Explained (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 13 - Tattoo - full transcript

[buzzing]

[man] There's something in our DNA,
and I can't explain it,

that drives us to mark our body

in a way that's different
from the people around us.

Every monkey wants to look different
than the one next to him.

[narrator] These days,
tattoos are everywhere.

Above my knee.

-Most of my arm.
-On my ankle.

[narrator] On athletes, movie stars,
and even elected officials.

In 2015, almost one in three Americans
had at least one tattoo.

Just three years earlier,
it was one in five.



There are now tattoo conventions
all over the world,

including in Brazil, India, and Egypt.

But go back just 50 years,
and tattoos were incredibly rare.

And in a lot of places in the world,
that's still true.

In China, tattoos are banned
from appearing on television.

In Japan, tattoos are often banned
from public pools and spas.

And in the United Arab Emirates,

you have to remove your tattoos
if you wanna join the army.

But humans have marked themselves
since the dawn of civilization.

I don't think
there was one origin event

or one place where tattoo was developed
and then it spread around the world.

I think it was more of an independent
invention in many different places.

We have this natural impulse
to mark significant life-changing events.

[narrator] Ancient human cultures
that would never have met each other



developed their own traditions
of tattooing.

There are 61 tattoos on Otzi the Iceman,

a 5,000-year-old frozen mummy
found in the Italian Alps.

So, if we've always done this, why are so
many people suddenly getting tattooed now?

It's the face I was born with
and there's nothing I can do about it.

Well, that isn't quite true.

[woman] Tattoos are not the forever scar
our parents warned us about. [reporter] Tattoos on Apo Ani's body
indicate that he had a high status.

It used to be convicts,
carnies, bikers, and sailors.

[man] Since the days of primitive man,
tattoos have remained a sign of toughness.

That's nice. That one's nice.
And I thought, "Oh, I want one."

They're part of me.
This is the inside of me, outside.

I have the portraits of my grandparents
on my forearm.

This is kind of like an iconic building
in South Minneapolis.

This bicycle here,
this is for my great grandfather.

[narrator] Most of the tattoos
you see today

come from a handful
of tattoo traditions.

I got it a few months
after my 24th birthday.

So we have spearheads over here,
and then some shark teeth.

And then over here,
we have a tortoise shell.

-Tortoise shells were used as shields.
-[record scratches]

[narrator] That is a warrior tattoo.

Centuries ago, indigenous Hawaiians
tattooed patterns like that

to mark achievements in battle.

Tattooing was widespread

in indigenous communities all around
the world for thousands of years.

Traditions were handed down
for generations

and marked coming-of-age, membership
to a group, and spiritual power.

The first tools used to do this
were pretty basic,

like thorns or pieces of bone.

So designs in the ancient world
were simple geometric patterns.

Symbols were usually inspired
by the environment.

Plants and animals,
waves and mountains, the sun and stars.

If you're from a certain island,
certain vegetations grow there.

That could be like a landmark base
of that kind of pattern.

It's basically an address.

So people could recognize that,
"Oh, yeah, that pattern is

from this side of the forest,
this side of the island," and everything. And they would know
how to approach that man or that woman

in a respectable way.

[Lars Krutak] These traditions were
handed down

by cultural heroes, ancestral heroes.

That's where they find their origins.

And every time that tattooing ritual
is reenacted,

you're calling on all of those entities
from the past.

So it's an extremely powerful moment
when the ink...

hits the skin.

There's this rhythm.
It's almost like a drum beat.

[rhythmic wooden tapping]

And it kind of wakes
the ancestors in some sense.

Another person joins you guys
to stretch the skin.

They made their own soot.
They made their own ink.

So the forest is basically
another ingredient in there.

[narrator] Tattooing was a painful ritual

that, once completed, marked your place
in your community.

This was especially true in
Pacific Island cultures like Samoa.

