I saw the movie Eastern Promises over the weekend, starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. Few mainstream movies pique my interest, but I happily shelled out $11 to see this one because the plot involves the Russian mafia and criminal tattoos.
My interest in criminal tattoos has been growing steadily, especially after reading “Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, Volume II” by Danzig Baldaev.
The author was a supervisor at St. Petersburg’s notorious Kresty Prison and over the course of 30 years, he recorded and decoded over 3,000 inmate tattoos. In the underground Russian criminal culture, tattoos are visible communication tools that tell the inmate’s story: their position in the mafia, crime history, even sexual preference. It’s a highly complex system of differentiation that outsiders rarely understand. Symbols not only have highly specific meanings, the meanings also change depending on the location on an inmate’s body.
Fascinating that the skin has been such a prominent medium of communication throughout the course of history (ie–Polynesian tribes used tattoos as a right of passage and as a way to display family lineage.) And then I find out about things like “handvertising,” where brands can market themselves on the backs of people’s hands. Granted, it’s just a customized ink stamp, but the evolution of ink-on-skin is nonetheless a very interesting one. I’m just waiting for brands to have people endorse their logos permanently with tattoos (if it’s not happening already). Talk about getting ‘branded” in the most literal sense!
Filed under: Shrinkwrapped | Tagged: advertising, communication, culture, social commentary, tattoos
ooh, interesting. It was non-fiction, not actually an encyclopedia, right? Handvertising- it’s like a huge leap from getting an ad stuck to the side of your car. My brother once shaved a nike swoop into the back of his head, but he wasnt paid for it.
[...] 5 but those weren’t of particular interest) that had the two volumes of the book I mentioned. Shrink The Media had an article about about tattoos that included the book Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia by [...]