Assignment 1-4-6: Written Analysis

Written Analysis: Assignment 1-4-6

Sambhav Khanal

HUMN240-E4WW (SU12)

Omar Alomari

21^st June, 2012

Now coming towards the end of the course, I somehow realized that it was a bit difficult to relate between different theories of popular culture with the topic that I have selected i.e. Tattoo and Piercing. In the duration of six weeks, some weeks were pretty easy to relate the topic of tattoo with the theories such as myths, stereotype and rituals while others theories of heroes and cult of celebrity, formula were a bit tough to make a relation. Among the theories that I personally felt a bit easier to relate, the best that fits in my topic was the theory of myths and stereotypes.

Talking about myths, myths about tattoos are those things which we hear about them but the real fact about such myths is that what we have heard may not be true every time.  There are lots of myths about tattoos. We hear so many things about tattoos which makes no sense at all. For instance, there is one common myth about tattoo that if you have your girlfriend/boyfriend’s name as a tattoo then it makes your relationship ruined. It is not true at all. The reality about that fact is that once you have the name of your loved ones as a tattoo then it will be forever and in case your relationship breaks out then it keeps you striking always in somewhat frustrating way. Besides, there is another myth about tattoo that while tattooing, light colored tattoo hurts more in comparison to the darker ones. The real fact behind this myth is that during tattooing, once the work of dark color is finished then only the light colors are used and it is obvious that once your skin is pierced by the needle for the process, it gets penetrated and raw before applying the lighter color and it hurts for sure. Thus, theory of myths seems like applying here.

Theory of stereotype also seems to apply to the topic of tattoo. There is one common stereotype thinking about tattoo that those people who have tattoo on their body are not well cultured or are basically punk type or ill-mannered. I strongly disagree to this point. Here, I am able to cite an example of my own brother. My elder brother has a dragon tattoo on his right shoulder and a mermaid on his back. The tattoo of mermaid is hardly exposed but his dragon tattoo gets exposed almost every time. Many people know that he has tattoo on his body but nobody thinks that he is a bad boy or ill-mannered because he is really a nice guy. He is sober, gentle and well behaved and talks to everyone nicely and is helpful at the same time.

As far as I am concerned, what I found out as an interesting finding from my analysis was thinking about how tattoos played into the theory of rituals. I really had to put a huge amount of concentration and hard work in order to make these two topics organized. Once I was able to figure it out, then only I understood how much tattoo has to do with rituals. Each and every tasks we do, be it our daily home routine or our professional life, it could be related to a form of ritual.   

Why I chose tattoo as my topic is because I really found out this topic quite interesting. Now that I have applied it to different theories that we read in class, I have a further detailed view on tattooing. I really like to deliberate about it from diverse aspects, the client, the artist, and the outside world’s sight. It is a comprehensive way of thinking rather than just, oh!  It’s pretty; I would like to have one!