Assignment 1-4-3, Popular Culture- Tattoo and Piercing

Piercing and Tattooing- Rituals and Stereotypes

Sambhav Khanal

HUMN240-E4WW (SU12)

Oman Alomari

2nd June 2012

Piercing and Tattoo- as a form of ritual

Tattooing, a form of body art can be commonly seen in many of the traditional tribes in the countries like Australia, Africa, and New Zealand. Piercing tattoo in different body parts with the help of many objects has been prevalent as an important culture or ritual Tattooing in body parts through various traditional objects has remained an important cultural or ritual in many groups from a long period of time and it is quite clear that piercing tattoo has obviously some belief along with it.

To cite an example of piercing and tattooing as a ritual, in some of the African tribe, they have the ritual of making tattoo of crocodile skin on their back and on their arms when they cross the age of 18 where they become man from child according to their culture. This ritual is called as Scarification. According to Aswetravel (August 15, 2010), Scarification is prevalent in different cultures mainly in Africa and in Papua New Guinea. In the Sepik tribe in New Guinea, scarification is like an initiation rite for the young men. They slice the men’s’ chest, back, and buttocks with a bamboo edge making like a crocodile skin which would test their strength and self-discipline. This tribe believes that crocodiles created the humans, and the scars in their scarification represent teeth marks of the crocodile that “swallowed” the young man during the ceremony.

Also, in some of the Newari culture here in Nepal, there is the ritual of piercing the body parts like tongue and ears when certain events or festivals come. These festivals actually comes once in 12 years and during this ritual, one member from the community must do piercing as per their religion otherwise something bad will happen to the whole community.

Piercing and Tattoo- Stereotype

From the perspective of stereotyping, in some culture it is positively perceived whereas in some society and culture it is perceived in negative way. For instance, in some tribe, tattoo is taken as symbol of manhood where as in today’s society man with tattoo is taken as punks and hooligans. Nevertheless, it does affect the perspective structure of our environment and society. So, we should always keep our mind broaden rather than a narrow perspective mind because the stereotyping directly or indirectly lead to misleading of perception.

References

Aswetravel. (August 15, 2010). Weird And Interesting Body Art From Around The World. Retrieved June 3, 2012 from http://www.aswetravel.com/weird-interesting-body-art-from-around-the-world/