitist, and takes away the sharing experience of wearing something that other people see and think, yeah, I get it, I feel that too. (in Snape, 2018, p. 282) At one level, the accessible portfolios of artists across numerous social media platforms mean that this outcome is inevitable, because, as Cleen potently observes of the impact of social media, now no ‘tattoo is custom’ and so, because any original design is visible, and so is copy-able, ‘everything becomes flash’ (in Snape, 2018, p. 282). However, social media platforms proved to be a crucial means for artists to stay connected with the ‘tattoo community’ during the 2020 COVID-19 global lockdown that resulted in studios closing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. During this period,

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artists could stay in contact with clients who had booked tattoo work prior to the lockdown, showcase prospective designs and sell bespoke artwork online.

TATTOO FANDOM AND PARTICIPATORY DIGITAL CULTURES In assessing 21st century subcultural social groupings, Andy Bennett stresses a key issue is that such configurations are fluid and foreground lifestyle preferences, aesthetic feelings and practices. Moreover, the Internet has formed a significant expression for such groupings, especially given its inherent capacity to connect individuals in a translocal context, but also as such spaces are built upon ‘more fluid understandings of membership’ (2014, p. 97). If the idea of a palpable and clearly defined ‘tattoo community’ can still to be considered with some caution (as Atkinson does), the issue of fandom arguably helps to reconsider this in relation to tattooing and social media. In their critical analysis of spreadable media, Jenkins, Ford and Green link such digital practices to the impact they have with regard to online forms of fandom, and the nature of contemporary fan activity. As they state: Fandoms are one type of collectivity (in that they are acting as communities rather than as individuals) and connectivity (in that their power is amplified through their access to networked communications) whose presence is being felt in contemporary culture. Members of minority or subcultural communities, various kinds of activist and DIY groups, and different affinity groups are also linked through shared ‘sociality’ and ‘identity’. (2013, p. 166)

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This understanding of what digital network technologies, and primarily social media platforms, means for fan groups is of key importance with regard to tattoo enthusiasts engaging with tattoo-themed online media, and the references to issues such as ‘affinity groups’ is applicable to tattoo ‘fans’. However, Jenkins’ (1992) analysis of the nature of spreadable media in this regard connects with his early work on the communal nature of fandom, as expressed in his now-classic book, Textual Poachers, in which he examined the participatory activities and communal groupings of fans in relation to media culture. Therefore, a key aspect of fan behaviour is that they implement a distinctive mode of reception with regard to the object of their fandom. As such, fans make a conscious process of selection with regard to a particular cultural text (television, film, music, etc.), but also invariably wish to talk about the particular text with other fans. Traditionally, fans joined organizations or attended conventions, enabling them to engage in sustained discussions of their favoured media texts, but also exchanging fans letters, and making use of early chat sites on computer networks. The crucial issue for Jenkins is that, from this perspective, fandom constitutes a particular interpretative community, a communal space in which differing textual interpretations are subject to negotiation, and where alternative readings or evaluations of particular texts are proposed, debated or challenged. With reference to tattoo-themed social media sites such as Inked magazine, these processes are evident in a digital context. For example, image postings and features based upon specific tattoo designs, trends and examples of bodily placement result in a wide range of differing, and often competing, perspectives. Given the photography-based nature of Instagram and its basis as a visual ‘conduit for communication’ (Leaver, Highfield, & Abidin, 2020, p. 1), tattoo-themed Instagram sites such as Tattoo Inkspiration (4.5 million followers) and

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Tattoos of Inztagram (5 million followers) represent extensive, but interactive and participatory tattoo image repositories. Primarily, these social media sites consist of the postings of particular artists’ work, but they are also networks by which tattooed social actors can upload images of their tattoo designs and tattooed bodies. For instance, Tattoos of Inztagram combines artist showcases with user-posted imagery, tattoo models, trend styles, tattoo-themed comedic memes and celebrities with tattoos (such as David Beckham, Adam Levine and Conor MacGregor). Moreover, all of the images can be liked, commented upon and shared with other users across other social media platforms. Tattoo Inkspiration contains similar content, but as the name of the site indicates, it is presented as not only a place in which tattoo enthusiasts can engage with tattoo imagery and exemplars of tattoo work, but also seek inspiration for their own future tattoo designs. Therefore, these sites present a compendium of differing aspects of tattoo culture, such as professional tattoo model shots and artist portfolio images. Furthermore, the wealth of visual material posted to these platforms is also driven by the convergent impact of smartphones, and the practice of taking the ‘selfie’, which has resulted in a flood of user-generated content uploaded online (Gannon & Prothero, 2018), and many images on such social media sites are selfies posted by tattooed social actors. Additionally, such sites (and a myriad of others) present a compelling catalogue of differing tattoo styles, genres and trends (often related to popular cultural texts, such as It or Joker film character designs), and a diverse array of tattooed bodies, ranging from those with minimal or light designs, to the extensively and heavily tattooed. In this context, tattoo-related social media sites keenly represent a contemporary expression of what Jenkins dubbed the fan-based ‘art world’. The concept of the art world, derived from Howard Becker’s Art Worlds (originally published in

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1982), explains the various components that underpin the production and distribution of art, whereby an art world is ‘an established network of cooperative links among participants’ (2008, p. 34–35). In this sense, the concept of the art world refers to the conventions that underpin how art works are aesthetically understood, how they are circulated, exhibited and sold, and the systems of critical evaluation that underscore these processes. In the context of cultures of fandom, Jenkins stresses the ways in which fan conventions and modes of networking (fanzines, newsletters, online forums, etc.) play a central role in the distribution of knowledge about particular media productions (comic books, science fiction novels, new film or television releases). Furthermore, fandom constitutes its own distinctive Art World founded in the form of fan-produced texts which contribute to the shared sense of appreciation for a particular cultural form. What is important in this analysis is that, due to the nature of such art worlds, fandom constitutes a definite, but alternative, form of social community. In this context, [The] fan’s appropriation of media texts provides a ready body of common references that facilitates communication with others scattered across a broad geographic area, fans who one may never-or only seldom-meet face to face but who share a common sense of identity and interests’ [and who are] defined through their common relationship with shared texts’. (1992, p. 213) A significant factor with regard to social media sites such as Tattoos of Inztagram or Tattoo Inkspiration is that they represent key examples of communal perception (with followers numbering in the millions), but that they are literally tattoo-themed art worlds. Accordingly, their Instagram pages are virtual tattoo galleries, while other sites, such as Tattoo

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Snob, serve as personally curated collections considered (however, subjective that may be) to be of the highest quality tattooing. Alternatively, a site like Things & Ink combines artist and design profiles with commentary and debate issues relating to gender and tattooing and female tattoo culture and its community needs and concerns. As such, a particular focus in this regard concerns historic contexts that consistently challenges pervading gender tattoo stereotypes that tattooing was traditionally a masculine practice (profiling early artists such as Maud Wagner, for example), but also addresses current issues of tattoo-based sexism and inappropriate attitudes and touching presumptions directed towards tattooed women. In other social media sites, however, such as Tattoodo, the gallery aspect is central, but the site serves as a convergent meeting point for tattoo enthusiasts and the tattoo industry. Cofounded by Ami James, Tattoodo has some 20 million followers across its key social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tattoodo.com), with 2 billion site visits registered per month, and advertises itself as the ‘World’s #1 tattoo community’. At one level, Tattoodo highlights and celebrates tattoo practice, culture, trends, designs, videos, ‘Tattoos of the Day’ features, etc., on its social media sites, but its unique selling point is that it enables tattoo enthusiasts to book consultations with artists aligned to Tattoodo. Furthermore, Tattoodo enables clients to connect with artists from across the world to provide a custom design. As Ami James explains: It’s a platform where you can get a tattoo design. A lot of people have ideas for their next tattoo, but very few have the actual design. We built a platform where you can create a competition, put $100, $200, or $300 in escrow, and start getting personalized designs from our 3,000 artists worldwide. The

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designs depend on how good your design brief is, and how active you are on giving feedback to the artists… We also have a section called Design Store where you can buy designs from some of the best artists on the planet. You can takes these designs to your local tattoo artist, or receive them as a print or iphone [sic] cover, etc. (Anon, 2014) The issue of tattoo-based social media sites centered on the collation and participatory interaction of tattoo enthusiasts represents a reflection of DeMello’s conception of media-based tattoo community, but in a much more engaged form. Moreover, the idea of seeing such social media sites as digital art worlds gives them a potent quality with regard to curating tattoo culture. In this context, a consequence, and impact, of tattoo-based social media sites is that, thanks to their intrinsic participatory nature, they constitute significant spaces in which myriad aspects of tattoo culture are captured, and so will be preserved in a rich, digital form. In relation to the digital impact of mobile technologies, Elisa Giaccardi argues that they play a vital role in establishing ‘new digitally mediated forms of heritage practice’ (2012, p. 2). The crucial issue is that social actors in possession of such technologies can easily share user-generated content in differing contexts of affiliation, such as tattoo-themed social media sites, and as danah boyd (2014) stresses, a key component of social media expression is its persistence and durability as digital content. Consequently, social media platforms offer distinctive paths to the creation of ‘media museums’ (Russo, 2012) that record (and continue to record) the evolutions and changing expressions of tattoo culture.

