Sunday 23 November 2008

Tattoos for Punishment and Humiliation

I am still working away from home at the moment and so the rest of this post may have to be postponed until later this evening or some time tomorrow (Tuesday), Suffice it to say that yet again I have had to waste time and effort correcting my e-mail supplicant. The collection of pics here are some that I found on my laptop and will distribute around the relevant posts later - the mouth soaping pic has proved the hardest to find incidentally. Talking of hard to find illustrations: I am considering discussing tattoos, not as decoration but rather as tools of humiliation and as a form of punishment. This is something I broached in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1, if you remember, wherein the schoolroom unit's girls had to sign documentation not just giving permission but requesting that their patient number along with the hospital's name and those damming words - psychiatric unit - be tattooed on one of their buttocks. Remember we are talking ugly dense black block lettering here and applied at a 45 degree angle making the most of the area available - remember; it is the psychological impact on the girls that interests me here as much as anything. I have had the devil of a job finding suitable illustrations. However I did come across one or two suitable illustrations (see above right for example) by an artist going by the name of Dubigeon Loic (I posted a link to some of his work in a previous article). In all probability the artist intends the characters appearing on the young lady's backside to be the result of branding. While that imagery is fine in the context of fantasy sexual slavery, I think that in an institutional environment, especially one purporting to be a legitimate psychological research unit, albeit one privately run and funded, tattooing is far more likely to have evolved as a method of control. It is easy to standardise through the use of a stencil template and might seem relatively innocuous to the subject, if one is rather economical with the truth - untill she sees the result. The thing, is; in volumes 2 and 3 there is further exploration made into this area - as always I am not without my ideas, but you can never have too many so if any of you out there would care to comment or contribute - be my guest. Maybe you hate the idea, maybe you love it - please let me know.

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