Banksy rant?

[nathanm]

I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this one, but it touches on many ideas.  Your thoughts?

 

[Andrew79]

A call for the destruction of private property if you don't approve? Sounds like standard lefty nonsense to me, designed to appeal to emotion over intellect.

For it to be taken seriously, he'd need to come up with a far better answer to why you should be free to smash up other people's property than because you had "no choice whether you see it or not."

[nathanm]

I wouldn't classify what he does as "smashing" or "destruction" necessarily.

[TheRobin]

I think I get the ambivalence.On the one hand some good observations about how modern advertising capitalizes on the general low self-esteem of people by trying to tell them what they supposedly need to be succesful.On the other hand no concrete thing that he isolated as a root problem. So naturally if the guy only has a foggy and vague idea about the problems his anger will be projected equally at a foggy and vague class of people (here: the advertisers).Quite sad that such beautiful anger gets wasted at such an ugly idea of who supposedly controls our lifes.

[Guest NateC]

 

I think I get the ambivalence.

On the one hand some good observations about how modern advertising capitalizes on the general low self-esteem of people by trying to tell them what they supposedly need to be succesful.
On the other hand no concrete thing that he isolated as a root problem. So naturally if the guy only has a foggy and vague idea about the problems his anger will be projected equally at a foggy and vague class of people (here: the advertisers).

Quite sad that such beautiful anger gets wasted at such an ugly idea of who supposedly controls our lifes.

 

+1

[ribuck]

From the ad:

"Any artwork* in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it..."

*I just swapped "advert" with "artwork".

Incidentally, re-facing billboards has a long tradition, and I think many advertisers even embrace it because it brings more attention.

[thornyd]

If he really feels advertisements are constantly attacking him, I feel sorry for the guy. Must be absolutely hellish to walk down a street, or browse videos on youtube

[PatrickC]

Yes, not his greatest piece by any chalk. I think Banksy's genius (if I can say that) is more evident in his artwork and not his statements. In my opinion his imagery generally speaks much more about the truth of the world than the words he's ever chosen to use.