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THE TATTOO COMMUNITY SPEAKS: INTERACTING WITH SUBCULTURAL TATTOO CELEBRITIES In his study of fandom, Mark Duffett stresses that, in addition to the mediatisation of fandom into a collective form of public practice, online communications have ‘turned the fan community from a network of local cultures of periodic rituals [such as convention participation] into a non-stop process of social effervescence’ (2013, p. 293). Moreover, this culture has also had a dramatic effect in terms of celebrity fandom, because the ‘net has created new opportunities for fans to feel closer to their stars’ (2013, p. 237). This apparent relationship is a digital culmination of a now longstanding connection between the public and celebrities via traditional mass communication media. In relation to the impact of the then ‘new’ media of the 1950s: radio, movies and especially television, Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl argued that these media, based on feelings of intimacy directed out to audiences by actors and presenters, could establish a ‘simulacrum of conversational give and take’ that they dubbed the para-social interaction (1956, p. 215). As Robert van Krieken (2012) states of this mode of interaction, while based upon nonreciprocation, many fans do nonetheless feel connected to media personalities, and can take inspiration from them as to how they live their lives and interact with others. However, the issue of connection is arguably different when considered from the perspective of social media. This is because, as Baym (2012) argues, there is a chance that a celebrity may actually respond to a tweet, comment or image post on their official site (if only to click the ‘Like’ option), or may even engage in direct interaction with a fan. Yet, in the context of tattoo culture, this possibility of contact and interaction is far more likely with regard to ‘celebrity tattooists’, or tattooists who have some media renown. This category invariably involves tattooists featured on tattoo-themed reality TV shows. At one level, the relationship

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between such artists and tattoo enthusiasts is, by definition, more intimate in nature than that experienced in wider celebrity culture. In this context, while figures such as Ami James, Chris Garver, Tommy Helm, Ryan Ashley, Cleen Rock One, Kelly Doty, Megan Jean Morris, Jay Hutton, Nikole Lowe, Alice Perrin, Megan Massacre or Grace Neutral are media personalities, they represent examples of a category that Bertha Chin and Matt Hills dub the ‘subcultural celebrity’. Thus, while possessing a media presence, this is a mode of ‘celebrity that is restricted rather than general, being recognised by specific (fan/ subcultural) audiences rather than being culturally ubiquitous’ (2008, p. 253). However, in the context of a form of fame based upon tattooing, the issue of connection to enthusiasts, or tattoo ‘fans’ is all the more unique due to the fact that subculturally famous tattooists are invariably working artists. For instance, the British tattooist, Grace Neutral (discussed in Chapter 3 in relation to the television series Needles and Pins) has 647,000 Instagram followers and the image galleries are a fusion of examples of her tattoo work, photographs of her site working on clients, convention appearances, fashion shoots and screenshots from various Needles and Pins episodes. In this context, image comments on her site represent a combination of comments on her specific work with clients, and her status as a television personality, but her renown is, in the main, subculturally connected with her status as a tattooist (with an artistic specialism in hand-poked tattoo techniques) and largely in relation to tattoo culture. In terms of media status, Kat Von D is a major breakout celebrity in relation to her prominent starring roles in reality TV shows, album releases and cosmetics and fragrance ranges, and in terms of social media presence, she has followers that number in the millions (Facebook – 11,875,557 followers; Instagram – 7.3 million followers; Twitter – 1.97 million followers). However, in their examination of fan/

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celebrity interactions, Melissa A, Click, Hyunji Lee and Holly Willson Holladay (2013) identify that social media–based reciprocity can be established between fans and celebrities, from the intimate and personal information posted by a celebrity on their platforms to reactions by them to public postings. In the context of their analysis of the social media relationship between Lady Gaga and her fans, the reciprocal relationships can be positive and inspirational, but this is not always the case. In 2019, Kat Von D revealed, through her social media platforms, her new tattoo: a design that blacks out a large part of her left arm, covering many previous tattoos. The technique is a potentially complicated one (ensuring a quick process to avoid scarring that will mar the surface effect), but it is a style that divides artistic views. Artists that specialize in the style argue that black-out tattoos ‘offer a customer the chance to have something that has a connection with the roots of tattooing – solid and black with a neat and clean look to it’ (Rimmer Givens, 2020, p. 46). Reflecting this assessment of the style, on November the 4th 2019, Kat Von D posted, ‘I’m so in love with my new blacked out arm tattooed by @hoode215! Can’t believe it only took him 1.5 hours – and it’s the most consistent, true black I have ever seen!’ (Bowenback, 2019: Cosmopolitan.com). Via Instagram, however, many users posted very negative response reactions to the work, such as: It literally looks like the ink was sprayed on! For a tattoo artist and someone with so much artistic skill, this seems…well it’s just terrible. I’ll say it. And people taking [sic] like it’s such an artistic expression…is it. Looks like an arm was dipped in a can of paint. (Bowenbank, Cosmopolitan.com 2019)

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With regard to the issue of social media reciprocity, Von D responded to such messages (and many more like them) in a later post, in which she said: Even though tattoos are an outward expression, they really aren’t for anyone else other than the person wearing it…Yes, I did decide to black out a large portion of old, crappy tattoos on my arm… Regardless of what people might think about it, I absolutely LOVE how simple and clean it looks now. (Noor, 2019, the Guardian.com) Such exchanges stress that an online ‘tattoo community’ is far from monolithic in how it evaluates tattoos and tattooing, but the crucial legacy of Web 2.0 is that social media has made an unprecedented impact on the ways in which tattoo enthusiasts, via convergent digital technologies, can engage, and, crucially, publicly contribute to tattoo discourses. While the idea that the communal contacts established through social media represent merely a form of ‘depersonalized intimacy’ (Jagoe, 2016), Hampton and Wellman stress that mobile phones and social media have a key communal power as they ‘provide opportunities for partial commitments to different social milieus’ (2018, p. 648). As this chapter has explored, the milieu of tattooing has a pervasive and multifaceted presence in social media. Therefore, whether tattoothemed social media sites represent a digital expression of DeMello’s conception of a media-linked tattoo community, or a digital addition to the interpersonal ties that bind tattoo enthusiasts together that constitute Atkinson’s conception of the figuration, social media plays an intrinsic media role in contemporary tattoo culture. In this sense, given the differing perspectives and levels of engagement evident on social media sites, they reflect what Jenkins calls ‘participatory

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communities’ (Jenkins, Ito, & boyd, 2016, p. 12). Hence, such platforms are digital places in which distinctive voices can be communicated and heard; where tattoo styles, practices and trends can be debated, valorised or critiqued. They are where the public can interact with the tattooists seen on reality TV (possibly to the artists’ chagrin, as with Kat Von D), and where artists and clients can make contact and engage in the practice of tattooing. In addition, given the convergent, participatory and spreadable nature of social media, they are platforms where tattoo enthusiasts can digitally commune, and, can, more importantly, add images of their own tattooed bodies to the sites that may well become the tattoo ‘media museums’ of the future.

