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[buzzing]
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[man] There's something in our DNA,
and I can't explain it,
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that drives us to mark our body
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in a way that's different
from the people around us.
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Every monkey wants to look different
than the one next to him.
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[narrator] These days,
tattoos are everywhere.
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Above my knee.
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-Most of my arm.
-On my ankle.
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[narrator] On athletes, movie stars,
and even elected officials.
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In 2015, almost one in three Americans
had at least one tattoo.
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Just three years earlier,
it was one in five.
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There are now tattoo conventions
all over the world,
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including in Brazil, India, and Egypt.
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But go back just 50 years,
and tattoos were incredibly rare.
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And in a lot of places in the world,
that's still true.
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In China, tattoos are banned
from appearing on television.
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In Japan, tattoos are often banned
from public pools and spas.
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And in the United Arab Emirates,
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you have to remove your tattoos
if you wanna join the army.
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But humans have marked themselves
since the dawn of civilization.
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I don't think
there was one origin event
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or one place where tattoo was developed
and then it spread around the world.
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I think it was more of an independent
invention in many different places.
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We have this natural impulse
to mark significant life-changing events.
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[narrator] Ancient human cultures
that would never have met each other
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developed their own traditions
of tattooing.
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There are 61 tattoos on Otzi the Iceman,
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a 5,000-year-old frozen mummy
found in the Italian Alps.
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So, if we've always done this, why are so
many people suddenly getting tattooed now?
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It's the face I was born with
and there's nothing I can do about it.
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Well, that isn't quite true.
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[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.
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It used to be convicts,
carnies, bikers, and sailors.
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[man] Since the days of primitive man,
tattoos have remained a sign of toughness.
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That's nice. That one's nice.
And I thought, "Oh, I want one."
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They're part of me.
This is the inside of me, outside.
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I have the portraits of my grandparents
on my forearm.
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This is kind of like an iconic building
in South Minneapolis.
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This bicycle here,
this is for my great grandfather.
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[narrator] Most of the tattoos
you see today
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come from a handful
of tattoo traditions.
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I got it a few months
after my 24th birthday.
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So we have spearheads over here,
and then some shark teeth.
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And then over here,
we have a tortoise shell.
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-Tortoise shells were used as shields.
-[record scratches]
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[narrator] That is a warrior tattoo.
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Centuries ago, indigenous Hawaiians
tattooed patterns like that
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to mark achievements in battle.
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Tattooing was widespread
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in indigenous communities all around
the world for thousands of years.
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Traditions were handed down
for generations
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and marked coming-of-age, membership
to a group, and spiritual power.
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The first tools used to do this
were pretty basic,
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like thorns or pieces of bone.
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So designs in the ancient world
were simple geometric patterns.
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Symbols were usually inspired
by the environment.
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Plants and animals,
waves and mountains, the sun and stars.
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If you're from a certain island,
certain vegetations grow there.
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That could be like a landmark base
of that kind of pattern.
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It's basically an address.
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So people could recognize that,
"Oh, yeah, that pattern is
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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
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in a respectable way.
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[Lars Krutak] These traditions were
handed down
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by cultural heroes, ancestral heroes.
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That's where they find their origins.
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And every time that tattooing ritual
is reenacted,
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you're calling on all of those entities
from the past.
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So it's an extremely powerful moment
when the ink...
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hits the skin.
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There's this rhythm.
It's almost like a drum beat.
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[rhythmic wooden tapping]
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And it kind of wakes
the ancestors in some sense.
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Another person joins you guys
to stretch the skin.
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They made their own soot.
They made their own ink.
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So the forest is basically
another ingredient in there.
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[narrator] Tattooing was a painful ritual
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that, once completed, marked your place
in your community.
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This was especially true in
Pacific Island cultures like Samoa.
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In Samoan tattooing,
simple designs representing animals,
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like the gogo, or seagull and centipede,
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which represented the unified strength
of the community,
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were made into patterns and tattooed
across the lower back and legs.
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Pacific Island tattoo traditions developed
uninterrupted for many generations
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until European explorers arrived.
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Tattooing hadn't been seen much
in Europe for over a thousand years.
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Christianity, like Judaism and Islam,
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generally saw tattoo
as a desecration of the body.
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So when British explorer
Captain James Cook
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landed on the Pacific island
of Tahiti in 1769,
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he and his men recorded
the indigenous tattoo practices.
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As Cook wrote:
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"Both sexes paint their bodies, Tattow,
as it is called in their language."
