Monumental or Mercurial? The Changing Nature of Street Art

            Graffiti – or street art – is a divisive issue that tends to divide people into two camps: those who are convinced it is criminal and others who see it as a way of beautifying cities. Bloggers Denise Lee and Courtney Chaisson have approached the subject in two different ways. While both discuss graffiti in terms of its artistic qualities as opposed to its vandalistic bent, Lee looks at the appropriation of street art into official public art, and Chaisson explores the ever-changing nature of artist Blu’s work and its interplay with multimedia. Both writers set out to tackle the larger implications of graffiti within a city, how it speaks to residents, and its impact on the art world.

            Denise Lee focuses on Ken Lum’s glowing white “Monument”, a fine artist’s take on the East Van cross that has been a symbol of the working class of East Vancouver for decades. Originally painted on surfaces from walls to skate parks to jackets, the reappearance of the cross in such a blunt context “tapped into deeper East Van imaginings, the collective memories of the experience of a working class East-ender in a city that often favoured the West” (Lee 2011). Creating official art out of something that was formerly street art, and at that, very political, is appropriate in this instance because “street art usually attempts to share attitudes rather than to alter communal perceptions radically” (Romotsky and Romotsky 1976:654). The cross creates a stronger sense of community as well as a staunch pride for belonging to that community. Somewhat ironically, the piece was commissioned by the Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program despite both the organization’s inclination to be relatively West End-centric and also the cross’s origins in “places too illegitimate for a future public art installment” (Lee 2011). When conceived of as a sort of political resistance, one article states that graffiti “makes sense only if it remains illegal” (Brighenti 2010:321), which contrasts the idea that “Monument” makes a statement of defiance to the West End.

            Contrary to the static landmark that is “Monument”, Courtney Chaisson discusses the tendency of many modern street artists not to be confined by their canvasses of walls, but to engage with their environments in a new way. The video Chaisson uses to illustrate the nature of his work, “MUTO”, is essentially a stop-motion animation depicting all sorts of creatures from street artist Blu’s imagination taking over the city. Blu’s piece is an extreme example, but it never stays the same for long. In many people’s eyes, graffiti is temporary only in that it is sometimes painted over only a few hours after its creation, but it “can be ephemeral, spanning only a few minutes. It can also exist momentarily in one form, then in altered states continue for considerable time” (Romotsky and Romotsky 1976:653). Works such as Blu’s that transcend conventional boundaries of street art reflect that graffiti “interacts and often overlaps and interweaves with the fields of other practices” (Brighenti 2010:316) such as design, law, politics, and market. Says Chaisson, “the trend towards fluid art has a positive impact on our society” (2011) due to the message’s ability to reach further than possible before.

            The two blogs connect in that both engage with the physicality of graffiti. In the case of Ken Lum’s installation piece, a traditional graffiti piece has become 3D, a space of its own, and acts a statement of East Vancouverites’ fierce pride. Italian artist Blu, however, uses space temporarily to bring to life the intricacies of his imagination. Both these examples of the evolution of street art reflect the idea that it forms a “radical interrogation of public territories, a questioning of the social relationships that define the public domain” (Brighenti 2010:330). Territory and space are redefined in the works of both Blu and Lum. “Monument” establishes the boundaries of East Vancouver as official – the cross represents a history of street art and working class solidarity, and in its current incarnation cannot be simply painted over. “MUTO”, on the other hand, represents a revolution in static street art and a move from works meant to mark territory to ones meant to expand the canvas of the street and to inspire, whether “produced legally or illegally, intricately planned or spontaneously created, functional or purely decorative, amateur public art is the effort to make the world at large reflect something of the individual” (Romotsky and Romotsky 1976:653).

Film Noir and the Femme Fatale

            Federico Fellini’s classic Italian film, 8 ½ (1963), can be analyzed through a multitude of frameworks, but feminist theory incites the viewer to consider “how different groups of people are represented in cinema” (Gray 2010:70) and the film’s portrayal of women demands scrutiny. The film is composed of sequences of fantasy, memory, and reality, and in all three, the protagonist, Guido (a semi-autobiographical depiction of the film’s director), has an objectifying perspective on women. Feminist theory “means an understanding of patriarchy as oppressive” (Mayne 1985:83) and yet contrary to this the sheer number of women in his life is alarming: Not only is there his wife, Luisa, but also his mistress, Carla, a mysterious actress he regards as his salvation, Claudia, and a prostitute from his boyhood who appears in the film through scenes taken from Guido’s flashbacks and fantasies, not to mention the hoards of other women he seems constantly to be surrounded by.