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5 TATTOOS AND POPULAR PERSONALITIES: INKED CELEBRITIES

Given the growing significance of reality TV, and the plethora of tattooed-themed reality TV shows, all featuring a number of professional artists, it is little surprise that one outcome of the genre is its ability to enable ‘ordinary people to transform into celebrities’ (Jerslev & Mortensen, 2018, p. 169). For example, some participants in reality TV shows as disparate as Big Brother, Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex, Jersey Shore, Geordie Shore or Love Island have become notable celebrity and media figures. As such, via the tattoo-based shows discussed in the previous chapter, this process is also evident with regard to a number of tattooists. Consequently, due to their appearances on shows such as Miami Ink, LA Ink, NY Ink, Tattoo Fixers or Just Tattoo of Us, professional ´ tattoo artists such as Ami James, Chris Nuñez, Jay Hutton, Danny Robinson, Cally-Jo, Charl Davies, Kat Von D and Megan Massacre have become celebrity figures, albeit of the subcultural variety. This is because, in the main, their cultural visibility reflects the subcultural form because their level of

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media fame tends to consolidate their reputation and presence in tattoo-based discourses and contexts (other tattoo-themed TV shows, or featured guest spots at international tattoo conventions), which significantly boost their social media follower numbers. However, with a level of fame that has consolidated their professional status within the industry, but it has also provided a level of celebrity that does have a further cultural reach. For example, while Megan Massacre’s appearance on NY Ink lead to further TV work in Bondi Ink Tattoo Crew and America’s Worst Tattoos, in addition to her opening her own studio in New York City, Grit N Glory, she is now also a clothing designer, model and writer. Moreover, Kat Von D has engaged in a number of cultural and business ventures. For instance, in addition to running her own tattoo studio, High Voltage, she has also diversified into the fragrance market with her Saint 1 Sinner line, and the cosmetics industry with the release of her Vegan Beauty range. Such activities reflect what Turner refers to as the process whereby, as public media figures’ prominence rises, the ‘celebrity can develop their public persona as a commercial asset’ (2014, p. 37). Similarly, Ami James released the tattoo-themed Ink Clothing line, selling tattoo-inspired apparel and jewellery. Of course, tattooing has made an impact in high fashion before such developments, most notably due to what Christian Audigier, the founder of the Von Dutch fashion brand, did with the name and tattoo imagery of the iconic tattooist, Don Ed Hardy in releasing an apparel line. Alternatively, due to social media and a celebrity cadre who have increasingly, and publicly, embraced tattooing, a number of tattoo artists have become media figures due to their literal proximity to celebrities, in that they are the artists who are selected to tattoo their bodies. Consequently, the tattoo artists Keith ‘Bang Bang’ McCurdy, Jon Boy, Dr. Woo, Kevin Paul and

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Nikko Hurtado have tattooed a number of celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Halsey, Rihanna, Rita Ora, Justin Bieber, David Beckham, Miley Cyrus, Drake, Harry Styles, Selena Gomez, Emilia Clarke, Ed Sheeran and Dwayne Johnson. In addition to being the go-to artist for such famous figures, while celebrities are in the act of being tattooed, their social media updates and selfies of the tattooing and the completed tattoo have contributed to this cadre of artists becoming a notable professional group. Consequently, their status and cultural visibility has become considerable, with artists such Dr. Woo reported to have waiting lists of up to two years for prospective clients (Gardner, 2019) and having 1.6 million Instagram followers. However, the key element of the rise of ‘elite tattooists’ is that tattooed celebrities have become increasingly visible via popular cultural representation. Writing in 2009, Josh Adams examined the enduring association between tattooing and deviance (in the United States), concluding that the practice of tattooing seemed to hold on to some of its marginal characteristics. In this sense, as he states, despite ‘the changes within the industry, embodied in the notion of the Tattoo Renaissance, it is understandably difficult to shed tattoo’s negative associations after generations of active stigmatization’ (2009, p. 285). However, the influence of film, television, social media and celebrity is arguably negating many of these tenacious attitudes, especially with regard to the ways in which celebrity culture is actively mainstreaming images of tattooed bodies, but also confronting the areas that Adams argues constitute the areas most stigmatized, which are the face, neck, hands and fingers. And so, while many celebrities are lightly tattooed, with minimalist designs, others are both heavily and visibly tattooed in precisely the areas Adams flags; to the extent that it is celebrity culture that is arguably a prime force in changing attitudes to such previously ‘taboo’ tattooed areas.

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TATTOOS AND MEDIATED CELEBRITY BODIES The veneration of distinctive individuals possessing (or perceived to possess) great renown, from royalty, artists, poets, or political leaders, is an ancient component of human history. Moreover, the access to fame expanded through the development of mass communication media, epitomized by the creation of movie stars via Hollywood (Braudy, 1986). However, there is perception that there is a distinctive difference between classic conceptions of fame and contemporary celebrity. As Robin D. Barnes argues, in a traditional sense, fame was invariably associated with some public demonstration of unique skill or achievement, whereas celebrity ‘is more transient, relying on marketing, timing, and instant appeal’ (2010, p. 19). Hence, contemporary celebrity accommodates film stars, music icons, political advocates and reality TV personalities. In this regard, celebrity is based upon a cultural group’s ‘capacity to attract attention’ and being ‘well known (highly visible) in itself in at least one public arena’ (van Krieken, 2012, p. 10). Furthermore, the vehicle to attain this status of renown is invariably achieved through the media (Giles, 2000). Consequently, while fame is an ancient aspect of human culture, as Ellis Cashmore contends: Celebrity culture became a feature of social life, especially in the developed world, during the late 1980s/early 1990s, and extended into the twenty-first century, assisted by a global media, which promoted, lauded, sometimes abominated, and occasionally annihilated figures, principally from entertainment and sports. (2014, p. 8)

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For Cashmore, modern celebrity culture is characterized by media-driven fame (television, print media, the Internet and digital platforms), and so, as Sean Redmond stresses, given the crucial role of media, celebrities are ‘representational constructs’ that express social conceptions of class, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, modes of consumerism and identity (2014). This is based on the ways in which individuals react to celebrities, as sources of entertainment, figures of deep affection (sometimes leading to pathological behaviours, such as stalking) or as attitudinal or bodily ‘role models’. For Cashmore, the status of celebrities representing a distinctive standard of beauty became evident from 1930s Hollywood and has become a crucial aspect of celebrity discourse and cultural influence. Therefore, as Redmond argues with regard to the primacy of celebrity bodies within contemporary media culture: ‘One can see how celebrity bodies work to transmit dominant cultural values about race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, age and social class’ (2019, p. 109). This aspect of celebrities representing bodily role models that inspire members of the public to engage in physical, cosmetic or surgical procedures to emulate them is a significant aspect of sociological and cultural approaches to the impact of celebrity culture. As Anthony Elliott contends, celebrity, from a sociological perspective, has been evaluated with regard to the ways in which celebrity connects with concerns with self, identity and the body within a consumer culture, to the degree that celebrity culture ‘speaks directly on certain basic concerns to do with the body, ageing and desire’ (2018, p. 307). However, a distinctive addendum to discourses surrounding celebrity bodies, and how they are culturally perceived and assessed, is the ways in which tattooing has become part of this phenomena. This is especially significant as tattooing has become progressively more visible as part of celebrity, especially in the context of 21st century media culture. As such, in addition to representations of tattooing in

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film, television and social media platforms, it is now common to see tattoos adorning the bodies of a variety of celebrities, including sports stars such as WWE wrestler, Ronda Rousey (and various other wrestling stars) and football and NBA stars like Marcos Rojo and Kevin Wayne Durant. Furthermore, David Beckham, Johnny Depp and Ruby Rose’s extensively tattooed bodies adorn mainstream advertising media for brands such as Breitling and Tudor luxury watches, Dior fragrances and Urban Decay cosmetics. In this regard, celebrity culture represents a significant media contributor to the ongoing process of the ‘normalization’ of tattooing, in which, via celebrity, the ‘tattoo world has now become the ultimate in chic’ (Saltz, 2006, p. 13). In the view of the tattooist, Henk Schiffmacher (2005), the wearing of tattoos on the bodies of social elites is not an unprecedented cultural phenomenon as tattoos have, in differing times, been embraced by the ‘lower social classes’ and aristocrats, artists and intellectuals keen to shock respectable tastes, push against social boundaries and indulge in cultural trends. Hence, the renewed visibility of tattooing with regard to contemporary celebrity cultural ‘elites’ represents a rejuvenation of this bodily practice. In placing the role of celebrity in the context of the changes in Western tattoo culture from the 1970s, while limited in terms of both numbers and visibility, Catherine Grognard (1994) argues that celebrity influence did play a role as part of the perceived renaissance of tattooing. This was because, in addition to the self-expressive aspects of tattooing that progressively characterized this period, the wearing of tattoos by film stars and musicians also bestowed upon tattooing a distinctively fashionable status. The new-found ‘prestige’ of tattooing was culturally signified by the fact that iconic film stars and performers such Sean Connery and Cher represented an early wave of famous tattooed bodies. However, nonmainstream

