It is often mentioned that our culture is sick. The ubiquity of tattooed Americans is held as one piece of proof of that statement. If the culture is sick – as opposed to the individuals themselves – it’s as if the well from which we’re collectively drawing our water is tainted with arsenic. When we criticize tattooed individuals we aim to criticize the culture-wide change that has led to more people obtaining what we consider either vapid displays of narcissism or overt signals of counterculturalism.
But it’s worth taking a deeper look at what tattoos represent. It’s no surprise that tattoos are correlated with lower socioeconomic class or criminality. Social commentator Theodore Dalrymple wrote that tattoos are the greatest indicator of criminal behavioral tendencies other than cigarette smoking. But tattoos also signify other things such as membership to a group whether it be soldiers, sailors, or gangsters. Tattoos can also represent a token of accomplishment or a rite of passage.
The increased prevalence of tattoos is readily observable. While only 6% of people in the 1930s had a tattoo, in 2006, one in three people in the 18-29 demographic and one in four in the 18-59 demographic had one. It’s also safe to assume that today an even greater portion of the population have multiple tattoos or “sleeves”. Surely, the increase of the fad and access to tattoo parlors is part of the equation. But something about the inked images and their increased prevalence indicates a deeper meaning behind the trend – if that’s what it is.
In “Anchoring the (Postmodern) Self?” Paul Sweetman writes:
…corporeal artifacts [tattoos] are approached and experienced as distinct from other, more free-floating products in the `supermarket of style’. Whether or not their meaning is fixed in these terms, tattoos and piercings are employed by some as a form of anti-fashion and as a way of fixing or anchoring the reflexively constructed self.
Jill Fisher writes in her paper “Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture” that tattoos represent an individual reclaiming his or her body in the face of a desiccating capitalist system. Capitalism, Fisher writes, commodifies the body. The State, once external to the body and contra an internalized self, has moved into the body. The externalized self then marks the body with a tattoo to “tame the unruly body-state”.
These arguments make a strong case that modernity and post-industrialism have helped atomize society and the individual. The irony is that the very reason that people may have turned towards tattooing as an outlet may be the very same reason that tattooing became ubiquitous in the first place. The erosion of values and traditions snuffed out puritanical anti-tattoo sentiment, but a void remained in the collective unconscious which sought to anchor back in to the values that had eroded.
Most of the literature on the subject doesn’t pay much attention to the things that people are actually getting tattooed on their bodies, which seems like important information.
Dalrymple wrote in a 1995 essay which ended up in his collection Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass:
In the reception area are posters illustrating the patterns from which most of the clients choose, bespoke tattooing being considerably more expensive. The patterns seem inspired mainly by sub-Wagnerian Norse mythology, the female figures deriving in equal measure from Brunnhilde and Ursula Andress, the male from Siegfried and Arnold Schwarznegger. Snakes winding their way around skulls, saber-toothed tigers, and bulldogs bearing fangs are also popular.
Many tattoos are the result of a great welling up of romanticism in the collective unconscious. The images that many people get inked on their bodies are archetypal – representing ideals of nature, fraternity, fidelity, nationality, and family. Ironically, these are all institutions that are reportedly eroding which leads to the tacit approval of superficially engraved skin.
As Sweetman argued, tattoos can help anchor the self which is now, in this nihilistic world, devoid of any value-providing point of reference. Humanity floats in a buoy-less sea, but the archetypes of tradition and romantic idealism still exist somewhere within us.
So when that energy escapes – even under the most childish or vapid of circumstances – it will grab for some steadying agent. In a weird way, the move towards tattooing is an individualistic excursion towards a collective ideal. It seems like an expression of individualism, but it is actually a wandering toddler looking for its teddy bear.
There are elements of nature that the self romanticizes in the face of our modern rift with nature. The co-worker I wrote about yesterday wanted to get her torso treed. Trees represent the height of nature and spring forth with life. Birds are also popular archetypes – probably stemming from their history among British sailors who inked their bodies with sparrows which signified both freedom and hope.
Another co-worker has a Bengal tiger etched on his forearm. The tiger, I assume, is an archetype that represents masculine energy, virility, and ferocity. It is difficult to overtly embrace such qualities. National flags, family crests, the faces of children, the names of loved ones, the face of Jesus, prayer-clasped hands – these are outward representations of the values systems of the people who choose to get tattooed.
There is also the gaudiness of Nordic or other-worldly mythological creatures and beings which Dalrymple mentions. Interestingly, the archetypes run parallel to the ones we see in Death or Black metal which is an art form that has been characterized as being a helpless lashing out against decimating nihilism. That music genre – the most extreme and gaudy blowback from the decimated culture – seems outwardly nihilistic and value-drained, but it seems instead to be rooted in a desire to reclaim a life-giving pagan traditions.
