As a fan of
Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History (Princeton Uni Press, 2000) edited by Jane Caplan and
Bad Boys & Tough Tattoos: a social history of the tattoo with gangs, sailors, and street-corner punks, 1950-1965 (Haworth, 1990) by Samuel Steward I was interested to see the Nicholas Weston Trade Mark Blog's
report on that firm's annual survey of bad ink, ie people decorating their bodies with
trade marks rather than the usual hearts, anchors, names of one-time partners or signifiers that they are members of the Crips, Yakuza, Mongrel Mob or other nasties.
Of those receiving a tattoo, only around 2–5% receive a brand tattoo, and predominantly in the 18 – 25 age group. ... Tattooists [reported] that brand tattoos were obtained on impulse in some cases and as a carefully considered choice in others.
The Blog drily notes that
Opinion among tattooists was divided on whether the choice of brand-tattoo reflected its culturally iconic status or the recipient's faith in the brand. One tattooist opined that "it is a humour thing." One tattooee received payment to have toilet rolls of a certain brand inked onto his backside but otherwise the overwhelming majority were not paid to become human billboards. All of those surveyed denied that any recipients of a brand tattoo were visibly drunk or affected by drugs at the time.
In responding to the question "So What" Weston indicates that
Most well known brands and logos are registered trade marks. Use of a registered trade mark as a tattoo is generally not "use as a trade mark” by using the sign in the course of trade for the purposes of s 120 of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth).
'Ads by Google' (ah, the joys, the joys of predictive marketing) has helpfully displayed an ad for an online ink service "7000 free tattoos for every body ... design your dream tattoo online" - presumably useful for clip art kids of various ages or those whose affiliations are a bit outside having a brand of toilet paper inked on their btm or bit of colour on the
membrum virile. (I'm not going to take up one site's offer of "Genital Tribal Tattoos With Mermaids" ... and not just because the mermaids are so not me or because I'm persuaded by Christian Klesse's critique 'Modern Primitivism': Non-Mainstream Body Modification and Racialized Representation' in 5(2)
Body & Society (1999) 15-38.
Klesse argues that the philosophy underpinning the non-mainstream body modification practices of 'Modern Primitives'
seeks inspiration in the body modification techniques and bodily rituals of so-called 'primitive societies'. Establishing their prioritization of body, sexuality, community and spirituality as analytical links, the author shows that these self-perceived radical opponents of Western modernity nonetheless remain captured in its foundational discursive assumptions. The author argues that the movement's enthusiastic turn towards 'primitivism' represents a particular identity strategy within the late modern condition. Drawing on colonial discourse analysis, the author argues that the primitivist discourse originated as an ideology within colonialism and has informed the construction of the Western self-image. Modern Primitives' notion of 'primitivism' is seen as a postcolonial legacy of this tradition of 'othering', which inevitably reproduces stereotypes of racialized people.
Another perspective is offered by Christine Braunberger's
article 'Sutures of Ink: National (Dis)Identification and the Seaman's Tattoo' in 31
Genders (2000)
Seamen (merchant and military) acted as the primary hosts for the tattoo's immigration from East to West. Concurrently, they altered the symbolic valence of tattoos in America from carnival freak show exoticism to an ambivalent marginal signifier of militarism and national fantasy. In tracing these shifts, I will argue that the tattoo's meaning was fluid across and within the various groups who utilized the form and thus erased stable readings while marking unstable possibilities. I will therefore contend that for the military itself, the tattoo functioned to simultaneously transgress and maintain militaristic interpellation. For the seamen, the tattoo fetishistically marked a desire to perform a phallic masculinity and the anxiety of what such a performance might mean. As an object which is not an object and hence always and never really "there," the tattoo destabilized the military's heterosexuality, functioning to both access an experiential homosexual eroticism and refuse acknowledgment of that access by symbolically representing a stable heterosexual "manhood." For the American public, the tattoo spoke of exoticism and eroticism that was "troubling," but could be subsumed under the banner of a positive national symbolic. The tattoo functioned as a fetish object for national anxiety which affects, and is affected by, the individual military body's various relational positions, but especially by those Others outside the borders.