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figures also illustrated further alternative early examples of what Grogard dubs the popular cultural tattooed ‘brotherhood’. For example, the cult actor, and member of Andy Warhol’s Factory artistic collective, Joe Dallesandro’s ‘Little Joe’ tattoo (inscribed on his upper right arm) was a conspicuous aspect of his off-screen persona, and his image in iconic Paul Morrissey films, such as Flesh (1968) and Trash (1970). Beyond the film industry, tattoos were prevalent in popular culture, but located within distinctive subcultural spaces of popular music, most notably heavy metal. Emerging from numerous psychedelic bands of the late-1960s – performers like Jimi Hendrix, and groups such as like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly, such bands were among the first to present a form of rock’n’roll that was notably harder and louder than other forms of contemporary popular music. Discarding the inherent psychedelic overtones of the 1960s, heavy metal would emphasise the abrasive power of rock to produce music that stressed sentiments of alienation, menace, destruction and nihilism (Arnett, 1996). The genre quickly expanded in the 1970s through bands such as Black ¨ Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead and Iron Maiden; and it continued its expansion through the 1980s via the likes of ¨ ¨ While, as Metallica, Megadeth, Poison and Motley Crue. Andy R. Brown (2006) argues, heavy metal was neglected by classic subcultural theorists, potentially because of its traditional focus on excessive masculinity and machismo, it has proven to be an enduring form, developing further throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, albeit with a myriad of differing expressions. Given the traditionally rebellious and abrasive spirit of heavy metal, it is unsurprising that tattoos have long been part of its culture and bodily aesthetic. Hence, performers such as Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Stanley of KISS, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee from ¨ Motley Crue, ¨ Slayer’s Tom Araya and Kerry King and Guns

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‘n’ Roses’ Duff McKagen were notable for their tattoos. Moreover, from the 1990s onwards, the prevalence of tattooing has expanded, with many musicians sporting heavily tattooed bodies, with prominent examples including Marilyn Manson, Blink-182’s Travis Barker, Korn’s Brian ‘Head’ Welch, Andy Biersack of Black Veil Brides, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds and various members of bands such as As I Lay Dying, Avenged Sevenfold, Bring Me The Horizon, Gallows, Architects and Bad Wolves (to name but a few). Traditionally, tattooing is also mirrored by the genre’s fan base as tattooing is also historically and contemporaneously an endemic aspect of the heavy metal fandom, acting (in the form of chaossignifying monster figures drawn from popular culture, or band logos and album imagery) as ‘a special mark of loyalty to the metal subculture’ (Weinstein, 2000, p. 129). As Gill argues, tattoos and body modification have long been used by individuals within subcultural groupings such as heavy metal fans to identify themselves as ‘outsiders’ with fashion and body modifications that communicate values and commitment to the culture. The primacy of tattooing within this subculture intensified from the early 2000s as mainstream fashion brands began to feature clothing and accessories that were based upon ‘rock’ fashion, such as studded belts and t-shirts bearing band logos. In the wake of fashion ‘tourists’ sporting metal imagery, tattoos (with extensive designs and visible placements) were seen as a key means by which to reclaim authenticity and retain the outsider, or ‘hardcore’ cultural aesthetic and commitment to the culture, for both fans and metal musicians alike. However, as Gill notes: Just as the fingerless gloves and skinny jeans had been co-opted by the high street, so too tattoos started to become mainstream. Celebrities such as David Beckham and Johnny Depp started to get

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more and more tattoos – as did fashion and perfume models from Jean Paul Gaultier to Diesel. Just as a ¨ Motorhead t-shirt, long hair or a beard had lost their specific semiotic meaning to a subculture, so too tattoos no longer meant, ‘I am really into hardcore’. (2017b) Consequently, in Alexis Petridis’s view, the twentiethcentury conception of youth subculture is outmoded because the digital world of the Internet ‘doesn’t spawn mass movements, bonded together by a shared taste in music, fashion and ownership of subcultural capital: it spawns brief, microcosmic ones’ (in Gill, 2017b). Yet, as Scott Rowley, Editor-inChief of Classic Rock magazine states: I think people enjoy being ‘different’, so subcultures will probably always survive. Big subcultures are now split into sub-subcultures. You’re not just into metal, you’re into stoner or black metal or metalcore or whatever. And there’s tension between those smaller sects and the larger subculture. The internet may have brought us all together, but that only makes us all want to be different even more. It’s much easier to find like-minded people, revel in your own niche and feel superior to everyone else. (in Gill, 2017c) With reference to Black Metal, a metal form based on occult themes, but also often anti-Christian motifs and imagery (Hjelm, Kahn-Harris, & LeVine, 2013), it is significant to note the ways in which the Internet, via social media platforms, does serve to bring together adherents who cleave to a particular sub-subculture, with tattoos playing a major

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role, as illustrated by the Polish band, Behemoth. With regard to the band’s singer and guitarist Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski’s social media sites, they prominently feature his own extensive tattoo collection (frequently posting images and footage of him obtaining them and undergoing laser removal in order to replace older designs with new ones). However, a central aspect of Darski’s Instagram site is the posting of fan art, often expressed in the form of tribute tattoos. As such, many Behemoth fans wear tattoos that consist of arcane/occult symbols that feature on album covers and there are numerous Nergal portraits based upon the visually striking (and often religiously controversial) stage and video costumes that the singer wears. However, as Gill (2017c) observes, Behemoth has also been featured in mainstream fashion, most notably when Justin Bieber was photographed wearing one of the band’s t-shirts, again flagging the potential for mainstream fashion to incorporate subcultural forms. In addition to heavy metal, hip-hop is also characterized by many artists being extensively tattooed, especially contemporary rappers such as Lil Wayne, Tyga, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Kid Ink, Lil Mosey and Travis Scott, and Travis Scott, but the level of tattooing evident in the context of 21st century popular culture is now not typically associated with subcultural musical forms. Because, while tattoos continue to extensively feature in the genres of heavy metal and hip hop, they are now also pervasive in mainstream music and adorn the bodies of mainstream pop performers. Hence, many of the most commercially successful and most highly mediated music-based celebrities sport tattoos, from minimal motifs to extensive bodily coverage. Consequently, celebrities such as Rihanna, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, P!nk, Nicki Minaj, Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora, Chris Brown, Adam Levine, Selena Gomez, Adele, Blackbear, Lana Del Rey, Ariana Grande, Mabel and Post

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Malone are notable for their pop hits and their latest tattoos. Citing the examples of Adam Levine (the lead singer with the US band, Maroon 5), Machine Gun Kelly and Ed Sheeran, their heavily tattooed bodies reflect the aesthetic of the heavy metal performer, but in a mainstream musical form. Moreover, they also stress the key identity–expressive dynamic that drove the Tattoo Renaissance, and reinforces the argument that it was never one discrete ‘tattoo era’, but has alternatively proven to be a successive series of events regarding the cultural visibility and normalization of tattoos. For example, with regard to Ed Sheeran’s 601 tattoo designs, these include a large lion design on his chest, a koala tattoo to symbolize a tour in Australia, a family tree symbol, lyrics from his songs, Pingu, Disney characters and the word ‘Red’ on his left shoulder (as a tribute to his friend and musical collaborator, Taylor Swift). While Sheeran’s tattoos are routinely criticized on social media platforms for their apparent lack of artistry, given that many are simple designs, this is intentional and expressive with regard to what the tattoos mean to him. As Sheeran states of the lion design: The one that means the most to me is this lion – and it’s the one I got the most stick for. The reason I got the lion was for Wembly. It was the biggest achievement that I’d done. I get one every time there’s something that I’m proud of or I want to remember. (Anon, 2019: Body Art Guru.com) This explanation flags the ways in which contemporary tattooing enables the wearer to articulate an aspect of self and identity through bodily adornment, whereby tattoos represent personal accounts of signification and subjectivity (Sullivan, 2001). Furthermore, Ed Sheeran is not alone in representing a

