Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film (2010) weaves together well-known pranksters of "street art" and commerce with goofily wry commentary. It's a joke, and it's no joke. It's real and it's unreal.
Is it Space Invader aka Invader or Banksy who quips, "[(Street) artists] make their mark by any means necessary"? It's Punk. It's Pop. It's an Andy Warhol Factories palimpsest. What's it all about, Alfie? In the poster above, there goes a framed Mona, the Eiffel Tower of universal pop art conciousness, down the street in a shopping cart, pushed by some dude.
Don't forget to exit through the gift shop, buying imitation prints and other desiderata.
Who are the "real" custodians of culture, anyway, and why? Who died and made them Kings, Queens or Little Boots?
After the opening cut -- topped with horribly cheesy music -- the film kicks into gear. You then get a chunk of "Kelly Watch The Stars!" from Air's Moon Safari (1998) and a lot of clandestine graffiti-style guerilla action. Is it filmer Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash (MBW) who says, "I like the danger"? It is apparently Banksy -- in disguise like Zapatista guerilla icon Subcomandante Marcos (Delegate Zero) -- who observes, "Street art has a short life span so we need it documented." There's Shepard Fairey in a late Warhol wig and Sex Pistols t-shirt. Around this point in the film he notes "The Power of Repetition . . . It [a sign, symbol, icon, slogan] gains real power from perceived power." Mona Lisa. Eiffel Tower. Kilroy was here.
Guetta wants to film everything in the moment because it's "the last time I would see it [anything] this way." And when Mr. Brainwash gets his own large art exhibit, Banksy muses: "Maybe it means art is a bit of a joke." Maybe not. In either case, go out and make some and if you cannot, go out and buy some. It's all good, ain't it?
Today's Rune: Separation (Reverse).
4 comments:
I could not figure out when I was being had with this. But I enjoyed it.
Earlier post on BOMB IT:
http://eriklerouge.blogspot.com/2010/07/bomb-it-film-by-jon-reiss.html
It really gets obnoxious at the point of detention at Disney, certainly. The whole MR BRAINWASH transformation was a right joke, and it was never made clear who was supposed to be filming him. Or maybe I missed that part . . .
Sounds purty weird but purty interesting at the same time.
A good book on the subject of how the art world operates is "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark" by economist Don Thompson. Enlightening & depressing.
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