LET THE SOFT ANIMAL OF YOUR BODY LOVE INK MASTERS

WEEK 5-ISH

REQUIRED READING:

Ink Master (Season 5 & 7 & 9 & 10) on Paramount Plus

I love a craftsmanship competition. I love LegoMasters, Project Runway, Blown Away, Top Chef, or anything fixated on people chasing random dreams—completely foreign to my own. 

I don’t want to watch people dance, sing, act, tell jokes, or play basketball at a professional level. That is not enjoyable, because I absolutely covet those abilities and my stomach hurts with jealousy. But I have never in my life wanted to tattoo a hurricane on a ribcage, so I am free to login to Paramount Plus and let the soft animal of my body love what it loves: the head tattoo challenge!!

Ink Master relies on a steady stream of “human canvases” —absolutely, chilling! Hannibal Lecter viiiibes.  Elimination challenges are performed on the skin of volunteers who will offer a sometimes brief, sometimes very un-brief description of what they’re looking for. For example, during Pin-Up Week (we love—there’s one every season!), canvases can request a “Law Enforcement pin-up” or a “Viking pin-up” like the one that led to this famous exchange:

Famous to me.

While being tattooed in a high-stress environment with strict time constraints and variable results sounds like a hard-sell, some human canvases are repeaters: appearing in multiple episodes and seasons. I scanned a couple reddit AMAs from former canvases, and while some were able to negotiate stipends and recover their lodging/travel expenses from the producers, many participants are paid in experience.

Here’s one canvas’s description of the pre-production negotiation:

“They make it very aware that what you get is what you get and the potential of in satisfied work is a possibility. You only sign a consent form which makes you unable to speak about or post about the experience prior to the episode airing. I'm heavily tattooed and wasn't worried about an iffy butt tattoo, I mean I have my face tattooed so I wasn't too concerned about my butt. Just waned the free 12 hours of work. And I was satisfied with my piece regardless on both seasons. Other people on that episode, that was their first tattoos :0, they were the crazy ones. Props to them but most everyone was in for the experience and the free work.”

^This miniature reassurance was MORE THAN ENOUGH to clear my ethical misgivings about the show’s use of human canvases. I saw this photo realism Chewie tattoo permanently applied to a human leg and felt nothing but the utmost inner peace.

One of the primary joys of Ink Master for me is my own inability to distinguish winning and losing tattoos. 

LOSER TATTOO:                                                         

WINNER TATTOO:

Unburdened by any technical knowledge, I am free to fixate on the whole. We’re not usually pressed to evaluate a tattoo beyond ourselves (i.e. would you want this tattoo on your own body?) and appraising a prize-fighter eagle as the execution of a vision (whole and external to your own) is liberating. An exercise in art criticism? A tingly extraction of self? A streamed dissociation?

This is all to say… subscribe to Paramount Plus.