Exit Through the Gift Shop

by: Owen Gleiberman

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a marvelous, one-of-a-kind contraption, a joyfully spinning top of a movie that keeps zigging and zagging and taking the audience right along with it. It’s easily the cream of this month’s crop of movies, though it’s so tricky and layered that before I saw it, everything I’d heard about it made it sound a little…complicated. Maybe even intimidating. Not to worry: For all its through-the-looking-glass playfulness, it is really, at heart, a vividly direct and witty and biting look at the world of contemporary street art.

A lot of the kick of the movie is that the art itself is so much damn fun. There have been rumors, from the outset, that Exit Through the Gift Shop is a fake, a very crafty put-on documentary. I actually think that something quite the opposite is true; it’s more genuine than it knows. The movie is billed as “a Banksy film,” which implies that Banksy, the hit-and-run virtuoso of underground British street art (he’s one of the movie’s prime subjects), directed it, or at the very least that he’s pulling the strings. But such is the magic of Exit Through the Gift Shop that the movie’s ultimate what is art? joke comes almost directly at Banksy’s expense. And it’s not even clear that he’s fully aware of the joke’s ramifications.

Much of the giddy high of street art is that it’s so toyish and graphically simple and childlike and accessible. The film’s central figure, Thierry Guetta (pictured at left), is a French-born Los Angeles boutique owner who, in the late 1990s, becomes obsessed with videotaping street artists in the act of putting up their guerrilla installations. It’s through Guetta, who as many have noted resembles a Gallic hipster- bourgeois Ron Jeremy, that we come to know such prominent street artists as Guetta’s cousin, who goes by the nom de plume Space Invader, or Shepard Fairey, the young man who later became famous for his Obama “Hope” poster, and who is here represented by what was (until then) his most celebrated and relentlessly repeated image: a faux-fascist print of a scowling face (it’s taken from a shot of Andre the Giant) underscored by the word “OBEY.” Fairey plastered this image everywhere he could — on walls, curbsides, billboards — and its message, though somewhat free-floating, would seem to be this: We’re living in a media society that, though politically free, has a fascist spirit, a world that keeps giving us orders through images.

 

This kind of mock-didactic message-mongering is a hallmark of the new wave of street art, and in many ways its godmother is the artist Barbara Kruger, who in the early ’90s featured cut-out Big Brother slogans (I Shop Therefore I Am, Your Body Is a Battleground) imposed, with maximum irony, on top of iconic photographs. If Kruger is the muse of the Shepard Fairey generation, the other ancestral art god who hovers over Exit Through the Gift Shop is Claes Oldenburg, the celebrated Swedish museum prankster known for his giant sculptures of badminton birdies, cigarette butts, and what have you. Banksy takes a major page from Oldenburg when he deposits a beautifully wrecked London telephone booth on the street. This is “art” as Candid Camera — it’s really all about seeing what passersby will do — and Banksy then ups the ante by depositing a dummy version of a Guantanamo-prisoner-in-orange-jumpsuit right into the middle of Disneyland. The sheer danger of staging this stunt feeds right into the Banksy mystique. He’s the artist as hooded outlaw, seen only in tabloid-TV silhouette, an invisible man too fatally cool to emerge from the shadows.

Is his art political? Yes, indeed. But sort of the way that the hippies were political. I loved the rascally audacity of Banksy’s creations, but at the same time, there’s a naive undercurrent to the implication that the street art we’re seeing in Exit Through the Gift Shop is somehow “subversive.” And where that naiveté truly comes into focus is in the second half of the film, when Thierry Guetta decides to become an artist himself. Taking a page from Banksy, who had already crossed over into the world of expensively chic high-end gallery shows, Guetta rents out a Los Angeles warehouse and mounts his own outrageous grab bag of an art show.

Calling himself Mr. Brainwash, he shamelessly appropriates ideas from all the street artists he’s chronicled, and he also rips off, flagrantly and openly, Andy Warhol. But it’s not just that he “lifts” some of Warhol’s most famous images — like the Marilyn Monroe silkscreens (only now with the face of Michael Jackson, and other celebrities, grafted onto Monroe’s glowing blond sex halo). In a strange way, he does to Warhol what Warhol did to the straight art world. Guetta’s most ingenious creation is an eight-foot-tall spray can of Campbell’s tomato soup — that spray can being, in effect, a vehicle for mass-producing Warhol’s most famously mass-produced image of mass-production-as-art. Would Warhol himself, if he saw that spray can (or those Michael Monroes), turn over in his grave? Or would he laugh at the pop-art-is-dead/long-live-pop-art spectacular awfulness of it?

One thing is for sure: As you watch Exit Through the Gift Shop, the movie — which is to say, Banksy — encourages you to look down your nose at Thierry Guetta, to see him as a huckster vulgarian who represents the end of art. And he is. But unless I’m seriously missing something, what Banksy doesn’t seem to realize is that he’s precisely the wrong messenger for that condemnation. In Exit Through the Gift Shop, Thierry Guetta is supposed to represent the ultimate commodification of street art, but what he really represents is the playful, happily brainwashed, do-what-you-dare fulfillment of it. He outdoes Banksy at his own game by taking him all the way to the bank.

EXTENDED TRAILER:

 

http://movie-critics.ew.com/2010/04/21/exit-through-the-gift-shop-art-as...

 

Pirate Radio

 PIRATE RADIO (2009)

<!--StartFragment-->

Plot:

“Carl (Tom Sturridge) arrives on the pirate radio ship, Radio Rock, after being sent to stay with the ship's Captain, his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), to hopefully set his life on a different track after being expelled from school. Here he meets Radio Rock's crew of ramshackle disc jockeys, led by The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a buoyant rock-loving American, along with the suave and bawdy Dave (Nick Frost) and the naive but good hearted Simon (Chris O'Dowd). Also filling the airwaves is self proclaimed New Zealand "nut," Angus (Rhys Darby), the mysterious Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom) and the even more mysterious, reclusive and downright disillusioned late-night DJ Smooth Bob (Ralph Brown). Serving as the ship's crew are the shy lesbian cook Felicity (Katherine Parkinson) and radio assistants, Harold (Ike Hamilton) and the appropriately nicknamed Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke).” –Courtesy of wikipedia.com

 

This film is about Radio Rock, a pirate radio station that was operating off the shores of England in the 60’s. It follows the lives of a tight-knit group of airwave usurpers that are bringing rock-n-roll to fans longing to absorb its auditory splendor. They essentially live the lives of rock stars, by playing the music of rock stars. The sub-story is more like an American Pie film: young man goes on great adventure to get laid. Now keep in mind, this film is “based” on a true story, however it is hardly a true story. The truthiness of the plot is: “radio stations that were unsanctioned by the government broadcasted from ships.” Though many of the characters were based off of ‘real-life’ DJs, it is still more fictional than anything.

 

So what is this film trying to say? They story essentially tells us that when you are passionate about something, and when you love something enough, you should be willing to die for it. It is a story of the few who are willing to stand up to a ruthless government to defend what they believe in. It is sort of a ‘less bloody’ V for Vendetta. The government viewed their dissent as a crime against the government, but a government is supposed to be representative of the people, and the film essentially stated that the majority of Brits were listening to Radio Rock. So it was up to the DJs of Radio Rock to stand up to “the man”.

 

This film, which like I said is mostly fiction, is definitely worth seeing in theatres. The visuals and the soundtrack are amazing, and the momentum of the story keeps you “tuned-in”. In a way, the young Carl is a representation of the audience: he is going to the ship and experiencing what the DJs are experiencing, for us. It is sort of an “imagine yourself in this situation” kind of experience. However, the American-Pie-esque-ness was a little annoying. What also bothered me (SPOILER ALERT?) was the Top Gun ending of the film. If you don’t remember how Top Gun ends, you will by the end of this film (talk to me Goose). The film, by the end, is inspiring and really makes you want to “stick it to the man” (and by “the man” I mean the FCC).

Trailer:

 

<!--EndFragment-->

 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

 

Review by Andrew Bunker-- (of El Roberto Productions)

 History can happen sometimes while nobody is expecting it. And then there are times when a camera is present to document everything as it unfolds. On April 11, 2002, when an Irish documentary film crew that had been covering Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was able to film a dramatic coup that unseated him (briefly) and installed a powerful businessman, Pedro Carmona, as president.

<!--StartFragment-->

 

Concerned about Chavez’s rhetoric of redistributing the nations oil wealth amongst its people, the powerful elite decided to remove him  from power – though, in a frustrating fashion, the film doesn’t get into much detail here. The privately owned media channels utilized the elite’s anger and proclaimed a massive protest against Chavez on April 10, 2002. Though the film shows the glaring differences between Chavez’s supporters (generally poor and dark-skinned) and those of his enemies (wealthier-seeming and white, for the most part), they don’t explain how the opposition was able to pull together the thousands of protesters who showed up that day (elites being, by their nature, not especially numerous). It turns out that the opposition had the support of the country’s trade unions and that Venezuela was at the time of

the coup engulfed in huge, crippling strikes; again, these are details that would have been helpful for the film to include. However, its also important to note that in the documentary, its shown that footage that was broadcast by the privately owned news outlets in Venezuela was clearly manipulated in a variety of ways in the oppositions favor throughout the film. Film can be made to lie, as this is clearly one of arguments of the pro-Chavez supporters. If private TV lied to the nation in support of the coup, you could argue that the doc itself is clearly biased in favor of Chavez - most clearly so in depicting his opponents. When the right-wing leaders are introduced, it's in slo-motion, and with depressing music. All done for dramatic effect.

 

The events captured in the film are undeniable dramatic and make for great theater....but you can ask the question why no one on either side thought to question the presence of the TV crew is a mystery, but they got an inside look at a coup - before, during and after which is unique in film history. However, despite having this one of a kind opportunity, the filmamkers of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised barely touch its subject. Potentially important facts like the likelihood of U.S. support (or at least verbal approval) for the opposition coup is barely expounded upon, except for an interview of Colin Powell where he provides a few negative remarks about the Government of Hugo Chavez. It is of course impossible to prove that the coup was sponsored by the U.S. government, but what was the purpose when the U.S. welcomed two of the anti-government leaders who soon after were instrumental in the coup? Why would the U.S. be interested in Venezuela? Because its the fourth largest oil-producing nation on the planet and its price has been guaranteed by the nation's ruling class.

The bottom line....the film leaves the viewer wondering...what's the position of the filmmakers? Unfortunately, the film is clearly one-sided and the filmmakers end up more as propagandists then documentarians. I would recommend watching this film for its interesting take on a coup as its happening and basically as pure entertainment.

 

Watch the full film! You're welcome.

<!--EndFragment-->

 

VIDEO REVIEW: Exit Through the Gift Shop

Brought to you by artepolitik.com and El Roberto Productions

http://theelroberto.blogspot.com