In Samoan tattooing,
simple designs representing animals,

like the gogo, or seagull and centipede,

which represented the unified strength
of the community,

were made into patterns and tattooed
across the lower back and legs.

Pacific Island tattoo traditions developed
uninterrupted for many generations

until European explorers arrived.

Tattooing hadn't been seen much
in Europe for over a thousand years.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam,

generally saw tattoo
as a desecration of the body.

So when British explorer
Captain James Cook

landed on the Pacific island
of Tahiti in 1769,

he and his men recorded
the indigenous tattoo practices.

As Cook wrote:

"Both sexes paint their bodies, Tattow,
as it is called in their language."

The Tahitian word "tatau" is now
the word used all around the world.

But almost as soon as Europeans
discovered Pacific tattooing,

they began erasing it.

Waves of colonizers and missionaries
who followed voyages like Cook's

took control of the islands
and banned traditional tattooing.

[Lars Krutak] Once you could remove
the tattooing from the people,

it made it much easier to subjugate them
to these Western ideals

and break these indigenous patterns
of local power and belief.

Colonialism and the Church,

like, erases their history,
their ancestors

for them to disappear
basically off the map

and for them to have an identity crisis,
and it's easier for them to assimilate.

[narrator] These tattoo traditions
were never fully eradicated,

and many of the original designs
were recorded by outsiders...

like anthropologists and travelers
to the islands.

And tattoo artists are now using
these century-old works

as references to design
the tribal tattoos you see today.

[Japanese shamisen music]

Well, my favorite one is this guy here.

Um, it's just a chair.

You know, when I first starting
getting tattoos,

it was about like being tough

and, you know, there was an image
of, "I'm tough, I can take this,"

and sort of overcoming something,
overcoming pain.

Now that's just kind of

-not as big of a deal.
-[record scratches]

[narrator] That chair is definitely
a contemporary take on tattooing,

but look at the other arm.

Those waves and gusts of wind,
for a long time,

that's something you'd usually only see
on Japanese criminals.

Tattoo was actually used
as a criminal punishment

in Japan for centuries,
usually on the arms or face.

But penal tattooing died out
by the end of the 17th century,

likely because of the rise
of decorative tattooing,

which criminals could use
to cover their marks.

But tattooing really took off
in Japan in 1827

when a woodblock printer,
Utagawa Kuniyoshi,

made a series of prints based
on the wildly popular book Suikoden,

which featured legendary outlaws,
some of them covered in tattoos.

His prints were a sensation.

Almost immediately,
people around Edo, modern-day Tokyo,

were getting tattoos of those same heroes.

[speaking in Japanese]
Tattoos are a symbol of power.

You carve a hero onto your back
to take on his characteristics.

[narrator] And the tattoos
Kuniyoshi inspired were enormous,

often covering the whole back
depicting a single unified image.

[Horiyoshi III in Japanese]
Before his work,

tattoos had been a patchwork.

He made the entire body a canvas,
using one motif.

[narrator] This style is now known
as Japanese traditional or Irezumi.

One Irezumi work can take years
to complete.

It's distinct for its bright colors
and large images of myths and monsters

drawn with exaggerated features

and surrounded by natural elements
like clouds and waves.

The Japanese government had outlawed
tattooing in the 19th century,

so Irezumi initially spread to people

who wanted to identify themselves
as dangerous. [in Japanese]
Power and fear are one and the same.

You do not fear the weak.

Weaklings aren't meant
to interact with legends and myths.

[narrator] Tattoo in Japan today is legal,
but still largely associated

with the criminality that evolved
alongside it for generations.

And the art form has become a visual
symbol of the Japanese mafia, Yakuza.

In the rest of the world,

Japanese traditional has grown to be
a hugely popular and influential style.

And it kind of works
with your contours and shapes,

and so it was always intriguing
and it was sort of exotic.

I think that's what people usually do,
especially with tattoos, right?

You sort of take
something foreign and exotic

and you make it a part of you.

