He’s a freak. [laughs and crowd cheering with faint circus music] Is he not?
His original light skin is barely noticeable. All that remains is the mutilated surface, defaced with images of mythical creatures. His distinct teal and red 388 figure full body tattoo is an eyesore, making him stick out of a crowd like a sore thumb. The tiny, intricate accents flood the spaces wedged between these large tattoo figures – a trypophobe’s worst nightmare. [tapping, as if creating holes]
Each impression left by the needle viscerally impacts the viewer, who vicariously experiences the discomfort of the imprinting pattern of small holes and cringes at the mere thought. However, despite the grotesque embroidery of his skin, his appearance is designed for the stage. He’s a spectacle to be viewed precisely because of the spectacular nature of his body.
“Give a round of applause for the infamous Tattooed Man of Burma, the Greek Alexandrio hailing all the way from Albania, the prince himself, Captain Costentenus,” the ringmaster exclaims. [claps and cheers] “He survived kidnapping from the savage Chinese Tartary, endured three months of forced tattooing as torture, and ultimately escaped to safety to be here with us today.”
[cheers louden] The imperial audience cheered in anticipation of the adventurous spectacle, catering to American tastes for exotic and foreign entertainment. Historiography interprets these freak showcases as an “arena to assert [colonial] hegemony by creating the image of the [tattooed], exotic other” in opposition to the “normal” spectator. [1]
As a tool to perpetuate imperial tropes of exoticism, difference, and inferiority, the tattoo is weaponized [sword slicing] and manipulated to characterize the tattooed as “freakish” and as the “Exotic Other” that ought to be on display and observed for its peculiarity and difference from “the normal.”[1]
“Welcome to Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. Let the show begin.” [circus music intensifies and then fades out]
Tattoos mark difference. [electric tattoo needle buzzing, progressively getting louder] A deviation from the aesthetic norm. A physical, permanent imprint inscribed on the body. “The tattoo has always been a metaphor of difference.” [2]“The tattoo attracts” as crowds congest modern tattoo parlors and book tattoo artists months in advance and “repels” as the tattooed are ridiculed and ostracized as freakshows [buzzing needle stops] “precisely because it is different.” [2]
“This deviance imbues the tattoo with significant power” to categorize and serve as a maker of “the Other” in a form of exoticization and pathologization as well as a physical symbol of identity. [3]
This dichotomy of the tattoo materializes in the multi-colored print “A Tattooed Man,” depicting Costentenus as diseased,within the nineteenth-century medical atlas on skin diseases, Atlas der Hautkrankheiten. As demonstrated by “A Tattooed Man,” skin modification is misinterpreted as pathological within colonial encounters, which introduces an additional element of oppression into racial politics through this exoticization.
Medicine serves as an extension of colonialism to support the spectacle of the tattoo as a “mark of the primitive” and establish a power dynamic between the “normal,” non-tattooed and the pathological” tattooed. [4] So if the tattoo is re-read as the symbol of the “exotic Other” within imperial contexts, what role does body art play outside of the lens of colonialism?
As my eyes follow each line, each curve, each piercing of the skin with the needle, I reflect on the figures these connected strokes construct and their purpose. Why this design? What significance does the tattoo hold for Costentenus?
The boldness of the tattoo is an instant identifier – the sheer coverage, elaborate nature, bright pigmentation, and even the featured figures.
Tattoos are a commitment, and through the permanency of this body modification, the tattoo is incorporated into understandings of the subject’s body. Since self-identification is all internalized, altering one’s physical self has become the most direct way to convey one’s self-concept to others. The tattoo provides an immediate visual and acts as a “powerful symbol of affiliation and identify.” [5] The beauty outside reflects the beauty within.
As the tips of my fingers trace the contours of Costentenus’ body imagery, I envision the process of the tattooist. Despite colonial efforts to exoticize and pathologize Costentenus and his tattoos, the spectacularity of the embroidery of the design continuously draws in the viewer’s eye.
[sounds of sewing machine and thread in a needle penetrating fabric] Through this lens, the tattoo can be viewed as a marker of the spectacular, the aesthetics of the design and mastery required by the artist, rather than the spectacle of the “Exotic Other.”
Years of practice worn into his hands to sculpt the skin with such mastery and delicacy. Key mannerisms of the technology feat programmed into his fingers, reflecting his expertise. The automaticity of hammering [sounds of hammering a nail] pigment hammered into his own psyche.
As the tattoo practitioner stretches the skin to stabilize the medium and allow for penetration, the tiny hairs erect, anticipating the sharpness of the needle [sound of needle dropping] and the power behind the hammer. Applied muscular force pins down the skin to allow for friction against the drawing instrument and to prevent distortion. The tattoo artist’s steady hand tightly wields the hammer and manipulates the body as his canvas. One eye shut and the other refined to laser-focus on the needle as pigment slowly encompasses the remaining negative space as one tattoo flows into the next.
For at least 3 months, the tattooist sits, staring at his raw technology of the needle and hammer each day as he creates the spectacular, in anguish – the artistic price for future audiences’ relish.
REFERENCES:
- Enid Schildkrout, “Inscribing the Body,” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143947, 327.
- Margo DeMello and Gayle S. Rubin, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 13.
- Clinton R. Sanders and D. Angus Vail, Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008), 3.
- DeMello, Bodies of Inscription, 13.
- DeMello, Bodies of Inscription, 12.
- Michael Sappol, Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine (New York, NY: Blast Books, 2012).
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