01 Tam - Sex Slavers
(MP abducted)
Tam
is a British artist who usually depicts uniformed, authority figures
being abducted, beaten up, humiliated and worse. A typical victim is
the MP (Military Police) Sergeant with a moustache and wearing
British army battledress from the 1950-60s. My first sample from the
story 'Sex Slavers' shows one such NCO* being carried off after being
stunned and tied up by professional kidnappers.
(*NCO
= non-commissioned officer i.e. Sergeants and Corporals promoted from
the ranks.)
02 Tam - Breaking
Corporal North (The Set Up)
This
uniform had some attractive, erotic styling which Tam captures nicely
in this sketch which sets the scene for the Corporal North story. The
top is a short jacket with patch pockets on the chest, shoulder
epaulettes and the usual badges and signifiers of rank all of which
enhance the upper body shape. The jacket is paired with high waisted
trousers worn with a chunky, distinctive belt which pulls in the
waist and accentuates both the upper body and most notably, the shape
of the backside – soldiers used to alter them to get a snugger fit.
The trouser bottoms are tucked into gaiters which makes the legs look
chunky.
03 Tam – Cock Inn
Encounter (MP is Stripped)
A
casual pick-up in a bar leads to an unexpected confrontation in this
picture. Tam's targeted NCO's are always forced to strip to their
under-shorts (which can scarcely contain their excited man-bits) and
made to wear with them key elements of the uniform - the cap, the
belt and in this case the MP armbands, which in
the normal world transform them from ordinary soldiers into
policemen. The under-shorts are a genuine design which looked just as
sexy on the right man as Tam's pictures suggest (I speak from
experience)!
These
images have a strong link with the post-war (WW2) era of National
Service* in Britain when the abundance of off-duty, military
personnel on the streets gave rise to a golden age of casual sexual
encounters - probably not like this though! It also spawned the photographic imagery of Royale studio
which like Tam featured models
wearing 'erotically reconstructed' uniforms (click on GIU/Royale
label at foot of this post for more examples). Royale photos usually
showed regular soldiers being bullied and punished by their NCO
superiors but Tam's stories and pictures show the squaddies taking their
revenge for all the harsh discipline, unfair punishments, missed
promotions and other petty jealousies.
When
I first saw images like these it pressed all the buttons for me, a
memorable crystallisation of my own fantasies, so Tam's work has
always had a special place in my affections. The combination of
normally unseen underwear with the outward symbols of macho job roles
plus the idea of grown men forced to dress up like dolls, to become
tempting sex objects still seems so sexy to me. I suppose Luger's
cowboys and Etienne's 'Cadets'
plough a similar furrow, but Tam's more mature physiques, their
immobilisation by bondage, and the element of compulsion raises the
erotic temperature considerably. Much as I enjoy the sexual appeal of
American sailors, Cops and Cowboys, being able to fantasise over a
British Soldier is something special. I have explored such imagery
myself with Squaddie
Steve
(*National
Service = 2 years of compulsory military service for all men on
reaching 18 years of age. Many men found the discipline hard to
handle and learned to hate their NCO's, bullying did occur but wasn't
commonplace)
04
Tam - Breaking Corp North (Beaten Up)
Corporal
North here is the object of one such vendetta (see image 2 for the
lead-in). The physical beating up of restrained captives with fists
and feet is a significant part of Tam's work and it marks him apart
from most other fetish artists who gravitate to more ritualised, less
intimate forms of punishment. Jotto and Kalabro spring to mind as exceptions.
The
NCO's in these tales are characterised as arrogant, nasty, physically
powerful, very manly and mentally strong in a way that's a little
hard to understand these days. In short, eminently worthy of being
beaten up and broken. They nearly always wear neat, full moustaches
which were symbolic of adult manliness in the 1950's. In the British
Army they were the preserve of officers and senior NCO's, ordinary
soldiers were expected to be clean-shaven. Tam obviously likes them
as an expression of masculinity, but here they also signify rank,
power and privilege. (Tagame's preference for moustaches, by
comparison, probably derives from the 1980's 'clone' era, he is too
young b.1964 to remember the post war years, when Japan was
demilitarised in any case).