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high-profile celebrity who not only has a number of tattoos, but whose tattoos are featured regularly in media coverage and professional work. As such, celebrities ranging from Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Tom Hardy, Lena Dunham, Asia Argento and Dwayne Johnson to Lena Headey, Dave Bautista, Kirsten Stewart, Ruby Rose and Scarlett Johansson frequently display their extensive tattoo work. Indeed, if these designs are not always present in professional media work (and they often are), then they are evident in numerous paparazzi shots on red carpets, and in self-posted social media content. With regard to Scarlett Johansson, as a ‘fan of tattoos’ with some nine designs, she also commemorated the completion of Avengers: Endgame (along with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner) with an Avengers symbol tattoo. As artist Josh Lord states of the designs, ‘There’s a symbol for everybody in the movie in there…Their initials are also all hidden in there’ (DeSantis, 2019: ES Insider.com). In the view of Mary Kosut, the pervasiveness of tattooing in celebrity culture represents both the mainstreaming of tattooing and its commodification within contemporary culture. It also represents a further indication of how celebrity bodies come to represent objects of imitation and wield bodily/image influence. Hence, in addition to celebrities possessing idealized bodies and styles, and commercially endorsing products that consumers associate with them, Kosut applies such imitative behaviour in relation to celebrity to the embrace of tattooing. The issue of fashionable role models is central to the classic examination of the fashion system, as proffered by the sociologist, Georg Simmel, who stressed that in modern urban, but anonymizing and impersonal, cities, individuals strive to communicate a distinctive sense of uniqueness within such settings. In this regard, a key means by which to acquire a stylish ‘look’ is to take inspiration from notable and influential social actors, so, as Simmel states,

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fashion ‘is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaptation’ (1957: 543). Kosut evokes this ethos with regard to tattooing, in that fans and admirers of celebrities have the potential to acquire tattoos simply because a celebrity has them, as she reasons, if ‘the musicians we idolize and sometimes seek to emulate (at least in appearance) have tattoos on their bodies, why not get one ourselves?’ (2006: 1039). In some instances, fans may directly copy a tattoo design worn by a celebrity, but more commonly acquire a tattooed portrait of a favoured celebrity, and Internet searches display examples of such work dedicated to celebrities as disparate as David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West, Beyonc´e, Amy Winehouse, Kobe Bryant, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Joe Exotic. However, fans must take care in their choice of artist, as Google abounds with pages dedicated to disastrous celebrity tattoo portraits.

TATTOOS, FASHION AND THE CELEBRITY PUBLIC/ PRIVATE BODY The association between tattoos and contemporary representations of the ‘celebrity body’ is one that has added to the repertoire of influences that are extant between celebrities and the public, but also flag fundamental changes that have occurred with regard to the public display of tattoos, and who has them. Hence, the tattooed body arguably plays a major role in, as Kosut (2014) argues, the mainstreaming of tattoos, or at least a significant role in eroding residual stereotypes and stigmas. While tattoos are now evident across a range of media forms, a significant expression is evident within the fashion industry, and the promotional images and activities featuring celebrities that are a central aspect of the industry. As the fashion academic

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Pamela Church Gibson observes, there is a longstanding relationship between famous social actors and fashion design and communication, especially with regard to celebrities representing fashion and cosmetics exemplars and fashionable bodily role models. As she states of the relationship between celebrities and the public interest, it ‘combines a wish to emulate their style and possess their perfect bodies with the desire to know as much as possible about their private lives’ (2012: 53). Moreover, such celebrities have increasingly become part of the fashion system, through design work (Victoria Beckham and Kanye West, for example), but more centrally as the images fronting fashion brand campaigns, especially in the luxury sector. As Church Gibson further notes, the resurgence of luxury fashion ‘in the 1990s coincided with the burgeoning of the new phase of celebrity culture. The two speedily joined forces for their mutual benefit’ (2012: 10). In this context, celebrity images and bodies have become central to fashion communication and advertising, as celebrity represents ‘a rich fantasy world to which consumers aspire’ (Tungate, 2008, p. 122). Furthermore, celebrities are regarded as key cultural trendsetters and innovators by consumers (Hameide, 2011) because in popular culture, ‘the celebrity is a voice above others’ (Marshall, 1997, p. 10). Hence, given the increasingly visible tattoos that many celebrities wear, it is no surprise that tattooed bodies are now part of fashion media discourses. In examining the relationship between tattooing and fashion, Paul Sweetman, writing in 1999, noted that tattoos in popular and consumer culture had notably increased, observing that many ‘celebrities now sport tattoos and piercings, and related imagery is frequently featured in advertising copy, as well as in the work of designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier’ (1999: 52). The presence of tattoos in fashion has only continued to be more prominent in the 21st century, from tattooed fashion designers such as Alexander McQueen,

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Rick Owens, Marc Jacobs and Virgil Abloh, to a growing number of fashion models sporting tattoo designs. With regard to models, while some wear minimalist designs (Gisele ¨ Bundchen, Kendall Jenner, Kate Moss, Gigi Hadid and Kaia Gerber), others have prominent and numerous tattoos, such as Eve Salvail, Catherine McNeil, Josh Mario John, Slick Woods, Leebo Freeman, Stephen James, Codie Young, Anwar Hadid, Levi Stocke, Freja Beha Erichsen and Cara Delevingne. With regard to Cara Delevingne, her numerous tattoos (some 26 designs), which include her mother’s name, Pandora, on her left bicep, the slogan ‘Made in England’ on the sole of her left foot, a diamond design in her right ear, the initials ‘CJD’ on her right hand (representing her full name), XII on her right ribcage and the image of a lion face on her right hand index finger, are often featured in her advertising and brand promotion work. For instance, her lion tattoo is prominent in a TAG Heuer campaign, and her 2019/20 work with Olivier Rousteing and Balmain cast her in semi-nude/nude poses with many of her tattoos designs prominently on display. A similar issue is evident with regard to actor and film director, Angelina Jolie, who represents a key example of a globally renowned celebrity figure who is significantly tattooed. While many of her film roles do not show her tattoo collection (although some do, such as 2008’s Wanted), they are frequently featured in celebrity magazines, Internet coverage and paparazzi shots at public media events. In this regard, Jolie’s tattoos are very much a part of her fashionable bodily image, and her personal identity. In this fashion, Jolie’s East Asian, Thai and Cambodian Buddhist symbols and mantras communicate Jolie’s close connections to these locations as represented through the adoption of her child, Maddox, and the extensive humanitarian work she has undertaken in those countries as part of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees initiative. In this sense, her tattoos act as identity ‘anchors’, and she has described them as representing ‘a totem

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pole of my history’ (Mifflin, 2013, p. 132). Given the personal nature of her designs, they also centrally feature as a key part of her body image in her endorsement work with the French perfume, cosmetics and skincare house, Guerlain, which showcase her shoulder and back tattoo designs in their marketing campaigns and imagery. With regard to the nature of culture in an ever-changing, ‘liquid’ world, Bauman looks at how fashion is a production system that exists in a permanent state of flux, and which is never (nor can it be) ever fixed. As such, argues Bauman: It cannot stand still; it requires continuous renegotiation. Driven by the impulse to be different and to escape the crowds and the rat race, the mass pursuit of the latest fashion (of the very moment), quickly causes the current marks of distinction to become common, vulgar and trivial, and even the shortest lapse of attention, or even a momentary slowing down of the speed of prestidigitation may produce effects opposite to those intended: the loss of individuality. (2011: 22) However, while the fashions and accessories that celebrities advertise will change due to the dictates of fashion that Bauman identifies, the ‘marks of distinction’ represented by their tattoos will not (or certainly not at the speed of fashion as tattoo removal is not instantaneous). The tattooed fashionable body, therefore, decisively goes against the prevailing spirit of the fashion system. Referring again to Sweetman’s research, many of the tattooed social actors he interviewed described their tattoos as decorative objects, as fashion accessories. However, while representing corporeal fashion statements, many tattooed individuals also saw their designs as being

