Dear Hollywood,
I would like to point out that when someone tattoos a map or vital research on someone else's back -- usually a woman, more often than not their daughter -- you are basically having the woman submit to a relatively painful procedure in order to carry information that she will never be able to use for herself, at least not without the help of another person and/or an awful lot of mirrors. And I'm not saying that I wouldn't submit to a procedure like that if I thought it was truly necessary, but I am saying I wish you would acknowledge within the text that the woman agreeing to be Living Parchment Paper MacGuffin seems to be getting the seriously short end of the stick in this arrangement.
Something to think about. Yours,
~ Ana
34 comments:
Unrelated comment on Waterworld: it bugged the hell out of me that people on an ocean planet with virtually no dry land consider a dude who can breathe underwater a horrifying mostrosity to be driven off or killed. In my head canon, a civilization on the other side of the world embraced that mutation and has been enjoying the benefits for generations; spreading the relevant genes around the entire population without massive inbreeding is obviously a very slow process, but even just having a few water-breathers around - to dive for dirt, help with fishing, etc - has been extraordinarily useful.
Were those two links mean to be the same?
I don't really understand the whole 'tattooing secret information on your back' thing. If someone was legitimately trying to suppress that research to the point where it's literally too dangerous to carry it in any other form, wouldn't they stripsearch the tattoo-bearer as a matter of course?
No, they weren't -- thank you. (Bad copy command! Bad!)
Second one is fixed, and links to Reza Hawkeye's back. May not be totally Safe For Work.
I'm going to have to reread that part of Fullmetal Alchemist again, because I thought the story did acknowledge that it was an extreme thing to do. (Or maybe I just took it for granted that it was because, dude, tattooing dangerous information on your daughter's back is all kinds of messed up!)
We're watching Bortherhood and we're on Season 3 or Part 3 or however they divvied them up and we only just got there last night. They haven't even confirmed that's what it is -- her father dropped in a flashback that she "has his research" and then later we see her in the shower, and I'm all THOSE ARE HIS RESEARCH NOTES AND TEN BUCKS SAYS THOSE BURNS CAME FROM ROY.*
Speaking of: I'm loving the series, but Part 3 is LIMPING along plot-wise. It's been almost entirely recaps for 4 episodes now. "Get on with it!!" she yells.
* Ten dollars will not be issued to any parties as a result of this statement.
There is, of course, a long and venerable* tradition of turning women into living MacGuffins in one form or another. (I was really enjoying Tron: Legacy on the popcorn-and-pretty-lights level that it offered to engage on, and then they had to go and make the lone female character have magic DNA that changed her role from supercompetent action girl into a near-inanimate treasure to be protected.) I mean, there's the whole Twofer Token concept (black and female, brown and nerdy, Asian and gay, mix-and-match traits like you're at the Demographic Baskin-Robbins) and back when 'minorities' were either lesser-known or less-acknowledged, the simplest hybrid is probably Woman And Plot Device. She's both female and an abstract concept! That way we don't have to pretend she's a person. Everyone wins!**
I'm still not clear on why it's traditional to tattoo the back with Secret Information. Under the circumstances, surely the stomach is a preferable location, especially upside-down so that the tattooed person can still read it if necessary. Is it an aesthetic choice? Would it be too distracting if the southern end of the map ran into her cleavage? Exactly how much spare time does a person have to have to 'hide' their super-secret information to decide that inserting intricate designs into someone's flesh is the best way to hide said info, as opposed to writing it all down in a simple cipher and then finding the smallest capsule it can be rolled up inside?
What if it turns out that the map can only be read correctly when the bearer is stretching their limbs for a jete and otherwise the map will lead directly into the Forest of the Wood Sharks?
*Read here: 'facepalming through the ages'.
**Except for everyone.
What if it turns out that the map can only be read correctly when the bearer is stretching their limbs for a jete and otherwise the map will lead directly into the Forest of the Wood Sharks?
This suggestion turns a generally fail idea into all kinds of win. :D
All good questions. I can say that the stomach -- best I can tell -- is a pretty sensitive area, very ticklish for many, and an area prone to stretching, so it's a bad place to put something that absolutely must retain the original written integrity. Plus, as you point out, there are boobies, which make it additionally father/daughter ick *and* tricky to pan to with the camera without careful placement.
(This is additionally why tattooing a map on a CHILD is silly -- if that Waterworld girl has a growth spurt or, god forbid, scoliosis, that map will most likely be useless. *facepalm*)
I've got to watch Brotherhood one of these days. I know it's supposed to be a lot closer to the manga than the first anime was. I've also got to actually buy the manga sometime, since I'm generally in favor of supporting stuff I like with money. (I borrowed them from a friend.)
I'm liking Brotherhood, but I'm super annoyed that the blu-ray versions we've bought don't have English subtitles on the English dub track. (I'm very slightly hearing impaired.) Fortunately, the music is rarely louder than the dialogue and the characters speak and shout fairly clearly, so... yeah.
We're at the "Dr. Marco rescued by Scar and Roy just found out the Fuhrer's true nature and Reza is reassigned to be a hostage and Ed saw Al's body in the white room thing and Envy just sprung the War Criminal Philosopher Stone guy from prison" point as of the moment.
