Graffiti Is Harder Than It Looks

It's been quite a while now since I saw the Banksy movie ("Exit Through The Gift Shop" if we want to use correct titles today), so here's hoping I can pull some coherent thoughts together on a movie that's left most every theater by this point. Problem is, I don't quite know where to begin: it was an immensely pleasing documentary, but a documentary in the Banksy style where you aren't even sure what's right and what's wrong. If we assume that the mysterious hooded and voice-altered figure really is Banksy and that all the other characters really are who they're supposed to be (although it is tempting to believe other things, but my mid-film hand analysis proved Banksy and Mr. Brainwash, your as-of-yet-unintroduced title character, to be separate people, and besides, does it make any difference whether these people are who they say they are?), then the movie reads as the story of street art, as told from the perspective of Thierry, a French dude living in Los Angeles. Thierry gets involved in the scene back in France through a street artist cousin who later introduces him to other prominent artists in Europe and America, eventually leading to Banksy himself. The conceit that leads to the movie, though, is that Thierry is an obsessive videographer, meaning that while running around at night with these dudes putting up graffiti he was also filming (awkward sentence construction). This leads to an astounding wealth of raw footage chronicling the birth of a scene, footage that Banksy ends up turning into a movie when Thierry proves himself unfit to direct by creating an unwatchable and seizure-inducing attempt at film. As Banksy takes control, he tells Thierry to go try his hand at being an artist; thus Mr. Brainwash was born.

This is where things switch tone. Up until this point, Thierry was our anchor, the man who was figuring out this complicated world of street art with us, a friend. But the film always had a kind of distant attitude towards him, and right about when he introduces his version of the movie things get a bit nasty. After all, everything previous had been pretty much objective, what with Thierry figuring out the world of street art, and talking head bits with Banksy and other dudes like Shepard Fairey served to back up everything that he was observing. But once Thierry started producing art, subjective stuff, it was time for the big voices of the street art world to speak up, and their voices are less than favorable. I won't really get into the specifics, as that would spoil the meat of the movie for you guys, but the bottom line is that Thierry/Mr. Brain Wash, his street art persona, are less than successful. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Mr. BW is basically a reflection of most things that are wrong with the creative world today: his work is derivative, he hires others to produce it, he lacks a real reason to create street art beyond the desire to emulate and achieve success, and his only strong skill seems to be self-marketing, which leads to a great series of interviews with the Los Angeles public talking about how they think Mr. BW is awesome, even though he clearly is not and they clearly have no idea what he's all about. Hype! It's so cool.

Banksy comes out with a line around this point in the film, something like, "I used to tell everyone they should make art, but then I met Thierry. I don't tell that to everyone anymore." And I guess that'd be one of the major themes of this movie, a cautionary tale about how to go about creating art. On the one hand, sounds like the man is saying that Real Art is for the pros, so piss off. But in fact, when you look at that statement with the rest of the first half of the movie, talking about the rise of the movement and all that, it seems to be more of a "be real with your art" message. Mr. BW's problem isn't the impulse to create art, it's his intentions and motivations. His work is empty, shallow, commercial. Basically everyone else's art has a bit of spiritual flair, be it anti-authoritarian mischief, cutting social commentary, or just something cool displayed ephemerally in the public world. I think what the ambassador meant to say was that everyone should still create art, but they should do it on their own terms and for themselves. If you hone your craft and develop a weltanschauung (just wanted to use the word), then possibly fame and gallery shows will follow, but by that point it won't really matter, 'cause the art will be something that you do for yourself and for it's own artistic sake, and will thusly remain untainted. I suppose there's some more in there about the nature of public consumption of art (we like it pre-hyped and marketable, presented in a big gallery party so we can be seen enjoying it), and the bits about the origins of the scene are almost straight documentary, but that's about all I've got for direct themes.

Indirectly, there's some weirdness about the ethics of what Banksy did. Because let's face it, he took Thierry's footage and then made a movie about what a tool Thierry is, and might possibly be prospering. But this falls back into the category of Weird Things That One Could Think About Too Much, like the accuracy of any of the history of the movement stuff, whether it's really Banksy, what he's getting at by producing a movie like this (teasing us, defying the public to unmask him?), and even whether Thierry is just a character. The mind reels though, so it's safe to leave it as possibly troublesome but only mildly uncomfortable while watching Banksy rip on our filmmaker. Thing is, that ripping is really funny; the whole movie is really funny. And the editing, music, and all those other stylistic things are also slick and super-cool, as befitting a hip street artist's movie. It's a real pleasure to watch, and despite Banksy's admonitions inspiring. Perhaps the best way to breed the next generation of graffiti artists is to show them how it isn't done.

Next on my writing agenda: thoughts on the end of "Treme," and possibly a movie to come in the next week. I really just end with these to remind myself of what I ought to be doing.