(05-12-2010 10:52 PM)binkie Wrote: It seems I have been promising / threatening to post in this thread for about 1,000 years. I’m ignoring season 9, obviously, except for an oblique reference at the end, because that is the only sensible course of action.
This is all the result of something Byatil wrote in the ‘What did you think of season 9?’ thread, which made me think about what the tattoos mean to Lucas in subjective and objective terms:
It is, it seems to me, tremendously important for narrative and character purposes that almost the first thing we learn from Lucas about the tattoos is the extent to which they have been forced: by circumstance, by requirement, by location, by cultural necessity and by the stubborn drive to survive. “You don’t do it, you don’t belong. You don’t belong, you’re dead.” This is an interesting introduction, in which Lucas identifies the presence of the tattoos as an expression of a strange sort of autonomy. He is telling Harry, as the tattoos told the prison population, that he made a choice to be part of the community in which he found himself. He could have chosen not to succumb to the tattooist’s needle, and this choice could be read as either defiance or defeat. He chose instead to survive, and the tattoos are a record both of survival and the price of survival.
The practice and record of forced tattooing or branding is, in archetypal terms, older than Cain. It has long been a near-universal expression of retributive morality, and a correlated manifestation of an unofficial codification of criminal resilience. Criminals have, throughout human history and across cultures, been marked for purposes of identification, control and humiliation. Equally, criminals have taken on the tokens of their punishment and subverted them to the point at which these tokens represent and convey insolence and rebellion. This has allowed for the emergence and refinement of a distinct visual and moral language of specificity and observance. Of course, all languages are factors of cultural and social control as much as they are expressions of social and cultural liberation. Lucas’ tattoos were not forced by the regulating authority, but by the regulated (criminal) body politic. The language of the tattoos - both in the physical manifestation and in the coding - is one negotiated, communicated, understood and controlled by the politics of a particular, paradoxical, requirement to conform to a language of non-conformity. The tattoos are a permanent record of obedience to an agenda of control and ownership – and a means of operation within, and in deference to, that agenda: they speak to a place in a system. Each tattoo is also a record of the time taken in its application, and of the time encoded in its image: eight cupolas; eight points on a star; the creation of time at the beginning of all things; the moral markers of existence (tiny pin pricks in the fabric of time) contained in mottos of belief and good behaviour; a shackle binding its bearer to a place, and a set of rules, in time; declarations of willingness, participation and belonging now and in the future; assurances of the permanence and longevity of memory.
Cake for anyone who's made it to the end!
Another fabulous analyse, Binkie!
You really grasp the smallest details we see (or don't see) and turn them into a superb clarification of the psyche of the characters!
I do have a question, however.
I know that sailors f.i. got tattood for reasons of recognition, if they would drown on sea and their bodies were found beyond recognition, one could tell who they were by looking at the tattoos they got. So they actually equalled who they were with their tattoos.
Could this be a reason prisoners got tattoos, too? You never know, I guess, what could happen to you and your body whilst in such a harsh environment.
As for the Ancient of Day's tattoo, I must admit that I'm not very familiar with the work of Blake, but from what I understand of it, it has to do with mythology, with Urizen as an embodiment of conventional reason and law, one who creates and constrains the universe. (Some see him as God.) but who oppresses Orc, who embodies revolutianary passion and creativity.
I wonder if this tattoo might have ment to Lucas the complete surrender to the place he was in and the pain he suffered; if he truely anticipated dying there and came to accept this possibility.
It seems to me this painting embodies the total believe of not being able to change ones faith, a total surrender to what the 'stars haved mapped out' for ones life. If this is the case, the utter feeling of defeat must have been tremendous.
Or maybe he got this tattoo as a constant reminder NOT to give in to this feeling of defeat and NOT to accept that one can't change ones path?
Can I have a piece of chocolate cake too now?
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