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‘expressive of personal interests or their own biographies’ and as ‘an act of “self-creation”, that…helps to construct a viable sense of self-identity’ (1999: 67–68). With regard to tattooed celebrities popular cultural representations, and especially fashion discourses, their tattoos communicate, within the context of differing texts and product messages, what Sweetman dubs ‘a coherent and consistent self-narrative’ (1999: 69). A prominent example of this process is evident with regard to the model and actor, Ruby Rose. Beginning her media career as a VJ for MTV, she became a notable fashion figure through her appearances in high-profile fashion magazines such as Vogue, InStyle and Cosmopolitan. A key part of her style was, and is, her heavily tattooed body, which has featured in advertising campaigns for brands such as Maybelline and Ralph Lauren, and she became the brand ambassador for the Urban Decay cosmetics brand in 2016. Consequently, the issue of self-narrative and image consistency has become a key part of Rose’s image as an actor in film and television, in that her tattoo designs are habitually part of her onscreen characters and image. This was notable in her role as prison inmate, Stella Carlin, in the successful and influential prison-set comedydrama, Orange Is The New Black (2013–2019), in which her own collection of body art is revealed. Hence, her bodily aesthetic incorporates her iconic fashion look in terms of her tattoos. Similarly, Rose’s own distinctive tattoos have featured in a range of film roles, such as xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (2017), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), Pitch Perfect 3 (2017) and The Meg (2018). Moreover, in the television series, Batwoman (2019), in playing Kate Kane, the Batwomen, she portrays a tattooed young woman who takes on the mantle of the protector of Gotham City, in which she mixes many of her own tattoos with additional makeup-created designs unique to the character. Given that her image is present in fashion, film and television, Rose represents not only a prominent tattooed

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media figure, but one whose tattoos form an intrinsic part of many of her media roles, contributing to the increasing visibility of heavily female tattooed bodies in contemporary popular culture. The issue of tattoos and self-narrative within media representations is also evident in relation to the fashion and performative work of tattooed celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Johnny Depp, Harry Styles and Halsey. With regard to Bieber, a key aspect of his transformation from a 13-year-old pop singer has been his progressively extensive tattoo collection, numbering over 60 designs across his body, with full sleeves and extensive chest work. Many of Beiber’s designs have religious motifs that reference his avowed Christian faith, but others represent tributes to previous partners, most notably a wrist design dedicated to Selena Gomez. Bieber’s tattoo work is consistently visible in many of his music videos and live performances, but is also present in a number of globally prominent Calvin Klein clothing and underwear campaigns, in which his tattoos are frequently a dynamic visual motif in brand imagery. Similarly, the actor Johnny Depp’s promotional work for the Dior fragrance, Sauvage, clearly features Depp’s tattoos on his forearms and hands throughout the various media platforms of the campaign, while former One Direction singer Harry Styles’ tattoos are frequently on display in his work for Gucci apparel and fragrances. This ethos is also central to the imagery created to represent the musician Halsey, in her work with the DKNY fashion brand. With some 351 tattoos across her body (ranging from a butterfly, lyrics from her songs, barbed wire, an anchor, daggers, and roses, to musical notes, the emblem of the Mandalorians from the Star Wars universe, and a minimalist portrait of Marilyn Manson), many of these designs are evident in the branding imagery for DKNY clothing and

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accessories. Furthermore, Halsey’s tattoos are also on extensive display at Fashion Week events for the brand. Writing in relation to the myriad tattoos worn by Marc Jacobs, Amy Larocca states of the prominence of tattoos in both fashion and celebrity culture, that: Perhaps ‘the culture’s shift toward tattoos is of a piece with our need to constantly reveal ourselves, to live in a continual flow of art-directed personal information...With tattoos we speak to one another with messages that are supposedly for ourselves…but also announce to the world what we’re telling ourselves...This sort of half-reveal works especially well for celebrities. Their tattoos get them even more public attention, while hinting at an unspoken inner life. (2013 The Cut.com) The primacy of tattoos being visible across differing media or manifest in particular forms of media communication (Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp revealing their usually private tattoos in fashion brand images, for example) raises a significant issue as to how the identities of celebrities have historically been articulated with regard to public knowledge. As Chris Rojek argues, celebrities are effectively cultural fabrications, whose sense of self may appear to be intimate (thanks to the parasocial relationship media can inspire for the spectator), but the celebrity is a carefully mediated figure who is presented to the public via the work of a range of cultural intermediaries. Such agents (publicists, marketers, cosmetic experts, promoters) create a public persona for a celebrity that is easily communicable and appealing to an audience. Furthermore, celebrity status has traditionally rested upon a decisive divergence between a private and a public self. As Rojek explains:

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The social psychologist George Herbert Mead argued that the split between the I (the ‘veridical’ self) and the Me (the self as seen by others) is the human condition at least since ancient times, in Western society. The public presentation of self is always a staged activity, in which the human actor presents a ‘front’ or ‘face’ to others while keeping a significant portion of the self in reserve. (2001, p. 11) However, the visibility of tattoos across a number of media platforms, especially with regard to the intimate and identitybased nature of many designs, serves to communicate biographical components of the private celebrity self. In this regard, there are numerous websites exploring celebrity tattoos that show images of many designs, discussing or revealing their meanings. Furthermore, celebrities often discuss the meanings of their tattoos themselves in interviews and display them on their Instagram sites. Such actions can serve to blur the public and the private aspects of celebrity personalities and form points of recognition and identity communication.

BREAKING BOUNDARIES, CHANGING STIGMA: THE CELEBRITY TATTOO EFFECT While stressing the seemingly ubiquitous cultural presence of tattooing, and its apparent routine visibility in celebrity-related media discourses, the issue of changing gender perceptions regarding tattooing is a significant one, in which celebrity has played a role. As Dominique Holmes argues, the increase in women acquiring tattoos is an important 21st century

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development, and that the ‘archaic opinion of the tattooed woman as a freak or a misfit is on its way out’ (2013, p. 7). With reference to female celebrities such as Amy Winehouse, Rihanna and Scarlett Johansson, Holmes states that ‘the tattooed female surrounds us, making it a completely natural phenomenon in today’s society’ (2013, p. 12). Yet, this was not always the case. In the view of Yuen Thompson (2015) and Dann and Callaghan (2019), female tattooing has suffered the stigma of being culturally regarded as an unfeminine ‘deviant’ bodily practice, with visible tattoos on women yielding social censure in relation to perceptions of ‘self-mutilation’ or as rendering the female body as ‘ugly’ (especially with regard to heavily tattooed women). In this regard, in addition to women acquiring extensive tattoo collections that renegotiate traditional gender bodily norms, the visibility of celebrities with tattoos can reinforce these bodily transformations and counter any residual cultural norms. For example, Yuen Thompson refers to the example of the singer Janis Joplin getting a Florentine wrist bracelet tattoo from the artist Lyle Tuttle in 1970 as representing a significant act, and so representing a self-assured example of a female tattooed body in popular culture. Significantly, Joplin’s tattoo inspired many female fans to adopt similar tattoo designs. Hence, with direct regard to gender and tattooing, Mifflin (2013) cites the important and positive influence of tattooed female celebrities such as Kat von D and Angelina Jolie as influential cultural tattoo role models. The visibility of celebrity women with tattoos has therefore challenged gender demographics to influence positive change with regard to social and cultural perceptions of tattooing in relation to female bodies. Moreover, with the prominence of visibly tattooed celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Cara Delevingne, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Megan Massacre, Rita Ora, Selena Gomez, Arianna Grande, Ruby Rose and Halsey, the tattooed female body is culturally visible and a significant presence in popular culture.

