People are claiming that Banksy’s new film is purportedly a fake, but this is missing the point. Neda Vanovac writes.

Graffiti, is it art? Image: Leonski

British graffiti artist Banksy’s documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop recently screened at the Sydney Film Festival to riotous laughter and applause. A light-hearted romp through the graffiti underground, the film tracks well-known street artists as they made their mark on the urban landscape.

However, some critics, hip to Banksy’s tricks, are denouncing the documentary as a fake. The real question is, who cares?

The film follows a charmingly bumbling Frenchman, Thierry Guetta, through the nighttime cityscapes first in LA and then around the world as he adoringly films his graffiti artist idols. Finally meeting Banksy, his “last piece of the puzzle”, Guetta manages to make himself a seemingly indisposable recorder of events.

The story then turns around as it becomes apparent that Guetta might have the raw footage but no talent for stringing it together. Banksy tells him to put on an art show, and the resulting extravaganza sees the creation of Mr Brain Wash, or MBW, who seemingly rises out of nothing to put on a show in LA of derivative pop cultural artworks heavily referencing Andy Warhol and Banksy himself, and totally lacking in any originality. It is a raging success.

The movie’s detractors have claimed that the film is one big prank, with Guetta in on the joke and Banksy directing him to pose as a street art desperado, that, as Fast Company’s Alissa Walker says, “[manufactures] a brand new persona that both celebrates and criticizes the over-commercialization of street art.”

But that’s the whole point. If the film is eventually revealed to be a hoax, then that makes it all the better.

Banksy has always been a polarising figure, determined to poke fun at both the establishment and those who think of themselves as anti-establishment; consumer culture and those that are desperate to be seen as aligned with Banksy’s politics.

But Banksy is on no one’s side, and his ever-shifting agenda means that he can keep everyone feeling off-balance. More than anything, Banksy’s work exists to reflect society with a sense of humour.

He has managed to maintain his anonymity since his work began appearing around London in 1993; no mean feat, considering that his works can sell for half a million dollars. In the film, he is shown as a shadowy hooded figure, his voice distorted. He is filmed from behind or wearing masks, hats and fake beards as he goes about his work. And yet he has become the most famous street artist in the world.

Confronting and meaningful. Image: Richard Cocks

Banksy’ aesthetic is simple: he uses stencils to create clean graphic lines that allow him to “socially cartoon”, making his statement clear and easy-to-read.

And what a statement it is: balaclava-ed protesters throwing a bunch of flowers in place of a Molotov cocktail; kissing policemen; a caveman carrying a tray of fast food; John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s Pulp Fiction characters pointing bananas rather than guns; a Buckingham palace guard urinating against a wall; two rats standing as nightclub doormen at a tiny door in the wall with a red carpet; a rat dressed in a suit with a briefcase, ‘let them eat crack’ written behind him; a dove wearing a flak jacket with a scope trained on its chest; a man dangling naked from a window sill while inside, a clothed man looks out accusingly, a worried-looking underwear-clad woman standing behind him.

In 2005, Banksy travelled to Gaza and painted a series of trompe l’oeil paintings along the wall. The image detailed children building sandcastles with part of the wall torn away to reveal an island paradise; a small girl frisking a soldier; and a ladder disappearing over the top of the barbed wire.

For the average person, there is nothing arty or glamorous in graffiti, no higher messages of rebellion against authority or the artistic expression to be gleaned.

“Just mess that has to be cleaned up by someone,” writes Sydney Morning Herald’s Charles Purcell, as he equates Banksy with crudely-sprayed phalluses and profanity. Last month, Purcell wrote an ignorant, provocative article about graffiti that both inflamed aficionados and was supported by those who consider it to be vandalism.

“Note to Banksy: graffiti is not art, it is vandalism,” he ends, on a note of supreme self-satisfaction.

This, again, completely misses the point.

Banksy himself has repeatedly reflected on the irony of his work being embraced by the art community, which he has called “the biggest joke…It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”

He is resistant to mainstream art, telling The New Yorker, “I don’t think art is much of a spectator sport these days. I don’t know how the art world gets away with it, it’s not like you hear songs on the radio that are just a mess of noise and then the DJ says, ‘If you read the thesis that comes with this, it would make more sense.’”

Banksy's rats represent the oppressed and downtrodden. Image: Trois Tetes

He is a passionate defender of returning jurisdiction of the streets to its citizens. He often paints rats and monkeys as taking over the world. To Banksy, the rat is the ideal totem of the downtrodden and the oppressed.

“I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said “that’s a clever anagram of art” and I had to pretend I’d known that all along,” he wrote in his book Wall and Piece.

His argument for the validity and necessity of graffiti is simple:

“[It’s] one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer, and nobody is put off by the price of admission.

“The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think that nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless.

“The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you’re never allowed to answer back. … The wall is the weapon of choice.”

Graffiti, as an art form, has raised many unanswered questions about the ownership of public space.

The eternal dance between graffiti artists and the law continues, with artists quickly creating ephemeral images which people may or may not even see before they are scrubbed off and painted over.

As The New Yorker observed, “graffiti aficionados like to say that the form is as ancient as cave drawing.”

For every Charles Purcell that refuses to attribute any value to the form, there are hundreds of graffiti artists showing him how little they care about his precarious perch from where he has crowned himself arbiter of public art and taste.

Why not give the everyday man and woman a say? Banksy has proven, and he is just one of many, that graffiti can be poignant, witty, and convey a message all at once. It belongs to everyone.

“Any advertisement in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it is yours. It belongs to you. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head,” he writes in Wall and Piece.

The irony is that the inevitable rise of the graffiti counterculture has been embraced by the same people Banksy has been lampooning. He couldn’t sell his works for $500,000 without the support of mainstream art, no matter how much he might despise them.

This is exactly why Exit Through The Gift Shop is a triumph. It demonstrates the willingness of society to eat up whatever is deemed ‘cool’ no matter how ridiculous. The commodification and mainstreaming of the street art subculture is right there for us all to watch unfold.

Whether the film is real or a hoax, its message remains the same and the joke is on us. We’re welcome to share the laughs, if we can spot the punchline.