05 Tam - Cops Colour
Book (Captured Cop Tortured)
Tam
tells stories in pictures and this example is from Cops Colour Book,
an early work with a deceptive title that matches the naïve style.
This example shows some more of the brutal street-style punishments
that flow from Tam's pencil and this time the victim is a British
Policeman who has tried to detain two ruffians up to no good. The
apparently simple drawing style is actually quite successful at
depicting some fairly complex body action and despite the absence of
spectacular angled viewpoints, the venomous nature of this attack
jumps out at you. This cartoony story is understandably popular with
Tam enthusiasts, there's some interesting psychology going on here
and the subversive ideas expressed speak louder than the artistry.
Tam
doesn't use the sophisticated, comic design style of Tagame, Fillion
and other modern day artists (who use multiple interlocking frames
per page), but something more like the 'Kake' format of Tom of
Finland with a single picture per page. You will find examples of
Tam's work with several sketches on a page (like the one above in
fact) but they are not formally framed and integrated into one design
and he often breaks them up into separate images for the final book,
presumably to make them easier to read. Tam's stories are usually
longer than the Kake series running to hundreds of pictures in some
epic cases.
06 Tam - Cops Colour
Book (The Villains Fall Out)
There
are also links to Tom of a stylistic nature in Tam's early work and some elements
of Cops Colour Book are actually redrawn versions of Tom images,
including the fight scene above which you may recognise (above right). With a
couple of minor alterations, Tam's rather less polished version
manages to create a sense of immediacy and serious combat which isn't
there in Tom's original.
07 Tam – Whipping of
a Captured Paratrooper
This
picture of a captured British Paratrooper stripped and whipped down
South America way is a marvellous example of Tam's very personal take
on erotic styling, his kitbag of sexy ingredients. The texture of
those flimsy under-shorts comes out particularly well in this image.
The power plays are typically Tam too. The Paratrooper badge
incorporated into the belt buckle tells us that this is a crack
soldier from an elite Regiment and therefore especially prized as a
captive – by the same token, he is doubly humiliated - by capture
itself and with the degrading mockery of his uniform forming part of
his punishment. The background tree detail is a rare luxury with Tam,
who in his eagerness to tell the story and focus on the erotic appeal
of the suffering captive, usually leaves out backgrounds (or else
they are lost during the cleaning up process).
In
this later picture Tam has developed his own more angular style, his
faces sometimes look a bit like Matt's
– see also for example the second image in this article. His shading
technique here with fuzzy, parallel lines is very confident and
rather classy, but you can still see Tom's heritage in the sensuality
of the skin toning and those mammoth pecs with their gleaming nipple
discs - which must outshine the para's boots!
08 Tam – Sex Slavers
(Ringing the Cop's Tits)
The
sensual style of the paratrooper whipping above is a conventional way
of expressing the erotic element in S&M pictures, but Tam goes
further here as a kidnapper in 'Sex Slavers' inserts rings through
the captive cop's nipples. Despite his muffled grunts of pain it
hardly seems like a punishment since the two men's groins are pushing
together and the cop is leaking profusely over his tormentor's
trousers. In Tam's stories the captives usual end up wanting the
abuse, which is just as well, but this piercing and ringing of the
restrained policeman's nipples is not just about inflicting pain, but
the symbolic exercise of control over his body, going beyond mere
humiliation. The cop's erotic response registers his susceptibility
to this sort of control and his suitability for enslavement. His
captor is enjoying this discovery and the sexual moment – perhaps a
little too much for his colleague's liking.
I
particularly like the drawing of the two henchmen here, their
treatment is quite different to the idealised, cop 'hero' figure,
being slightly scuffy, more earthy and real. Something similar
happens in Tom's later work where the highly stylised Kake character
is juxtaposed with more normal-looking men and I will return to this
in my article on Tom.
This
image has no background detail at all and the high level of contrast
creates an austere, flat look. Much of Tam's work looks like this.
It looks like the subtleties of the original drawing have been lost
which means that multi-figure compositions have to work harder to
retain their coherence and avoid the appearance of being assembled
poses (the third man's eyes are working miracles here pulling things
together). This unusual technique has it's advantages though, once
you get used to the look, and I will expand on this in Part 2 of this
article.
More
on Tam in Part 2 here
Meanwhile
check out his work at Tams
Art blog
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