[narrator] And that's why
we still see wind, waves, and koi fish

that started out on woodblock prints
over a century ago.

[blues guitar]

[man] We just got married recently.

Yeah, we got matching tattoos:
the classic, you know, hearts,

and mine says, "HER NAME"

-and hers says "HIS NAME".
-[record scratches]

[narrator] Hearts and banners
are classic American tattoos,

but originally the only people
who had them were sailors.

♪ Heaven help a sailor ♪

♪ Gee, it's great to be a sailor
On a night like this ♪

♪ I said a night like this ♪

Well, sailors have gotten tattooed
since they went to sea on ships,

which goes back many centuries.

[narrator] Sailor tattoo imagery
commonly included initials,

nautical themes, and patriotic symbols.

Design options were laid out in sheets,
called flash, and picked off the wall.

Like tribal tattoos, these marked
your identity as a seaman,

as well as your achievements at sea,
like the swallow.

Sailors earned a swallow
for every 5,000 nautical miles sailed,

which, back then,
was extremely difficult and dangerous.

So a sailor with one or two swallows
was impressive.

And you might have seen this one:
a tattoo of a rigged ship.

Originally they had to be earned

by rounding Cape Horn
off the southern coast of Chile.

Sailors also have a long tradition
of collecting travel marks

to show off the exotic places
they had visited.

This is Palestine.
I was in Palestine from '37 to '39.

And I went down some patrols down Egypt.
I got that one there too.

That's when I was in Ireland in '36,
that one there.

[narrator] This style of tattoo
spread beyond sailors

when machine tattooing
was introduced in 1891,

and you could get tattooed a lot faster.

That started a whole wave of innovation
in the tattooing industry,

especially people that were
getting bodysuits done,

that had ambitions of being
a tattoo attraction in the circuses.

[newsreel] A sample
of the marvelous freaks you'll see

for the price of a small thin dime!

[narrator] Electric tattoo artists
turned sailors

and circus performers into canvases,

covering their body with
intricate, wallpaper-like arrangements.

[C. W. Eldridge]
I think the circus had a tremendous impact

certainly on spreading the art of tattoo
throughout the countryside.

There are many old-school tattooers
that grew up in the early 1900s

that credit their interest in tattooing
was seeing someone in the sideshow.

It kind of brought up a whole different
world to these small Midwest towns.

[narrator] The style they spread
is now known as American traditional.

Icons with bold outlines,
bright blocks of color and black shading.

Symbols that sailors tattooed
going back centuries,

like hearts, swallows, and anchors,

are some
of the most popular tattoos today.

So, my parents don't know
about any of my tattoos.

The idea of having tattoos would,
like, absolutely just mortify them,

which is funny because I've always
been interested in tattoos and stuff.

But I guess they never acknowledged
that part of me,

so I don't want to rock their world
by letting them know.

[narrator] Like in Japan,
criminal groups around the world

have long embraced tattoo's bad reputation

as a way to mark themselves
as dangerous and apart from society.

Tattooing thrived in prisons,

where inmates pricked themselves
using makeshift materials,

like guitar strings and black soot.

[reporter]
This one was made out of a Walkman

and used by an inmate artist
to scratch out some jailhouse tattoos.

[narrator] So prison tattoos
usually had thin lines and no color,

which became a signature style.

Tattoos showed up as significant markers
in gang and biker culture,

criminal underworlds,

and for a long time,
that's where tattoo stayed.

[woman] I think it might appear like,
"Wow, there's this crazy boom

and there's
so many people getting tattooed,"

which is true,
most people getting tattooed ever.

But I think that's been, you know,
many factors laid on top of each other.

[narrator] In the 1970s,
tattoo's image began to shift.

Tattoos appeared in glossy photo spreads

in influential American magazines,
like Life,

which, in 1972,

declared that the ancient art of tattooing
had come back into fashion.

Tattoo shops expanded from sailor flash

and started offering custom work,
letting people invent their own tattoos.