If only there was some kind of material, perhaps made of trees, that is smooth and flat and holds ink very well.
Seriously.
I've been reading 1491 lately by Charles Mann and apparently a lot of Native American cultures had a writing system based around knots in rope. I think that's awesome -- potentially very durable. No idea how sophisticated the writing was, but very interesting sounding.
In Maxine Hong Kingston's "Woman Warrior," she retells the legend of Fa Mu Lan, and there's a scene in which her parents carve a list of offenses that have been committed against their family into her back, with knives.
(Needless to say, this did not make it into the Disney version of Fa Mu Lan's story...)
In Kingston, I think she says that there's some magical purpose to this, at least in theory -- her body would be usable as a weapon even after her death. Anyway, whenever there's a key tattoo on a girl's back in a story I think it's sort of calling back to that particular reference -- but often in kind of a klutzy way. Fa Mu Lan is anything but a MacGuffin. Also, she KNOWS the information on her back; inscribing it serves some other purpose.
I'm super annoyed that the blu-ray versions we've bought don't have English subtitles on the English dub track.
Well, that's annoying.
I've become a huge believer in everything having subtitle options after working at the library. We've got a regular patron who's deaf and loves movies, but there are a surprising number of non-subtitled movies. It's terribly frustrating for him. And is a problem I'd never considered before. (So easy to be clueless when one is hearing privileged.)
I've been reading 1491 lately by Charles Mann and apparently a lot of Native American cultures had a writing system based around knots in rope. I think that's awesome -- potentially very durable. No idea how sophisticated the writing was, but very interesting sounding.
Given the options for multiple kinds of knot, sequencing, and perhaps best of all multiple colours, it would be possibly to create a very complicated and deep system. Unfortunately, as I understand it, there are a lot of cultures where knowledge of how to read the ropes has died out entirely, such that even if the ropes have survived, we've got no idea what they say.
I've got to think that 'pile of randomly knotted rope' is about the most innocuous thing a person could be carrying around. Especially if they also carry decoys like hidden message capsules with misinformation encoded on them. And again, if you've got time to safely tattoo someone, I think you have time to develop a simple rope code. I mean: if nothing else, MORSE.
It really is astonishingly common, even for recent things. (The DVD for the first season of The Tudors isn't subtitled despite clearly saying on the box that it is, for instance.) I'm fairly surprised -- oh, look, magic capitalism as defined by Ron Paul doesn't work and corporations fail to make good decisions to maximize their market. *sigh*
I wish movie theaters had subtitled showings. We'd definitely go.
I hadn't even thought about colors of rope. I've simply GOT to use this in a story somehow. Will, you are a wealth of ideas.
I wish movie theaters had subtitled showings.
That's a great idea! That it would allow deaf and hearing impaired people to go to the theater is more than enough, but it'd also be great for all the people who, while not actually hearing impaired, still have trouble catching all the dialogue in movies, thanks to poorly mixed audio, or just movie makers who think music and/or explosions are more important than dialogue.
I would like to point out that when someone tattoos a map or vital research on someone else's back -- usually a woman, more often than not their daughter -- you are basically having the woman submit to a relatively painful procedure in order to carry information that she will never be able to use for herself
Er...does that happen often? Is this a Thing?
And in the Lois McMaster Bujold Does Everything Better category, I'm reminded of the doctor who stored the results of his life's work inside the left calf muscle of the experimental subject later known as Taura, so they wouldn't be lost or stolen. And the first thing Miles asks, in a tone of considerable irritation, is, "Why the hell didn't you store them in your own tissue?"
"...I never thought of that."
I hadn't even thought about colors of rope. I've simply GOT to use this in a story somehow. Will, you are a wealth of ideas.
Thank you, although I'm pretty sure I got it from the South Americans. (What I think I personally added is the idea of multiple fibers used - most of the rope is written in grass X, but in the sections where it switches to grass Y, the truth is the opposite of whatever the rope says. To hell with 64-bit encryption, I HAVE FLAX.)
Re: subtitles in theaters, I can't count how many times a movie has seemed stupid in theaters and then made perfect sense at home when I had the subtitles to explain the Very Important Plan properly.
To hell with 64-bit encryption, I HAVE FLAX.
Ahahahahaha. I am so geeky-happy right now. :D
Specifically, you are thinking of the Inca and some earlier Andean civilizations, who used knotted strings called quipu for record-keeping. They could be made with different fibers - llama, alpaca, cotton - but it is unclear from the wikipedia page if the different fibers were meaningful, or if they just used whatever was most convenient at the time. They did use different colors and it looks like the colors were relevant to the meaning. Quipu were mostly used for numeric record keeping, but could also be used to express narratives. Here's the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu. I took an Andean archaeology class back in the day, and I always thought quipu was a really interesting system for information storage.
Yes, Inca! I thought it was Inca, but I hadn't checked and didn't want to send people down the wrong path. Thanks very much!
They did use different colors and it looks like the colors were relevant to the meaning. Quipu were mostly used for numeric record keeping, but could also be used to express narratives.
