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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:27 am Post subject: Tattoos as harbingers of social dysfunction? |
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Click on the link to see the picture..
http://www.kunstler.com/eyesore_200808.html
From Kunstler's eyesore of the month:
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My fellow townspeople often confuse the architecture and urban design with the activity taking place in it. It's an important distinction. The building itself, shown here, is a sturdy but unspectacular business building on the main street (Broadway) of Saratoga Springs, NY. Think of it as a "background building." It's not trying to be special or monumental, but it does what we want it to do: it makes provision for retail near the street and it allows other activities upstairs (offices, apartments). It accomplishes all this complexity gracefully.
The activity taking place here, however, is a symptom of the growing barbarism in American life. Tattooing has traditionally been a marginal activity among civilized people, the calling card of cannibals, sailors, and whores. The appropriate place for it is on the margins, in the back alleys, the skid rows. The mainstreaming of tattoos (on main street) is a harbinger of social dysfunction. |
Agree? |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:43 am Post subject: |
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Umm, no. The guy is severely overestimating the social significance of superficial activites. Yes, tatoos at one time might have symbolized cannibals, sailors and whores. But if they become the preferred decoration of grad students, magazine editors, and exurban web designers, than they will just as readily serve as the social marking of those latter groups. Which won't mean that grad students etc have become significantly more similar to cannibals, etc. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: |
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After being in Asia for around 4 years, one of the biggest changes I noticed in Canada and the United States was that every young woman has gotten a tattoo just above her ass crack, which is being showed off -muffin top and all- to the world. This closely mirrors the rise of the Ed Hardy douchebag, bottle service and the general loosening of 20-30 somethings from economic, political and social reality.
I believe that the increased spread of tattooing in a symptom of a wider culture that has become drunk on credit/debt, consumption, contrived identities, and "the life" and is more separated from reality than I remember. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:51 am Post subject: |
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Typical artistic deviant style, 1950s...
http://tinyurl.com/3ukg3h
Typical artistic deviant style, 2000s...
http://tinyurl.com/3wqw8k
These guys were both out to epater le bourgeois, or however the saying goes, but you'd never know it from their sartorial and grooming styles, which are polar opposites. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:53 am Post subject: |
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Well, then the univeristy graduating classes of 1991-94 are full of social misfits because tattoos were all the rage then. 
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| Tattooing has traditionally been a marginal activity among civilized people, the calling card of cannibals, sailors, and whores. |
In prudish Judeo-Christian cultures yeah. The bible counsels against tattooing exactly because it was a cultural trait of other peoples of the middle East and Africa. And entire tribes in southeast Asia, notably in Indonesia, have tattooing as an initiation ritual.
The German American author, Kunstler, is just doing his mom proud by being a good Protestant. Nothing more. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:58 am Post subject: |
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| I believe that the increased spread of tattooing in a symptom of a wider culture that has become drunk on credit/debt, consumption, contrived identities, and "the life" and is more separated from reality than I remember. |
Well, I can maybe agree on the contrived identities part, but even then, I'm probably more inclined to just regard it as a stylistic change, not neccessarily rooted in anything all that important.
I don't know. Pink shirts for men were big about twenty years ago, then in the early 90s there was this vogue(even among upwardly mobile businessmen) for Bugs Bunny ties. I don't know if I'd really read too much into any of that. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:01 am Post subject: |
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In prudish Judeo-Christian cultures yeah. The bible counsels against tattooing exactly because it was a cultural trait of other peoples of the middle East and Africa. And entire tribes in southeast Asia, notably in Indonesia, have tattooing as an initiation ritual.
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What I don't get is that he seems to posit some sort of society where the dominant conservative group would have felt the need to stigmatize both sailors and cannibals. But how many cannibals ever made it over to the Christian-majority seafaring countries for any significant length of time? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:02 am Post subject: |
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OTOH, what you're missing is that the tattoo is not an act of deviance now but of conformity. Like the housing porn, I see it as a sign of a culture that has lost hold of an ability to look long-term, to make mature decisions with money, their bodies and the rest. Tattoos are permanent, and also very, very trendy. When so many millions of people are making permanent alterations to their body in an attempt to fit in to very temporary trends and values I believe the rapidly accelerating cycle of consumption/disposal and contrived consumer identities has seeped far too far into our culture. We value the now and not the later. We do this with credit cards, with home "investments", with career choices, with relationships and much else. Obesity is the result of eating anything now with total disregard for later. We do this at the expense of our future. No, I am not saying tattoos in and of themselves will cost us our future but that they represent a wider cultural phenomon that is near-sighted and very dangerous.
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Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, I get what you mean. It's like a bunch of long-haired rockers saying , 'Up with conformity,' yet they themselves look all alike to each other, and to us looking at them they certainly have conformed. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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| I see it as a sign of a culture that has lost hold of an ability to look long-term, to make mature decisions with money, their bodies and the rest. |
I agree with the part about us having become a culture of instant gratification and a seeming inability to think in the long term. It would be pretty naive to deny that.
I just don't see tattoos fitting into that. Tattoos are like powdered wigs and facial hair. Just a passing cultural artefact that doesn't have much meaning. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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| I just don't see tattoos fitting into that. Tattoos are like powdered wigs and facial hair. Just a passing cultural artifact that doesn't have much meaning. |
Yes, tattooing is a cultural artifact, like totem poles or art. It is the product of the wider culture, which is properly defined as a shared perspective. Cultural artifacts are a product of our shared perspective.
I firmly believe that much of our culture (shared perspective) is near-sighted, indulgent and overly influenced by contrived consumer identities that we've absorbed through mass media. And that this culture has given rise to obesity, massive consumer debt, disposable relationships and, less importantly, tattooing. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| .... I see it as a sign of a culture that has lost hold of an ability to look long-term, to make mature decisions with money, their bodies and the rest. Tattoos are permanent, and also very, very trendy. When so many millions of people are making permanent alterations to their body in an attempt to fit in to very temporary trends and values I believe the rapidly accelerating cycle of consumption/disposal and contrived consumer identities has seeped far too far into our culture. We value the now and not the later. |
You don't understand people who get tattoos at all do you? The long term PERMANENT aspect of it is what attracts a lot of people to it. It will be there until the day you die. That is a well known and respected aspect of it. I got a couple of tattoos in university and have had conversations with plenty of others who have gotten tattoos and the permanence of it in our fleeting world of consumption is what's great about it, mark that, a lot of Westerners who get tattoos are already critical of the consumerist culture, are thinking outside of the "now". Sure there are a few exceptions but not a lot. I know of only two people who got tattoos as impulsive purchases of symbols they regret.
If you think people who got their tattoos in their twenties are regretting it in their thirties, forties or old age, then you better talk to people who've gotten them years ago. There's a story and a bunch of memories behind a tattoo and more often than not a lasting meaning. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:54 pm Post subject: ... |
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No, no, no. It's not tattoos. It's rock and roll that will bring forth the apocalypse.
Where's Mr. Eagles? I'm sure he has an interpretation of this. |
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Cornfed
Joined: 14 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| I'd certainly see the increasing prevalence of tattoos among Western women along with other forms of self-mutilation (piercings, boob jobs etc.) as being an indicator of their increasing tastelessness, crassness and generally sleezebagishness. |
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patongpanda
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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whycome you don�t got no tattoo?  |
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