Tattoo Blog

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Hey Hollywood, We’re Not All Bad

August 25th, 2010 by

I try to cover a lot of different angles on the tattoo blog.  If it’s about tattoo and it’s something that I haven’t really seen a lot of before, I tend to automatically gravitate towards it.  One of the easiest and most plentiful topics out there in relation to tattoo is the whole Hollywood angle.  You can barely run a quick search on the topic of tattoos on Google without page after page of gossip about Hollywood stars and their brand new tattoos.  I guess I’ve never really focused a lot of energy on reporting on stuff like this because I’ve never really given a crap if Brad Pitt got a new tattoo or not.

But today I found a brief blog post on the UK Guardian news site.  On it the author listed the various movies which contain tattooed characters.  When you really get down to it, over the years there have been a lot of characters in film with tattoos.  At any rate, the article makes a good point as it talks about tattoos in film:

“Most of us will know someone with a tattoo, even if they’re not willing to show it. Inking has definitely become a part of the mainstream, but in cinema it remains something of a novelty. A lot of film characters have become like politicians; make them as bland as possible so as not to offend anyone. Where are the tattooed romantic leads?”

“Whatever the reason, you can generally pigeonhole film characters with tattoos into psychos, gangsters and Angelina Jolie. But at least one thing is certain: these characters always have interesting pasts …”

I can’t help but agree with all of this – why are tattooed people only used as the trouble makers in film? Even if I try really hard to think of a film in which a tattooed character isn’t a criminal or psychopath, all I can really come up with is Adam Goldberg in the 2007 film 2 Days in Paris.  Goldberg plays the American boyfriend of a French woman visiting her parents in Paris.  The fact that I can only recall one film with a positive (more or less) role for a tattooed character is pretty lame – and I watch a lot of films.

Well it might be a while before Hollywood decides to give us a good hearted tattooed character, so I guess that until they do, we’ll just have to enjoy watching the tattooed psychopaths and criminals cause trouble on screen.

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