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The Tahitian word "tatau" is now
the word used all around the world.
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But almost as soon as Europeans
discovered Pacific tattooing,
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they began erasing it.
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Waves of colonizers and missionaries
who followed voyages like Cook's
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took control of the islands
and banned traditional tattooing.
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[Lars Krutak] Once you could remove
the tattooing from the people,
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it made it much easier to subjugate them
to these Western ideals
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and break these indigenous patterns
of local power and belief.
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Colonialism and the Church,
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like, erases their history,
their ancestors
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for them to disappear
basically off the map
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and for them to have an identity crisis,
and it's easier for them to assimilate.
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[narrator] These tattoo traditions
were never fully eradicated,
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and many of the original designs
were recorded by outsiders...
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like anthropologists and travelers
to the islands.
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And tattoo artists are now using
these century-old works
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as references to design
the tribal tattoos you see today.
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[Japanese shamisen music]
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Well, my favorite one is this guy here.
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Um, it's just a chair.
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You know, when I first starting
getting tattoos,
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it was about like being tough
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and, you know, there was an image
of, "I'm tough, I can take this,"
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and sort of overcoming something,
overcoming pain.
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Now that's just kind of
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-not as big of a deal.
-[record scratches]
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[narrator] That chair is definitely
a contemporary take on tattooing,
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but look at the other arm.
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Those waves and gusts of wind,
for a long time,
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that's something you'd usually only see
on Japanese criminals.
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Tattoo was actually used
as a criminal punishment
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in Japan for centuries,
usually on the arms or face.
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But penal tattooing died out
by the end of the 17th century,
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likely because of the rise
of decorative tattooing,
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which criminals could use
to cover their marks.
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But tattooing really took off
in Japan in 1827
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when a woodblock printer,
Utagawa Kuniyoshi,
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made a series of prints based
on the wildly popular book Suikoden,
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which featured legendary outlaws,
some of them covered in tattoos.
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His prints were a sensation.
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Almost immediately,
people around Edo, modern-day Tokyo,
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were getting tattoos of those same heroes.
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[speaking in Japanese]
Tattoos are a symbol of power.
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You carve a hero onto your back
to take on his characteristics.
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[narrator] And the tattoos
Kuniyoshi inspired were enormous,
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often covering the whole back
depicting a single unified image.
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[Horiyoshi III in Japanese]
Before his work,
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tattoos had been a patchwork.
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He made the entire body a canvas,
using one motif.
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[narrator] This style is now known
as Japanese traditional or Irezumi.
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One Irezumi work can take years
to complete.
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It's distinct for its bright colors
and large images of myths and monsters
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drawn with exaggerated features
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and surrounded by natural elements
like clouds and waves.
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The Japanese government had outlawed
tattooing in the 19th century,
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so Irezumi initially spread to people
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who wanted to identify themselves
as dangerous. [in Japanese]
Power and fear are one and the same.
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You do not fear the weak.
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Weaklings aren't meant
to interact with legends and myths.
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[narrator] Tattoo in Japan today is legal,
but still largely associated
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with the criminality that evolved
alongside it for generations.
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And the art form has become a visual
symbol of the Japanese mafia, Yakuza.
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In the rest of the world,
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Japanese traditional has grown to be
a hugely popular and influential style.
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And it kind of works
with your contours and shapes,
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and so it was always intriguing
and it was sort of exotic.
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I think that's what people usually do,
especially with tattoos, right?
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You sort of take
something foreign and exotic
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and you make it a part of you.
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[narrator] And that's why
we still see wind, waves, and koi fish
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that started out on woodblock prints
over a century ago.
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[blues guitar]
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[man] We just got married recently.
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Yeah, we got matching tattoos:
the classic, you know, hearts,
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and mine says, "HER NAME"
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-and hers says "HIS NAME".
-[record scratches]
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[narrator] Hearts and banners
are classic American tattoos,
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but originally the only people
who had them were sailors.
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♪ Heaven help a sailor ♪
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♪ Gee, it's great to be a sailor
On a night like this ♪
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♪ I said a night like this ♪
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Well, sailors have gotten tattooed
since they went to sea on ships,
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which goes back many centuries.
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[narrator] Sailor tattoo imagery
commonly included initials,
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nautical themes, and patriotic symbols.
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Design options were laid out in sheets,
called flash, and picked off the wall.