            When applying the Bechdel Test to 8 ½, the film easily passes certain questions, such as, “are there two or more women in it who have names?” There are many named women, however all of them are solely concerned with men, and many are connected to Guido either romantically or sexually. While Guido prepares to shoot his latest film, he solicits his glamorous mistress, Carla, to come join him and he arranges for her to stay in a hotel room nearby. Not long after, he phones his wife, Luisa, and suggests she join him on his film shoot as well. At first she doubts his sincerity and his practicality, but she does eventually succumb to his charm, though she is disillusioned when she does arrive. He is attracted one, loves the other, and understands neither. As one theorist contends, the genre of film noir is frequently concerned “with evil and corruption, and its use of two women – one sexual and treacherous, the other chaste and good – to symbolize a male hero's conflict has been identified by feminist critics as a virgin/whore dichotomy characteristic of women's general representation in classical cinema” (Mayne 1985:87). 8 ½ embodies this perfectly: When Guido and Luisa have lunch in a café toward the end of the film, she notices Carla looking Guido’s way, dressed in all her typical (and slightly ridiculous) finery, when becomes aware this must be his mistress. He denies it, but she counters that she is bored of being lied to and says to him, “How sad to play the bourgeois wife who doesn’t understand.”

            As each woman vies for his affection, Guido’s attention is turned elsewhere, and this is demonstrated best in the harem scene. In his fantasy, Guido is the sole male amidst around fifteen women who include the earlier mentioned prostitute, wife, and mistress, as well as several actresses, a friend’s young girlfriend, and even a showgirl. Each woman’s fate is determined by her age: once she reaches age 26, she is sent to the ominous “upstairs”, away from Guido and the other women. When there is a small revolt in response to one woman’s having reached her expiry date, Guido breaks out a whip akin to one a lion-tamer might use at an old-fashioned circus and terrifies the women into docility. Afterwards, the women and Guido reconcile, and they feed him, bathe him, and scrub the harem’s floors. To any feminist, this depiction of women is an absolute abomination.

            From a feminist perspective, 8 ½’s most fascinating character is La Saraghina, the prostitute the audience is first introduced to during one of Guido’s flashbacks that is melded with fantasy. In the flashback, Guido is portrayed as a young boy who ditches class in order to go to the beach to watch La Saraghina. In prior analyses, it has been said that “the feminist determination [is] to view her as blatant proof of Fellini’s misogyny” (Marcus 2004:222). She emerges from a cave-like dwelling in the sand, and the boys call out to her, asking her to dance the rumba. Portrayed as a “grotesque visual object” (Marcus 2004:227), La Saraghina is initially revealed through a series of close-up shots that focus only on her body. The viewer sees her, in the flashback-fantasy from the perspective of the young Guido, and thus as the ultimate example of subversive feminity and sexuality. The scene is almost disturbing in its depiction of the woman, as though she is not quite human; Fellini “does indeed exploit her monstrosity” (Marcus 2004:223) which invites questions so as to why the woman is so demonized. Later on, a cardinal of the Catholic Church later scolds the young Guido for interacting with the devil incarnate, leaving viewers with any respect for women with a bitter taste in their mouths.

(Video from YouTube user Marrhumbatanik)

Link-ups and Lockdowns

            While many of us have become accustomed to being constantly connected, plugged-in, never far from a wireless hotspot, radio remains a hugely important factor in connecting people both across vast spaces and within small communities. Both in the case of Northern Australia’s sprawling settlements and the separation of Aboriginal kin by distance, and often imprisonment, and in the case of a tiny town of 766 people in the Northwest Territories, radio broadcasts are crucial in fostering close-knit communities that transcend distance and isolation.

            Daniel Fisher’s article on radio request shows in Northern Australia reveals a sad truth about the indigenous population there in that they are overrepresented in Northern Territory prisons due, usually, to being incarcerated for minor crimes most white Australians pay fines for (2009:285). The area is particularly fractured beyond simple distance because of this, and because most do not own home phones, radio becomes an excellent mode of communication between kin. The idea of “linking people up” (Fisher 2009:282) is encouraged by DJs who want to facilitate a universal system of communication that can traverse the disconnectedness that comes with imprisonment. Fisher notes that the radio request shows, while positive, “evoke distance, loss, and longing” (2009:285), which directly reflect the nature of the messages communicated and the songs requested, which are often Aboriginal country songs that lament about loss of freedom.

            Northern Australia’s Indigenous community is in part constructed by radio broadcasts, specifically the aforementioned request shows that allow people to call in to dedicate songs, deliver messages of love and solidarity, and simply to let their friends and loved ones know they’re thinking of them. Calling in to make a request makes a story and a relationship public – this method of communication is a means for families to grow and to stay close even when there are multiple factors standing in the way (Fisher 2009:286). Without the ability to communicate with each other in this fashion, families and “mobs” are at risk of losing contact and potentially falling apart, and so the DJs are instrumental in keeping those ties strong, as “linking people up” is as much a part of their jobs as spinning records (Fisher 2009:288).