Getting tattooed didn't mark you
as one kind of person anymore,

and that brought in new kinds of clients.

[Stephanie Tamez] A lot of women
are getting tattooed,

and that's, you know,
half the population on the planet.

So I think the advent of them sort of
wanting to empower their own bodies

and gravitating to the artwork as well,

just made that whole other group of people
getting tattoos.

It's been a building block, and certainly
one of the most profound things

that has launched it all
is by visually seeing it.

[narrator]
And tattoos' visibility exploded in 1981.

MTV came.

[TV announcer]
Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.

-[hard rock music]
-[C. W. Eldridge] That was amazing.

I mean, I can remember
when MTV came on the TV.

I was, like, blown away by this.

I mean, I would sit there
with a little notepad

and make a little check mark
on the notepad

every time there was
a tattooed person shown on MTV.

And, man, at the end of an hour,
there was 40, 50 marks on it.

That had an unbelievable impact,
I believe,

on the idea of who was tattooed.

["Welcome to the Jungle" playing]

[music continues on cellphone]

I remember this video very well.

♪ Welcome to the jungle... ♪

So what do I think of that?

Right there, that says-- That sums it up.

I mean, right?

Like, that was the epitome of cool
at that time.

And to see the tattoos and then
he's wearing a, like, tattoo shirt.

That's just fucking rad.
Like, how great is that?

That just pulls everything together.

[narrator] People started collecting
and mixing global tattoo traditions

in totally new and personal ways.

And they began incorporating

the fine-line black-and-grey style
that originated in prisons,

adding lettering and realism
to tattoo's vocabulary.

So, this is Adam Levine.
He gets tattooed by a friend of mine.

These are cherry blossoms and wind bars.

And then he's got a traditional
American tattoo with "Mom" in the middle.

Then he's got some lettering.

It's a fun combination of all
these aesthetics kind of coming together.

This is an example
of a lot of different styles.

There's some classic iconography in it.
It's very personal.

That's the difference, right? Between
the American and a lot of Japanese, right?

Japanese sort of take on
these one central themes

and then they build these universal,
like, elements as their background,

like basic wind, water, fire...

[in Japanese] American tattoos have
a strong memory-related element.

Vastly different from Japan,

who uses mythology to tell a story.

American traditional is
you kind of collect it all,

and this is just another version of that.

And the common denominator is
that they are all in black and grey.

[narrator] Every style of tattoo
in the world is now at our fingertips.

Since the introduction of Instagram,

the number of tattooed Americans
has nearly doubled,

and tattoo artists are innovating
and expanding what tattoo can be.

But as the number of people
getting tattoos has soared,

so has the number
of people regretting them.

Joe says he wants the tattoo parlor
to pay him 2,200 bucks.

That's how much he says it would cost to
have the word removed with laser surgery.

[narrator] Tattoo removal is now
a multi-billion-dollar global industry

and growing,

with India, Japan,
and the United States leading the pack.

I got the tattoo in prison because I felt
that I would be respected a lot more

or the opposite gang may see it
and, you know, fear it.

It was basically like
respect in a gang, you know, lifestyle.

I definitely want to remove it
rather than cover it up.

[narrator] But the majority of people
with tattoos don't want them removed.

And studies have shown that getting
a tattoo can boost self-image.

People have reported
a significant Improvement in self-esteem

and that their tattoos make them
feel better about their bodies,

describing it as an act of self-creation.

[C. W. Eldridge]
It is part of the initiation, if you will,

of getting a tattoo is...

being willing to face the pain.

There's a commitment that you make
to wear that image.

That's part
of what the magic of tattoo is.

It gives me agency over my body.
It allows me to own it.

It's just like carrying a few messages.

It's sharing
a bit of information about you

that you might not even say out loud.

Everybody wants to be the most
expressive person that they can be,

and tattoos are, like,
such a great marker of that.

I love tattoos.
I think that tattoos are super great