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Like tribal tattoos, these marked
your identity as a seaman,
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as well as your achievements at sea,
like the swallow.
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Sailors earned a swallow
for every 5,000 nautical miles sailed,
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which, back then,
was extremely difficult and dangerous.
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So a sailor with one or two swallows
was impressive.
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And you might have seen this one:
a tattoo of a rigged ship.
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Originally they had to be earned
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by rounding Cape Horn
off the southern coast of Chile.
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Sailors also have a long tradition
of collecting travel marks
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to show off the exotic places
they had visited.
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This is Palestine.
I was in Palestine from '37 to '39.
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And I went down some patrols down Egypt.
I got that one there too.
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That's when I was in Ireland in '36,
that one there.
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[narrator] This style of tattoo
spread beyond sailors
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when machine tattooing
was introduced in 1891,
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and you could get tattooed a lot faster.
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That started a whole wave of innovation
in the tattooing industry,
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especially people that were
getting bodysuits done,
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that had ambitions of being
a tattoo attraction in the circuses.
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[newsreel] A sample
of the marvelous freaks you'll see
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for the price of a small thin dime!
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[narrator] Electric tattoo artists
turned sailors
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and circus performers into canvases,
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covering their body with
intricate, wallpaper-like arrangements.
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[C. W. Eldridge]
I think the circus had a tremendous impact
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certainly on spreading the art of tattoo
throughout the countryside.
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There are many old-school tattooers
that grew up in the early 1900s
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that credit their interest in tattooing
was seeing someone in the sideshow.
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It kind of brought up a whole different
world to these small Midwest towns.
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[narrator] The style they spread
is now known as American traditional.
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Icons with bold outlines,
bright blocks of color and black shading.
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Symbols that sailors tattooed
going back centuries,
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like hearts, swallows, and anchors,
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are some
of the most popular tattoos today.
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So, my parents don't know
about any of my tattoos.
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The idea of having tattoos would,
like, absolutely just mortify them,
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00:12:02,848 --> 00:12:06,769
which is funny because I've always
been interested in tattoos and stuff.
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But I guess they never acknowledged
that part of me,
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so I don't want to rock their world
by letting them know.
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[narrator] Like in Japan,
criminal groups around the world
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have long embraced tattoo's bad reputation
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as a way to mark themselves
as dangerous and apart from society.
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Tattooing thrived in prisons,
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00:12:24,870 --> 00:12:27,748
where inmates pricked themselves
using makeshift materials,
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00:12:27,831 --> 00:12:29,833
like guitar strings and black soot.
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[reporter]
This one was made out of a Walkman
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and used by an inmate artist
to scratch out some jailhouse tattoos.
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[narrator] So prison tattoos
usually had thin lines and no color,
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00:12:39,885 --> 00:12:42,095
which became a signature style.
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Tattoos showed up as significant markers
in gang and biker culture,
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criminal underworlds,
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and for a long time,
that's where tattoo stayed.
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[woman] I think it might appear like,
"Wow, there's this crazy boom
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and there's
so many people getting tattooed,"
234
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which is true,
most people getting tattooed ever.
235
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But I think that's been, you know,
many factors laid on top of each other.
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[narrator] In the 1970s,
tattoo's image began to shift.
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Tattoos appeared in glossy photo spreads
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in influential American magazines,
like Life,
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which, in 1972,
240
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declared that the ancient art of tattooing
had come back into fashion.
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Tattoo shops expanded from sailor flash
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and started offering custom work,
letting people invent their own tattoos.
243
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Getting tattooed didn't mark you
as one kind of person anymore,
244
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and that brought in new kinds of clients.
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[Stephanie Tamez] A lot of women
are getting tattooed,
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and that's, you know,
half the population on the planet.
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So I think the advent of them sort of
wanting to empower their own bodies
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and gravitating to the artwork as well,
249
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just made that whole other group of people
getting tattoos.
250
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It's been a building block, and certainly
one of the most profound things
251
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that has launched it all
is by visually seeing it.
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[narrator]
And tattoos' visibility exploded in 1981.
253
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MTV came.
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[TV announcer]
Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.
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-[hard rock music]
-[C. W. Eldridge] That was amazing.
256
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I mean, I can remember
when MTV came on the TV.
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I was, like, blown away by this.
258
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I mean, I would sit there
with a little notepad
259
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and make a little check mark
on the notepad
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every time there was
a tattooed person shown on MTV.
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And, man, at the end of an hour,
there was 40, 50 marks on it.