            Contrarily to the radio stations of Northern Australia, CBQM does not connect people living in different places, but serves as the heart of the tightly knit town of Fort McPherson. The role of radio host is informal – at various points, prominent figures of the town are featured, such as their lone police officer or the pastor of the local church. CBQM’s content ranges from recipes to Biblical readings, from weather and traffic warnings to live country music. When one member of the community can’t reach someone, they can always call into the station and have their message broadcasted for everyone to hear in hopes it will find the intended friend or relative.

            CBQM unifies Fort McPherson’s residents because it represents something they are all passionate about: their community. Throughout the film, people are depicted listening to the station in their cars, their homes, and wherever else there is a signal. The radio station acts as a source of entertainment, information, and spirituality, thus cultivating a stronger bond between residents who are otherwise bound only by geographic isolation. Due to being constantly tuned in to the radio, the townsfolk are also tuned in to each other, and this fosters an exceptionally compassionate and involved community.

The Blurred Division Between Homage and Parody

            Although there is no cut-and-dry formula for what kind of media is acceptable to reproduce and what is not, the media’s context is always essential to how that media is interpreted. With David Novak’s example of the song “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” from his article “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood,” the film Ghost World only takes the song out of context to an extent, wherein the original film clip can be seen within the film. The song and dance are not remade, because even though the film’s protagonist, Enid, dances along with the clip, it is the original material that is showcased. In this case, the song, while viewed out of its original context in Gumnaam (1965), is still technically in its original form. Additionally, because the song is “both a tribute to and a mockery of the early rock-and-roll styles that its mirrors” (Novak 2010:43), the video is in a sense being recontextualized into the very same environment it was inspired by.

            Contrarily, the performance by Heavenly Ten Stems was interrupted by a group of protesters who rejected their appropriation of Asian popular music. The difference between this instance of remediation and the featuring of “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” in Ghost World is in that the band is a group of mostly Caucasian musicians who know little about the significance of the content they’re performing, despite their involvement with the Asian-American community in San Francisco and their defense that it was a tribute to the artists and culture, not a parody (Novak 2010:60). In one protester’s view, the various costumes donned onstage (including dress from Indian and Korean tradition) took the concept too far and claimed that the band “did not just perform foreign music, but appropriated foreign identities” (Novak 2010:61). She took issue with power differences and contradicted the band’s claim that a Chinese person performing a cover of an Elvis song is the same thing.

            A prominent example of an instance wherein cultural appropriation is acceptable and even celebrated is in the works of Picasso’s “periode nègre”, the paintings that were primarily influenced by African masks, including his early Cubist Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907), which features figures whose faces are clearly reminiscent of the masks. In a 2006 article from The Guardian, the positive effect of Picasso’s work on contemporary African artists is discussed, one source claiming that Picasso’s works being exhibited in South Africa, alongside native art, make it so “unknown artists who made the masks and sculptures are validated” (Meldrum 2006). The exhibit’s presence allows the inspiration to come full-circle, in that the Picasso is now inspiring young African artists, just as they inspired him.

 (image from http://lsnfashion.blogspot.com/2010/06/trends-per-continent-japan-harajuku.html)

            Just as Picasso was inspired by traditional African art, Gwen Stefani was inspired by urban Japanese culture, which was made obvious with her solo debut, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (2004), and her posse of “Harajuku Girls”, four women with Japanese heritage who acted both as her backup dancers during live performances and also as her entourage. Unlike Picasso, however, several Asian-American women took issue with her disregard for Asian culture, the comedian Margaret Cho turning to her blog to comment, “I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don’t want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get,” (Cho 2005). In comparing Stefani’s posse to a “minstrel show”, a 19^th century stage performance that would feature white actors in blackface, Cho demonstrates how the appropriation of Japanese culture in this circumstance is overtly ridiculous and offensive. Another writer spoke out against Stefani’s treatment of the women as if they were her pets: “Stefani has taken the idea of Japanese street fashion and turned these women into modern-day geisha, contractually obligated to speak only Japanese in public, even though it's rumored they're just plain old Americans and their English is just fine,” (Ahn 2005).

            The difference between these two examples lies in a grey area, leaving consumers to figure out what exactly makes Picasso’s art worth celebrating and Gwen Stefani’s infusion of Japanese culture into her solo career condemnable. It begs the question, does intent matter? Clearly, Stefani intends to showcase her admiration for Japanese urban street style, but that did not make her Harajuku Girls acceptable in the eyes of Cho, Anh, and others. There is definite tension between tribute and mockery (Novak 2010:64) and it is acknowledged that recognizing oneself as an artist in the modification of or homage to a work requires the removal of the emphasis initially placed on its origin.