Last night, the creme of LA’s street art scene gathered in downtown’s stunningly ornate Los Angeles theater to see the premier of Banksy’s latest buzz-worthy project, a full length film—Exit Through the Gift Shop. The film tracks the creation and meteoric rise of Mr. Brainwash, the street art (artifice) sensation who stunned LA’s art world last year by producing a mammoth show in the old CBS offices in Hollywood. The story line is well known: amateur videographer Thierry Guetta spends a decade videotaping street artists like Shepard Fairy, Invader and Banksy, documenting their own rise within the pop culture zeitgeist. Banksy encourages Thierry to produce his own art show, which becomes a mammoth hit based on the buzz created by his affiliations with the street art elite. The end result is a new “name” artist of questionable talent, and a global art scene questioning its own hype. But how much of the story is fact, and how much is suspect? Banksy’s entire career is based around art as comic gag. Is it beyond him to orchestrate a narrative that confronts the hype befallen himself and his peers in the past few years? Here’s three reasons why Exit Through The Gift Shop might not be what it seems.
1) Banksy directing a film that repeated refers to Banksy as a genius is a sure sign of playfulness. And with Banksy, playfulness is almost always part of the joke.
2) The copious amount of “art” on display at the Mr. Brainwash show didn’t come from no where. While the film admits that the production was handled by a huge studio staff, it’s easy to envision Banksy sitting down and coming up with as many bad ideas as he can think of for Brianwash to execute.
3) Most of the street art establishment expresses something of remorse for the monster they created in Mr. Brainwash. It seems unlikely those intimately involved would opening admit to feels of regret for something they whole-heartedly endorsed. (See Congress for proof.)
Of course, none of this is conclusive proof of anything. It’s pretty much impossible to truly know the intentions of Banksy, Brainwash, Fairy and friends. And knowing would probably ruin the fun anyways. We this film, Banksy has elevated his work into an Andy Kaufman-type nether region, where truth and artifice weave in and out of each other with no warning. Or, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at the begin of The Great Gatsby, “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” Whether that statement holds for Banksy—like Gatsby himself—reveals the ultimate truth we will never get to. Not by watching ETTSH at least.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jvr7rdovl4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Not to ruin the fun, but it’s no hoax. The sentiments expressed by the artists in the film were real. Weird, right?
[...] in my mind, where the factual account end and the manipulated narrative begin? I go into depth here about my suspicions, but my gut reaction tells me that Banksy is laughing yet again, having dropped [...]
[...] más mediático y exquisito de todos. Por qué produce un documental, que suena bastante raro y tiene críticas no muy favorables, y aún así, lo queremos ver con ansía loca. La razón no es casual: a fuerza de repeler la fama, [...]
Is this post a joke? Either way, it’s a bad post or a bad joke. Of course the whole film is a joke!!! It’s the whole point. Through the character of Brainwash, Banksy argues that there’s a lot of hypes with marketing and consumption… The movie is simply there to show us we believe anything we’re told, and use that to promote ourselves and find our place in this consumerist society. As an audience to the film, we’re just the butt of the joke… As we are in real life with eveything that our economy creates. A very simple point made with humor. I mean the French guy start with selling thrift clothes for $50 a piece and calls each item a unique piece of clothing… Of course that’s a joke, it’s a parallel with what he does at the end of the film!!! When he sells crap for thousands of $$. And everyone falls for it, people buy all the shit, because they’ve been told to! Like in REAL life.
Wow I can’t believe someone wrote a post like this. a strong lack of critical thinking or maturity or both. And I’m not trying to be insulting.
[...] más mediático y exquisito de todos. Por qué produce un documental, que suena bastante raro y tiene críticas no muy favorables, y aún así, lo queremos ver con ansía loca. La razón no es casual: a fuerza de repeler la fama, [...]