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That had an unbelievable impact,
I believe,
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on the idea of who was tattooed.
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["Welcome to the Jungle" playing]
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[music continues on cellphone]
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I remember this video very well.
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♪ Welcome to the jungle... ♪
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So what do I think of that?
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Right there, that says-- That sums it up.
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I mean, right?
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Like, that was the epitome of cool
at that time.
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And to see the tattoos and then
he's wearing a, like, tattoo shirt.
273
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That's just fucking rad.
Like, how great is that?
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That just pulls everything together.
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[narrator] People started collecting
and mixing global tattoo traditions
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in totally new and personal ways.
277
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And they began incorporating
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the fine-line black-and-grey style
that originated in prisons,
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adding lettering and realism
to tattoo's vocabulary.
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So, this is Adam Levine.
He gets tattooed by a friend of mine.
281
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These are cherry blossoms and wind bars.
282
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And then he's got a traditional
American tattoo with "Mom" in the middle.
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Then he's got some lettering.
284
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It's a fun combination of all
these aesthetics kind of coming together.
285
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This is an example
of a lot of different styles.
286
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There's some classic iconography in it.
It's very personal.
287
00:15:48,657 --> 00:15:51,910
That's the difference, right? Between
the American and a lot of Japanese, right?
288
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Japanese sort of take on
these one central themes
289
00:15:54,788 --> 00:15:59,292
and then they build these universal,
like, elements as their background,
290
00:15:59,376 --> 00:16:01,253
like basic wind, water, fire...
291
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[in Japanese] American tattoos have
a strong memory-related element.
292
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Vastly different from Japan,
293
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who uses mythology to tell a story.
294
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American traditional is
you kind of collect it all,
295
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and this is just another version of that.
296
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And the common denominator is
that they are all in black and grey.
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[narrator] Every style of tattoo
in the world is now at our fingertips.
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Since the introduction of Instagram,
299
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the number of tattooed Americans
has nearly doubled,
300
00:16:33,452 --> 00:16:37,039
and tattoo artists are innovating
and expanding what tattoo can be.
301
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But as the number of people
getting tattoos has soared,
302
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so has the number
of people regretting them.
303
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Joe says he wants the tattoo parlor
to pay him 2,200 bucks.
304
00:16:46,548 --> 00:16:50,510
That's how much he says it would cost to
have the word removed with laser surgery.
305
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[narrator] Tattoo removal is now
a multi-billion-dollar global industry
306
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and growing,
307
00:16:55,682 --> 00:16:58,560
with India, Japan,
and the United States leading the pack.
308
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I got the tattoo in prison because I felt
that I would be respected a lot more
309
00:17:04,274 --> 00:17:09,071
or the opposite gang may see it
and, you know, fear it.
310
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It was basically like
respect in a gang, you know, lifestyle.
311
00:17:13,241 --> 00:17:16,828
I definitely want to remove it
rather than cover it up.
312
00:17:17,829 --> 00:17:20,832
[narrator] But the majority of people
with tattoos don't want them removed.
313
00:17:21,625 --> 00:17:24,711
And studies have shown that getting
a tattoo can boost self-image.
314
00:17:25,087 --> 00:17:28,006
People have reported
a significant Improvement in self-esteem
315
00:17:28,090 --> 00:17:30,675
and that their tattoos make them
feel better about their bodies,
316
00:17:30,759 --> 00:17:33,136
describing it as an act of self-creation.
317
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[C. W. Eldridge]
It is part of the initiation, if you will,
318
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of getting a tattoo is...
319
00:17:43,063 --> 00:17:45,524
being willing to face the pain.
320
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There's a commitment that you make
to wear that image.
321
00:17:49,402 --> 00:17:52,447
That's part
of what the magic of tattoo is.
322
00:17:52,531 --> 00:17:56,743
It gives me agency over my body.
It allows me to own it.
323
00:17:56,827 --> 00:17:58,537
It's just like carrying a few messages.
324
00:17:58,620 --> 00:18:00,497
It's sharing
a bit of information about you
325
00:18:00,580 --> 00:18:03,166
that you might not even say out loud.
326
00:18:03,250 --> 00:18:07,045
Everybody wants to be the most
expressive person that they can be,
327
00:18:07,129 --> 00:18:09,589
and tattoos are, like,
such a great marker of that.
328
00:18:09,673 --> 00:18:11,675
I love tattoos.
I think that tattoos are super great