blu rays dvd News | Attack the Doc: The Graffiti Edition

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by: Johnny Moreno January 27, 2012

Welcome to ATTACK THE DOC! A Digital Dorm feature that explores the world of documentaries and picks out the best among the best, among the best. We'll cover everything from subcultures around the world, to economic collapse, to music and trashy hillbillies from every walk of life. So pop a squat, turn off reality and sit back and enjoy a little slice of someone else's reality.

The Graffiti Edition

The first time I witnessed someone in my neighborhood climb up a thirty foot gutter and "get up" on the side of a building, I knew that at 10 years old, I had found my calling. Granted, I had found my calling a handful of times before that (beer getter, GI Joe blower-upper, human pinata) but here I found an activity that melded my need to create, my need to be a pain in the ass, and the excitement of doing something illegal. I know that most folks have an intense dislike for graffiti, but these two documentaries should give some incite on what it means to "get up", how it's not just an activity but a lifestyle and how the genre has evolved over the years.

BOMB IT

Bomb It is a 2007 documentary directed by Jon Reiss.

Ooooh, I'm telling!!!!

Growing up an obsessive graffit admirer, I had books about New York subway art that I fawned over like a teenage girl with a BOP magazine. Watching Bomb It, and seeing archival video footage of the painted trains in motion and the artists who "threw up" these pieces was a pretty cool treat for me. The film does a good job right off the hop of explaining the origin of graffiti and how it related to fame. Getting your name up on trains meant that people from other boroughs knew who you were just by your tag. While that might not carry a lot of weight to some, for a whole culture (mostly lower income youths) it meant the world since your name was all you had. And though graffiti has its roots planted firmly in New York City, the entire world has taken the art form and ran with it.

Even GIRLS can tag. I GUESS.

While "bombing" has turned into more of an outlaw event, other countries have taken to graffiti in the same way a revolutionary would take up a gun. The graffiti movement in France is a culture in which they feel the "racist" Parisians have moved every ethnicity to the suburbs, whereas in Cape Town Africa, graffiti is used as a political tool to spread messages. Amsterdamn artists are getting high and riding bikes; in Japan a young woman who used to use her art as a way of expressing anger, now uses graffiti to portray strong female characters. And down in Sao Paolo Brazil, one young man only paints in the city's sewage system to battle depression and hopes to earn enough money from his work to support a family he befriended that has been living in said sewage system for years.

Did her virgina throw up?

Bomb It works depending on your view of graffiti, and the explanations of "why" provided by the artists themselves will either empower your viewpoint or reinforce why graffiti is anything but art. What you will get, however, is a pretty honest look at the culture with interview by KRS-ONE, Marc Ecko, Ron English and most of the important original artists who's names still ring out in the community till this day.

Order BOMB IT here!!!

Trivia: "Bombing" is the act of putting up graffiti.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a 2010 documentary directed by street artist Banksy.

Banksy in a moment of prayer.

Exit was one of the most talked about documentaries in 2010, and for good reason. Banksy had been an enigmatic, underground hero for his socio-political graffiti style for years, and to see an in-depth look at the man and his method (who remains faceless and with a voice enhancer) was something to look forward to. For the first half of the movie, you're wondering why the movie is focused on an odd, energetic vintage clothes salesman from France. You're just kind of following Thierry Guetta, seeing through his eyes these street vandals who go to great lengths to make their mark, and at some point you're thinking, what's the end game? Where's this going? It isn't until, through Sheperd Fairey, that Thierry meets the legendary Banksy, that things become clear.

Mr. Brainwash. Millionaire.

While Banksy's original aim for the documentary was to create a response to his ultra successful "Barely Legal" art exhibition in L.A., he quickly realized that Guetta, who claimed to be a documentary filmmaker, was completely full of shit. Out of the 10,000+ hours of film, Banksy found that nearly all of the footage was unusable. Eventually, Banksy, as he states in the beginning of the documentary, that the documentary was supposed to be something else, yet he found Thierry Guetta to be the most interesting thing of all. When Banksy hightails back to England after his show, offhandedly telling Guetta to start doing art on his own, the film picks up its pace and shifts from part street art documentary/part spy movie, to a flat out comedy. Enter Mr. Brainwash.

You read that right. A millionaire.

I can't tell you how much fun it is to see Thierry Guetta, a man with arguable artistic talent but supreme self-confidence, take Banksy's nonchalant advice to pursue art and make a million dollars. A million f*cking dollars! Early in the film, you get some incite into Guetta's (before his transormation to "MBW") business mind when he explains how he made his small vintage clothing company successful: "I buy for $50 and if it has a certain stitching, I call it 'designer' and sell it for $400." Boom. MBW making that paper son!

When he starts prepping his big art exhibition, MBW's desire for publicity and hyping his show all over town overrides his responsiblity to mapping out where his artwork should go in the studio. It is the transformation from a quirky, Jimmy O looking Frenchman to boastful and confident Mr. BrainWash that makes the last half of the movie more enjoyable and fulfilling than the first half of the movie. Is MBW exploiting the art community's predilection to buy into hype? Does he believe that his own work (Elvis with a gun) is art? As he says in the film, only time will tell whether or not he's considered an artist.

Order EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP!!!

Trivia: People have said that Exit Through the Gift Shop is a Banksy hoax. What do you think?

Source: The Digital Dorm