All of this follows from the very simple observation made by Nietzsche – which is trite of me to recall here – that “God is dead.” There are no values – nothing for us to hang our collective hat on. As Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind:
Nobody really believes in anything anymore, and everyone spends his life in frenzied play so as not to face the fact, not to look into the abyss.
While, as Bloom argues, Nietzsche is solidly of the Right – against democracy and OK with inequality – he has been coopted by the Left’s egalitarians and democrats which merely compound the problem of the realization of nihilism. A Leftist embrace of Nietzsche takes his acceptance that objective values don’t exist and flips it on its head by encouraging people to make their own values. The young sea-steader – lost and out of sight of land – is then left with the idea that he can find value in something, and it seems that he currently thinks he can find it by taking it from within and putting it on his skin.
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Tattoos are not a response to nihilism, they are a product and symbol of nihilism. What better way to say that life has no meaning and one should live for today than to disfigure oneself grossly and permanently?
It’s just a shame the values of the tattooed class are always so banal. Tattoos never signify anything original or interesting. Like an acquaintance of Sofia’s I remember talking about getting “Let It Be” tattooed on her wrist.
I usually oppose talk of “our culture/civilization is declining” on mostly factual grounds, but this is something I might agree with. If you asked the average person today, “what do you believe in?” they’d have trouble comprehending the question, whereas if you asked someone a hundred years ago I imagine they’d give you an answer – a parochial religious one – but still something. Even 40 years ago, people believed in the future and space travel and shit. This is why Steve Jobs was so beloved and his death mourned like it was; he had a “vision” which included everyone and the future.
You’ve made a good argument for tattoos being a reaponse to nihilism, but I think that this applies more to older people who have tattoes or those who have them to commemorate obstacles overcome (death of a family member, military service, etc.). These younger generations are angry and lost, and many of them seem to rebel against traditional values that others lament in favor of more nihilistic lifestyles. Less religious adherence, fewer familial obligations, and the like, oblivious to the fact that their lack of concrete values is likely a major source of their unhappiness. They get tattoes because they are “cool” or “cute.” They may even get Chinese symbols transliterating into “hope” or “love” or tattoes with deep meaning without possessing (at least outwardly) nostalgia for any bygone values.
Older people who get tattoos are similar to those who ostensibly display huge religious symbols on themselves and their personal belongings. They want others to think that they are religious or have strong values, but it is very likely that the symbol/tattoo is actually a sign of guilt they feel for NOT having said beliefs.
The culture was already past its sell date in 1947/48:
Yockey writing in 1948:
Mainstream (Harvard) sociologist Carle Zimmerman had some strikingly similar observations in 1947:
http://bonald.wordpress.com/book-reviews-society/family-and-civilization/
I wonder, all these 18-29 year olds today, will they suffer embarrassment in their old age, or will so many of their then elderly peers be covered by shaggy, misshapen and wrinkled body art that it won’t be an issue?
Anon,
the wording may be getting in the way. tattoos are some sort of reaction to nihilism. we could say that it is a product of nihilism or that it is a response to nihilism. it depends on whether the people getting the tattoos are embracing nihilism or whether they are trying to overcome it.
the point i tried to make in the piece was that the symbols and images that people are getting tattooed on their bodies would support the argument that people are not embracing nihilism – they are fighting against nihilism’s death grip and trying to find value in something. this is so hard that, let me be honest, those with the poorest future-time orientation are likely to externalize those values and put visual representations of them on their skin.
I think the appeal of extreme political movements, including radical feminism, is the same.
You’re dealing with people with more or less empty souls, looking for a cause.
Gorby,
but what makes them empty souls and what makes us not so empty? or are we all equally empty just that some of us hold on to at least the notion of decency and shame that prevents us from taking nihilism to its logical end?
i’ve always liked the saying: “religion is good for keeping the masses in order”.
You guys need to get over yourself man has been decorating his body since the begining of time.
Aaron: “Tattoos never signify anything original or interesting.”
This may well be true but… so what? There’s 6 billion people on the planet which makes it pretty difficult to be somehow original or even interesting.
Good point, Arawn. If I were to get a tattoo, it would be a flower, because I’m a girl, and I like flowers.
Can’t be a sign of rebellion anymore since its become the norm vs. the exception.
Chinese words are the funniest tattoos why not get the whole fortune cookie…
Tattoos, in my opinion, are the colonization of achievements where there are none.
I don’t have any tattoos, but if I ever get one, it’s just gonna be an expired “sell by” date on my ass.
Truth in advertising, and all that.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX