Graffiti goes to the movies: American fictional films featuring graffiti artists/writers and themes

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, in addition to the increase in graffiti and street art in many urban contexts, a number of movies have been made that have either examined this phenomenon and the people who engage in this activity, or used graffiti and street art as a backdrop to tell a story. This article briefly reviews the scholarly literature that examines movies that portray criminals and criminal actions, and then analyzes seven American-produced fictional (drama) films using graffiti writers/artists as major characters and then draws generalizations about them. Although this is not a semiotic analysis of the films, to the extent possible, it delves into the settings, plots, characters, dialog, and how realistic the movies appear to be. In general, most of the films include unrealistic aspects and/or are of poor quality, and this contributes to misrepresentations of and stereotypes about graffiti writers/writing.

Keywords:

• graffiti
• film
• art
• streets
• crime

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Rachel Hildebrant and Aaron Z. Winter, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although many definitions of graffiti/street art exist, ‘graffiti’ generally refers to words, figures, pictures, caricatures, and images that have been written, drawn, scratched, engraved, or painted on surfaces where the owner of the property has NOT given permission for this activity. Street Art, on the other hand, refers to stencils, stickers, and wheat-pasted posters (i.e. of a noncommercial/advertising variety) that are affixed to surfaces, where the owner of the property has NOT given permission for this kind of activity (Ross, 2013). The world of graffiti and street art is more complicated than these basic distinctions (e.g. Waclawek, 2011), and includes numerous subtypes and participants, but for current purposes, these definitions will suffice. At a bare minimum, because of their illegal nature, graffiti and street art are acts of vandalism.

2. The writer uses the terms graffiti artist and graffiti writer interchangeably throughout this study.

3. It would be useful to include fictional movies on street art; however, the researcher could not locate any.

4. The investigator recognizes that there has been broad scholarly discourse on how commercial movies have treated prisons, prisoners, and correctional offers, and thus the research mentioned here are done for illustrative purposes.

5. Given that the origins of contemporary graffiti and street art are American, an argument might be made for the importance of movies that originate from the USA.

6. Although the researcher considered developing a coding sheet and having other researchers/research assistants engage in this process too, it was determined that little value added would be achieved by this process.

7. For reasons unknown to the writer, this movie has been released with two different titles.

8. In all likelihood, there are numerous movies made by film students that are of a fictional nature; however, the ones reviewed here are well known and have, in some, respects achieved a cult status. Noticeably absent is Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop. Although some critics have suggested that the film has fictional elements, it was designed to be a documentary, and thus for purposes of classification the researcher will keep it in this category. Also missing is Beat Street, which focuses disproportionately on dance and DJing, and Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, which is an animated movie based on a video game.

9. Closely related to this trend is the graffiti writer, who despite his attempts to go straight has friends who pull him back into the game. For example, in Transit, Shifty encourages Ritchie to continue writing, despite being on parole, and his inclination to stop.

10. My comment is not to dismiss the importance of “beefs” in a graffiti writers’ career (e.g., Snyder, 2009), but the dominance of these kinds of events and why they are included in almost all of these films.