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As discussed in Chapter 3 with regard to the K-Pop star Jay Park in South Korea, the tattoos worn by celebrities do not merely represent a component of the fashionable celebrity body, but can act to transform cultural norms and reactions to tattoos, and bodily placement. Hence, while Jay Park has faced criticism for his extensive tattoo collection (from family, and even some of his fan base, due to the Korean association of tattoos with gang and crime cultures), and been subject to censorship, his popularity as a prominent K-Pop star, and his media visibility, has contributed to changing attitudes towards tattooing in contemporary South Korea (Yeo, 2016, Be.com). Furthermore, the mutability of societal reactions to tattoos with regard to celebrity cultural representations is also evident in relation to bodily placements for designs long regarded as culturally taboo and sources of stigma. As Adams argues, even though tattooing towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century has manifestly experienced profound changes with regard to the social acceptability of the practice, tattoos on the face, neck, hands and fingers were still regarded as constituting ‘“extra-stigmatizing” areas’ that retained alignments with deviance, criminality and prison cultures (2009, p. 284). In criminological research, such as Friederike Funk and Alexander Todorov’s examination of criminal stereotypes in courtroom settings, attitudes towards such tattooing are indeed often negative, with reports that people ‘with a facial tattoo are perceived as deviant from the norm’ (2013, p. 475). Traditionally in the tattoo industry, tattoos in these placements were, as Steven Kurutz (2018) notes, called ‘Job stoppers’ because they would seriously limit employability options for the wearers of such tattoos. Yet, the view that facial tattoos have long been ‘seen as nonmainstream, nonnormative, deviant; as extreme forms of body modification’ (Ferreirra, 2016, p. 167) is nevertheless changing, with celebrity culture

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playing a role in this altering of social and cultural perceptions. In examining the ways in which facial tattoos appear to be becoming part of the mainstream with regard to tattooing, Kurutz states: For decades, tattoos in highly visible areas, especially the face, were considered the extreme in body art, at least in Western culture. It wasn’t only members of polite society who were put off. Even among tattoo aficionados, the face was sacrosanct, a canvas of last resort when the rest of the body was covered. (2018, NY Times.com) Anna Felicity Friedman, who runs the website Tattoo Historian, argues that the acceptance of such visible tattoos is a further beneficiary of increased media representations of tattoos, most notably from celebrities and sports stars, to tattoo magazines and tattoo-themed reality TV. Moreover, Freidman sees the motivation to wear facial tattoos as, at one level, a significant bodily style to gain notoriety on social media and also, significantly, as a fusion of rebellion and symbolic self-expression. Hence, in reference to musicians engaging in facial tattooing, Friedman posits the view that part of the motivation (echoing the subcultural aspects of tattooing) for such placements ‘is to give them a rebel/criminal allure. And some of it is a more artistic or free-spirit reference’ (in Kurutz, 2018: NY Times.com). While some celebrity facial tattoo designs are minimalist, such as Halsey’s Queen of Hearts motif by her left ear, Kehlani’s paper plane design on her cheek, and Justin Bieber bearing the word ‘Grace’ above his right eyebrow, there are other celebrity figures who sport much more extensive facial tattooing. These include Mike Tyson, Lil Pump, Lil Xan, Rick

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Ross, Kat Von D, Lil Wayne, Tekashi 6ix9ine, Ice Cold Gucci Mane (who did remove his famous ice cream cone tattoo, but still has a number of other facial tattoos), Amber Rose, Aaron Carter and the American singer, Post Malone. With an extensive range of tattoos across his body, hands and neck, Malone’s most famous tattoos are the various designs on his face, which include the prominently sized words ‘Stay Away’ and ‘Still Tired’ above and below his eyes. However, in addition to a barbed wire design across his hairline, he has a sword, a hammer, a medieval-style gauntlet and flail, a bloody buzzsaw, and a hammer on his cheeks and side of his face, to the point that much of his face is now tattooed. While such designs are clearly leading a change in perception to previously stigmatizing tattoo placements, the contemporary fashionable status of such tattoos, as promulgated by celebrities, including mainstream figures such as Halsey, Justin Bieber and most prominently, Post Malone, has resulted in a negative, or at least a cautious, response with regard to a new tattoo trend. For example, The British Tattoo Artist Federation (BTAF) stresses that face tattoos can still prevent young people from securing a job, but as Lee Clements of the BTAF reports, there has been a ‘huge increase’ in the trend of young people requesting facial tattoos in the wake of their popularity in celebrity culture. Consequently, with especial regard to neck, hand and facial tattooing, the BTAF is requesting that the legal age to get a tattoo be raised from the current 18 years-of-age to 21 to resist the fashion-based motivation for such designs, and mitigate against the later life effects that such visible tattoos can result in (Williams, 2019). While driving trends, extolling fashionable bodies, or changing gendered bodily norms, celebrity culture also illustrates the problematic nature of tattooing with regard to changing life experiences. Given that the key foundation of post1970s tattooing stresses the figurative nature of the practice,

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predicated upon memorialization, memories and symbolic communication and commemoration (Sanders & Vail, 2008), celebrity culture can also serve as a public forum highlighting the ill-considered nature of certain tattoo designs, and the causal attitude that tattoo decisions can be underpinned by. Rather, as Sweetman dubs them, tattoos act as anchors of self and identity, many celebrities have famously obtained tattoos as tributes to significant others, only to (in the full public gaze) engage in removal or cover-up procedures. Significant examples include Angelina Jolie removing ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton’s name, Khlo´e Kardashian taking off through laser treatment her ex-husband Lamar Odom’s initials from her hand, Nick Cannon covering up his large Mariah Carey portrait on his back with an alternative design and Johnny Depp altering the names of ex-wives Winona Ryder and Amber Heard. Perhaps highlighting the Millennial trend towards biographical tattooing, with regard to Arianna Grande and Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson, a key aspect of their relationship was their getting tattoo tributes to each other, only to then be covered-up at the end of their relatively shortlived romance. Hence, Grande’s ‘8418’ tattoo on her foot (signifying Davidson’s firefighter father, who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks) was changed to a homage to the dog she and rapper Mac Miller shared, Myron. Furthermore, Grande replaced the name ‘Pete’ on her ring finger with a black heart motif (Fasanella, 2018). However, Grande’s penchant for tattooing has also included her conceptual, and very public, design mistakes. Posting on Instagram Stories her tattoo on her palm spelling out the song title ‘7 Rings’ in Japanese, fans pointed out that in translation it actually referred to a Japanese style barbecue grill. Yet, even though the tattoo was subsequently redesigned, commentators still stated that it still did not unambiguously read as ‘7 Rings’, but could be read as ‘Ring seven finger’ or even ‘Seven finger ring’ (Moniuszko, 2019).

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FROM SUBCULTURE TO THE MAINSTREAM: CELEBRITY AND THE TATTOO The decades central to the mainstreaming of tattooing mirror the intensification of celebrity culture, and given the primacy of celebrities as key figures of social, cultural and fashion influence, it is no great surprise that celebrities represent a significant expression of tattooing in twenty-first century popular culture. In this sense, celebrities reflect the effects of the progressive waves of the Tattoo Renaissance and the mainstreaming of tattooing, but also play a role in driving and developing the normalization of tattooing. As such, tattooed celebrity bodies are significant factors in media discourses (to the extent that websites even, via Photoshop, ‘tattoo’ classic celebrity icons such as Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy Onassis). However, as Rojek states, celebrities can ‘change things and fill us with powerful inclinations and cravings’ (2001, p. 91). Nevertheless, as the British Tattoo Artist Federation’s concerns regarding celebrity-inspired facial tattoo trends indicates, this can be problematic for those who do not live in the celebrity world. Indeed, with regard to the photographer Mark Leaver’s project on profiling people with facial tattoos, it is only in 2016 that he stressed that ‘despite tattoos becoming more mainstream and socially acceptable, facial tattoos remain a niche subculture within the world of body art’ (Gordon, 2016: Daily Mail Online). To explain this apparent influence, celebrities are argued to exist within a world of ‘material and romantic achievement’ (Rojek,2001,p.149) andpossesslivesthathave‘beenglamorized and romanticized’ in media and cultural discourses (Stivers, 2001, p. 122). Consequently, the transgressive nature of visible tattoos fitstheworldoftheheavymetal,raporeven popmusician, but for those in the public domain, extensive hand, neck and face

