I've never seen a movie detail in a clearer way the difference between art and imitation. This film is a pitch perfect example of how general public ignorance kills real art and replaces it with cheap copies of itself. -particularly ironic for street artists, whose entire medium is based on making cheap copies.
How banksy could make this all so completely lucid and simple, how he begins by turning a documentary that was suppose to be about him on the amateur documentarian himself, seems a working example of the principles of street art – looking at wasted urban environments as a launching pad for art is just like looking at neglected urban people as the most interesting place for a story to begin.
And what a story. This is better than fiction: the film takes you from the documentarian's compulsion with filming everyone and everything, a seemingly pure pleasure, to his compulsion and luck with filming street artists. It makes you truly love him for his irrational passion in his new subjects and their growing trust in him as the only true documentarian of their work. Then it shows how this same passion drives him towards becoming a street artist himself. It seems a perfect fit - you don't need a pedigree - just passion. But he capitalizes on it, copying not only the work, but the hype machine that propelled Banksy, Obey and all others, until he's essentially a kind of grotesque gambler - a monster imitator desiring to now replicate and beat the art and artists he once loved innocently capturing. The public is none the wiser. They mistake his work for that of his influences. His style for that of those he ripped off.
In focusing on the little person and watching him grow into a monster imitator, a malignant force that capsizes the movement - you see how hype, press and capitalism corrupt passion, or are the logical extreme of it: passion taken to its final conclusion when left unchecked. You see how love for art is based on desire: a need to hold onto something so tightly you become it, how idolizing someone is one step away from tearing him down to replace him with your own untrained, envious persona.
By the end, Banksy's need to remain anonymous, his FBI styled black face, voice altered interview, takes on a much different meaning. It's not just to avoid recrimination for his illegal art, it's to avoid self-hype, celebrity, corrupting greed - the very kind that his imitator revels in. It's to make art with no drive to exploit himself, to keep it coming from an honest place, the only place it should come from, whether the public can tell the difference or not.
His final thoughts on the man who imitates him, while negative, don't feel biased, even given Banksy's somewhat losing role in their relationship. He was never in the public hype game to begin with, not as a recognizable human being, so from the very start, he avoided the final weakness that all rising artists - real or imitators - succumb to: the reproduction and sale of their own image.
How banksy could make this all so completely lucid and simple, how he begins by turning a documentary that was suppose to be about him on the amateur documentarian himself, seems a working example of the principles of street art – looking at wasted urban environments as a launching pad for art is just like looking at neglected urban people as the most interesting place for a story to begin.
And what a story. This is better than fiction: the film takes you from the documentarian's compulsion with filming everyone and everything, a seemingly pure pleasure, to his compulsion and luck with filming street artists. It makes you truly love him for his irrational passion in his new subjects and their growing trust in him as the only true documentarian of their work. Then it shows how this same passion drives him towards becoming a street artist himself. It seems a perfect fit - you don't need a pedigree - just passion. But he capitalizes on it, copying not only the work, but the hype machine that propelled Banksy, Obey and all others, until he's essentially a kind of grotesque gambler - a monster imitator desiring to now replicate and beat the art and artists he once loved innocently capturing. The public is none the wiser. They mistake his work for that of his influences. His style for that of those he ripped off.
In focusing on the little person and watching him grow into a monster imitator, a malignant force that capsizes the movement - you see how hype, press and capitalism corrupt passion, or are the logical extreme of it: passion taken to its final conclusion when left unchecked. You see how love for art is based on desire: a need to hold onto something so tightly you become it, how idolizing someone is one step away from tearing him down to replace him with your own untrained, envious persona.
By the end, Banksy's need to remain anonymous, his FBI styled black face, voice altered interview, takes on a much different meaning. It's not just to avoid recrimination for his illegal art, it's to avoid self-hype, celebrity, corrupting greed - the very kind that his imitator revels in. It's to make art with no drive to exploit himself, to keep it coming from an honest place, the only place it should come from, whether the public can tell the difference or not.
His final thoughts on the man who imitates him, while negative, don't feel biased, even given Banksy's somewhat losing role in their relationship. He was never in the public hype game to begin with, not as a recognizable human being, so from the very start, he avoided the final weakness that all rising artists - real or imitators - succumb to: the reproduction and sale of their own image.
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