Screen Machine

Review: Exit Through The Gift Shop

If we were to rank the most useful questions humanity has ever asked itself, “What is art?” would definitely rank dead last (If you’re wondering, “What if we delivered pizza to people IN THEIR OWN HOMES?” is number one). “What is art” is surely the most tedious, futile and infuriating question the human race has ever misguidedly asked itself. If someone says it’s art, then it is. Who do you think you are? The art police?

Which isn’t to say that some art isn’t utterly and comprehensively shit.

Exit Through The Gift Shop, the first film outing from Banksy, lord high pooh-bah of street art, mercifully doesn’t get bogged down in self consciously asking that question, nor in defending street art to its detractors. There’s no insecure hand wringing about the legitimacy of street artists’ work, rather, the film is full of the addictive thrill of making art that is public, dangerous and of course illegal.

Ostensibly the film is about Thierry Guetta, a native Frenchman living in LA who suffers from a peculiar addiction; he films everything. Absolutely everything. He’s obsessed with his camera, never without it in his hand. We are told his friends and family don’t even notice anymore.

Guetta’s filming is largely purposeless until, one night, he stumbles upon his cousin at work on a series of space invader mosaics in his garage, and discovers that he is in fact world-famous street artist Space Invader. Suddenly Guetta’s constant filming seems to have found a purpose. He begins filming his cousin at work, then other street artists, until he becomes something of an expert on the secretive street art fraternity.

Eventually Guetta’s singular pursuit throws him into the path of the most famous street artist of all, Banksy. The two become friends and Banksy allows Guetta to film him at work, a previously forbidden activity, as well as giving him a tour of his extensive workshop where, in one particularly fun exchange, Banksy explains how he accidentally forged a million pounds in the name of art.

With Banksy’s encouragement, Guetta finally decides to put his countless hours of footage to good use and make a documentary about the street art scene he knows so well. But when the result turns out to be an unwatchable hodgepodge of grainy footage and mind melting editing, Banksy takes on the project himself and sends Guetta back to LA with some gentle encouragement for Guetta to perhaps try making some street art of his own.

Guetta takes this friendly encouragement as nothing less than a dictum from on high. For Guetta there are no half-measures. He decides he’ll be bigger than Banksy or nothing at all. He takes on the ludicrous moniker “Mr BrainWash” then sinks millions into hiring a staff of artists and designers, buying printmaking equipment, leasing the massive ex-CBS studios to hold his debut exhibition and initiating saturation publicity campaign that blankets LA for weeks. The scale of Guetta’s sudden ambition seems almost unbelievable.

In fact “unbelievable” is exactly what most reviewers have deemed the dénouement of the film if not the entire enterprise. Banksy is above all a trickster, an enfant terrible, a mountebank (I had to look that one up) and most reviewers have taken this film with a liberal dose of salt.

I have to confess however, that when I watched it, I didn’t question the truth of the film’s story in the slightest. Guetta’s story is crazy, but crazy things do happen, and while a cynical person might call me gullible and naive, I’m actually just highly sensitive to the wonder and majesty of the cinematic art.

Whether the film is ‘true’ or not is pretty unimportant; it is certainly entertaining. Banksy (his voice altered and face hidden) appears throughout the film to deliver some typically droll one-liners, while the bemused horror of the career street artists who initially befriended Guetta and are later faced with the monster that he ultimately becomes, is particularly fun.

Yet, while I was grateful for the levity of the film’s style and did not expect or want Banksy (or any of his nameless collaborators) to spend the film justifying street art, there is a sense that the film misses an opportunity to address the debate about what constitutes legitimate expression in public spaces. There is no mention, for instance, of tagging or throw-ups. No mention of the hypocrisy which deems a billboard advertising Viagra proper use of public space and condemns a scrawled tag as vandalism.

If the filmmakers thought they’d be speaking to an audience who takes the legitimacy of street art for granted, they were mistaken. Roger Ebert’s review of the film included the following insightful little titbit: “There are all kinds of graffiti. Much of it is ugly defacement, the kind of territorial marking a dog does so much more elegantly.” Such silly and facile sentiments are hardly unique.

Ultimately the film’s most successful achievement may be the sympathetic way it presents street artists and their craft. With the obvious exception of Guetta, they come across as thoughtful, dedicated and intelligent. The practice of street art is portrayed as difficult and dirty, but also playful and honest. It isn’t hard to see why Guetta would want to join in the fun of creating street art, rather than simply recording it.

Towards the end of the film, Banksy, when asked what Guetta’s story tells us about modern art, replies “maybe it means art is a bit of a joke”. If that’s true, then it’s almost certainly a joke that Banksy is telling at our expense.

Zora Sanders is an Arts student at Melbourne University majoring in Cinema and Creative Writing. She was one of the Editors of Farrago in 2009 and has an occasionally updated blog.

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