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tattoos may well prove to be ‘job stoppers’ and have serious lifechance impediments. Furthermore, celebrities have access to cosmetics experts who can conceal their designs and enable them to work on a range of professional stages, and the financial costs of laser-removal technologies and techniques are arguably less onerous for celebrities. Indeed, given that a key aspect of Ruby Rose’s public persona is based upon her extensive tattoo collection, as she has found increasing success as an actor, she has undergone laser-removal procedures. For example, she has removednot onlyherknuckledesigns(whichread ‘JustLove’) but also two of her most famous tattoos, the Sia lyric on her neck and the tribute to Maybelline on her collarbone, both of which have been absent in red carpet photographs (Karasin, 2019). Therefore, while the world of music may be an accepting environment for extensive tattooing, including the long-held ‘taboo’ bodily regions of hands, face and neck, adopting such celebrity trends may prove to be a challenge for fans, or those who take fashion direction from the world of celebrity. This is because, as Kosut argues, tattoos are an ironic trend because they are permanently embodied, hence, as one of her tattooed interviewees noted, in the context of fashion, tattoos represent a ‘fad you can’t toss away’ (2006, p. 1040). Yet, Kosut also recognises the crucial role that celebrities have played in the 21st mainstreaming, and commodifying, of the practice because ‘actors and actresses seem to be just as enchanted with tattoo as the masses’ (2006, p. 1037). In this sense, Kosut likens the popularity of tattooing to the way in which the original 1970s Punk subculture was semiotically coopted by the culture and fashion industries, whereby tattooing has become ‘gentrified’ and communicated as being a ‘cool’ aspect of bodily adornment. Indeed, tattoos are not only communicated via media, but are also frequently marketed to consumers as part of advertising campaigns, a factor that further erodes their historic status as symbols of rebellion or

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cultural transgression. Given that Kosut observed this in the early 2000s, the commercial presence of tattooing has only accelerated as the 21st century progresses, as evidenced by the visible presence of images of Kat Von D, Ruby Rose, Angelina Jolie, Cara Delevingne or Halsey in fashion and cosmetics campaigns. Furthermore, Post Malone’s high-profile media campaign for Bud Light Seltzer, which debuted at the 2020 Super Bowl, foregrounds his tattoo collection, as the premise of the advertising feature depicts a number of people inside his body powering his various limbs and organs, and all sporting his exact same distinctive tattoos. So, there is no indication that the celebrity embrace of tattooing is abating, and that nor is any body part off limits. Accordingly, the bodily adornment that was once the predominant persevere of the subcultural underground is now at the forefront of celebrity, popular and tattoo culture.

CONCLUSION

In Bodies of Inscription, published at the very beginning of the twenty-first century, Margo DeMello poses the following speculative questions concerning the trajectory of tattooing and tattoo culture: What direction will tattooing take in the future? Will tattooing continue its inroads into the middle-class community? And will the youngest generations lead the way?…Another fear is that tattoos become mainstream? (2000, pp. 190 and 192) In the subsequent decades, the Tattoo Renaissance, initiated in the 1960s, continues to develop, and the Millennial and Generation Z generations are driving the progression and cultural proliferation of tattooing. Many researchers confirm that tattooing has become a part of mainstream culture and has moved away from earlier, more negative connotations. As such, the idea of tattoos as personalized symbols is a potent aspect of contemporary tattoo culture, in that for ‘many people tattoos are primarily permanent signifiers of specific life events or reminders of a specific period in life’ (Bengtsson, Ostberg, & Kjeldgaard, 2005, p. 264). However, the idea of some form of decisive break with the associations of tattooing with subcultural expressions is arguably overstated, as Sarah Frankel, Michelle Childs and Youn-Kyung Kim state, while ‘the tattooed

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subculture has become considerably less stigmatized, the lifestyle of tattooed individuals can be conceived as not in line with mainstream culture’ (Frankel, Childs, & Kim, 2019, p. 285). Nevertheless, the presence of tattooing in popular culture has served to present tattooing in a variety of ways, but all connected with the role of rendering tattoos, and tattooed social actors, more and more visible, and in some instances playing a decisive role in the normalisation of tattooing. It is important to take note that the relationship between tattoos and popular culture is not entirely a contemporary one. With regard to the hugely popular nineteenth century French novels of Eug`ene Sue, The Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew, both published in serialized form, tattoos are significant in the epic-length narratives. In The Mysteries of Paris, serialized between 1842 and 1843 (Sue, 1824–1843/ 2013), the tragic character Songbird is incarcerated in the SaintLazare prison, where she encounters the formidable She-Wolf, the toughest inmate. In addition to her agile, muscular physique, the most striking aspect of her body is the tattoo on her forearm of a blue dagger plunged halfway into a red heart, with the words ‘Death to cowards!’ written underneath the design. The effect of the tattoo on Songbird is emotive and intimidating, as she exclaims, ‘It’s sinister, and it frightens me’ (2015, p. 639). While in The Wandering Jew, published in 1844 (Sue, 1844/ 2016), the hero, Prince Djalma, is secretly tattooed with the symbol of the Strangler cult on the inside of his arm while he sleeps. The operation is a delicate one, and the symbol barely visible, but on recognition by authorities, the tattoo leads to his imprisonment as he is falsely accused of belonging to the murderous and clandestine order due to his wearing their mark. Hence, within the pages of Sue’s work, the tattoo is closely associated with the rebellious and the other. While there have been potent examples of cultural and media representations before the twenty-first century, from literature

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and films such as The Night of the Hunter, In Cold Blood, Papillon, or Tattoo, such representations have intensified markedly from the early 2000s. Consequently, tattoos, in their presence in advertising, fashion brand imagery and fashion shows, to film, television, social media platforms and celebrity culture, have a potent level of visibility in popular culture and differing media. Moreover, such representations display numerous elements of the development of tattooing. On the one hand, there are fictional narratives that still associate tattooing with otherness, rebellion and alternative subcultural lifestyles. On the other hand, factual media, such as reality TV shows, have offered unprecedented access to the world of tattooing, revealing the workings of tattoo studios and the professional (and personal) lives of artists. Moreover, reality TV shows the multidimensional motivations that people have to be tattooed, from the desire to use tattoos as a means by which to symbolically communicate a sense of ‘me-ness’ to themselves and/or wider society, to alternative representations in which tattoos do not need to have any semiotic value at all. Indeed, as TV shows like Tattoo Fixers and Just Tattoo of Us illustrate, many individuals get tattoos with little to no forethought of either the design or the consequences (especially if the tattoo is offensive). Yet, such tattoos form the basis of popular television shows that present bad tattoos as a source of entertainment and (often shocking) spectacle. Alternatively, social media sites dedicated to tattooing have digitally revitalized print media tattoo magazines and similarly re-energized the debate concerning the existence of a ‘tattoo community’. While the argument that tattooed individuals form a loosely related figuration (argued by Atkinson) is a potent one, the ways in which social media platforms serve as digital communal spaces is equally valid. This is because such sites connect artists with clients, irrespective of physical distance, but they are also spaces in which tattoo enthusiasts can ‘meet’, upload images of their tattoos, comment on professional work

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and debate tattooing trends. Moreover, image-dominated platforms like Instagram represent significant media in terms of rendering tattooing culturally visible. Furthermore, social media sites act as key platforms in which tattooed celebrity bodies are represented, amplifying the visibility of tattooed celebrities, which both influences the acceptance of tattooing and displays the wide spectrum of famous tattooed bodies, from heavy metal and hip hop stars to Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez. Yet, celebrity culture does also represent a potent expression of key social and gender boundaries that began to change in the early years of the Tattoo Renaissance, as exemplified by the mainstream media success and cultural visibility of performers such as Ruby Rose and Halsey. However, if twenty-first century versions of classic subcultures are not based on explicit alliances to fashion styles and musical genres, but are instead founded upon media fandoms, then popular culture itself serves as the inspiration for numerous tattoos in the Millennial and Generation Z demographics. Fandoms are the aspects of self that serve as biographical signs on the skin, in the form of music personalities, celebrities, or television and film characters drawn from the most popular media forms. In this fashion, the connection between popular culture and tattooing is a close one. Still, while tattoos have become more mainstreamed, they are still a distinctive bodily practice, and, as Buss and Hodges state, it is important to recognise that tattooing ‘continues to be associated with unconventionality and a youth culture interested in challenging existing standards of personal appearance’ (2017, p. 5). Perhaps this is clearest with regard to the increasing cultural visibility of facial tattoos, in which celebrity figures such as Post Malone are extending the limits of tattoos beyond what was previously considered to be socially taboo. This results in the transforming of tattoos into a component of celebrity image, and a highly visible component of popular media discourses, adding to the significant status tattooing has in popular culture.

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