The really fun part? That's exactly how writing started, at least from our surviving records. A durable storage system, initially used for accounting, grows to include nouns, concepts, and verbs. Even if the quipu were more mnemonic memory device for stories than bona-fide recordings, it seemed to be well on the way when the Spanish came and burned the lot.
At least in Prison Break, the main character tattooed the information on himself, and since he was breaking into prison it would have been really hard to take with him any pieces of paper, especially blueprints of the prison he was being sent to, so permanently attaching ink to his own skin made a kind of sense... But, speaking as a person with a large back tattoo, large tattoos on any area of the body are a really terrible way to store precious information. Not only are they impossible to hide from a strip search, and often difficult to see yourself depending on placement (although I only need one mirror to see all of my back tattoo), but most people can't stand the pain of tattooing for more than 3-4 hours, and a large tattoo often takes more than 15 hours under the needle, depending on level of detail. Since the skin has to heal completely between sessions, which takes several weeks, it usually takes months between beginning and end to complete the tattoo. I guess you could tie someone down and force them to sit through it all in one go... but I start to go into low level shock after about 3 hours of tattooing, so if you're doing that to anyone but your own self, you're a terrible person.
I used to read a bunch of Star Trek novels, back in the day.
There was a nonhuman character who carried her entire family lineage, and a bunch of Important Plot Stuff, in a piece of jewelry. It was a bunch of little mica-looking discs strung in clusters, and (being Star Trek) they'd been etched in a computer-readable format too tiny for the naked eye to see. She wore it, if I recall, as a waist sash.
I really liked that character and that method of "nope, no secret data here, no sirree". I suppose it would work better to tattoo someone with fur as the fur would hide the tattoo, but it still seems like a pretty obvious way to attempt to sneak your data through.
I caught the Fa Mu Lan callback too, but I think most of the people who use it, use it rather clumsily if that's what they're trying to play on.
True, true! I hear people pan bureaucracy a lot, but that's where we get writing! When a group needs to keep track of more people and goods than can be easily memorized, bureaucracy and writing are the best (or at least most common) ways to do so.
More on knives and Chinese warrior heroes and tattoos, says the person who dimly remembers these from Mandarin lessons in school a long time back: the patriot Yue Fei:
Yue Fei's mother then tells her son, "I, your mother, saw that you did not accept recruitment of the rebellious traitor, and that you willingly endure poverty and are not tempted by wealth and status ... But I fear that after my death, there may be some unworthy creature who will entice you ... For these reason ... I want to tattoo on your back the four characters 'Utmost', 'Loyalty', 'Serve' and 'Nation' ... The Lady picked up the brush and wrote out on his spine the four characters for 'serving the nation with the utmost loyalty' ... [So] she bit her teeth, and started pricking. Having finished, she painted the characters with ink mixed with vinegar so that the colour would never fade."
An interesting gender swap, considering what Ana has brought up in this post!
I have been informed by an absolutely delightful reader that they DO have captions in movie theaters! It's just that the device for reflecting them kind of... sucks. But still, cool!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-05-theaters-disabled_x.htm
http://www.ehwhathuh.com/2010/01/rear-window-captioning-at-movies-and_17.html
I have also been informed by another delightful internet person that there IS a trope for this! Yay!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanNotepad
If I recall correctly, in Susanna Clarke's book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (one of my favorites, though it seems to be one of those love-it-or-hate it kind of books), the Living MacGuffin character Vinculus is "tattooed" all over with the text of a prophecy having to do with the return of magic to England. It's revealed that his father or some other ancestor ate the book that originally contained the prophecy, which is why his son now IS the prophecy. For what it's worth, although Vinculus presumably can't read the parts that are on less accessible parts of his body, he does know the whole thing and attempts to recite it to the characters to whom the prophecy refers.
I do quite like the general principle of information conveyed as images on a person's skin, especially when the information is as surreal as the method of conveying it, but only when it's justified in the text. "Dude's distant ancestor swallowed the book of eldritch lore he was supposed to be protecting" works for me; "We've decided the best way to both hide and make available to you this vital information is to tattoo it to your back" doesn't.
"I really liked that character and that method of "nope, no secret data here, no sirree". I suppose it would work better to tattoo someone with fur as the fur would hide the tattoo, but it still seems like a pretty obvious way to attempt to sneak your data through."
Somewhat related to the subject, I do recall hearing stories of spies... possibly Roman, although I really can't remember, tranferring secret messages via tattoos. They would tattoo a coded message on someone's (usually slaves, from what I recall) head - which, of course, would normally be covered in hair, so the enemy couldn't find it. Once the messenger arrived, they could shave their head and read the message.
This had another advantage, which I don't see invoked all that often, but perhaps related... the messenger couldn't read the message, thus eliminating one weak link in the chain of security... at least in theory.
Gah! Yes! People grow! I hope that secret map has a lot of text, especially if she's been working out or enjoying cake.
Wasn't there an episode of Get Smart in which Max had a secret map imprinted on his chest (IIRC, it wasn't tattooed, it was something that emerged via something he ate), and, on his wedding day, he had to be careful of the map, leading to all kinds of silliness?
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