September 20, 2005
The Writing on the Walls
Every morning I wake up early and sluggishly drive to the nearest super market to grab a fresh stack of Bahamian newspapers. Usually, I come back with a collection of tasteful stories and entertaining articles that ride shotgun, bringing home enough news stories to keep me occupied and up-to-date on what's going on around here.
Today, as I flipped through The Guardian, I found an odd (somewhat comical) two-page spread on an ongoing vandalism problem here in the Bahamas. The pictures associated with the story showed illiterate scribbling spray painted onto the sides of buildings. The Guardian then had the nerve to label this tacky act of vandalism "graffiti art".
Art? For them to call this "art" is like when Bahamian juries convict moral less, cold-blooded murderers of manslaughter. My point? It's a total perversion of the word and I'm offended that such "educated" writers at The Guardian wouldn't be able to distinguish between the two.
The story, which glared a bold black title of "Living in Graffiti Hell" came accompanied with two pictures, both of which don't even come close to graffiti art. One photo showed the words (yes, they were words, not art) like 'gun', 'dogs' and 'talaban', the latter of the three words spelled incorrectly. The other picture looked like mindless finger-paintings a first-grader would bring home to his mother after a day of arts and crafts. If I scribbled the date on the side of an abandoned building, would you call me a graffiti artist? No, you'd call me an idiot.
The Guardian also went to such lengths, to show what a problem this was, by claiming that "graffiti artists are turning street culture into a crime". Street culture? Since when does writing profanities in black spray paint qualify as street culture? And why would anyone ever associate that with Bahamian culture? When I think of Bahamian culture I think of Junkanoo, I think of the National Art Gallery, I think of the dynamic young Caribbean filmmakers featured at the Bahamas International Film Festival. Not some dime store hoodlums who spray paint the name of their baby's mama on the side of a department store.
If you want to see real graffiti art, go to New York, LA, Detroit or Chicago, Meccas of real street culture and graffiti art. Admire the beautiful murals that real artists spend countless hours on, to create a work of art, not just broken sentences and chicken scratches.
I wonder if the editors at The Guardian have ever witnessed graffiti hell. You want to see graffiti hell? Visit the Watts Section of Los Angeles where street gangs pride themselves in their urban art and can spark wars by spray painting the wrong design onto the wrong building. The Bahamas doesn't have "graffiti hell", they have a pack of punks with a mind for vandalism.
The term "graffiti art" wasn't originated until a legendary artist named Keith Hering decided to express his art on the New York subways. Up until that time, graffiti was just another form of vandalism and had never been really viewed as a new style of art. Hering, who passed away from AIDS in 1990, was responsible for more than 50 public artworks during a seven year span, in numerous cities around the world. His infamous "Crack is Wack" mural has become a landmark along New York’s FDR Drive. Hering is also responsible for a mural on the exterior of Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, France, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. He also painted a historical mural on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before its fall. Hering revolutionized graffiti (and urban art itself) and will go down in history as the originator of true graffiti art.
With that said, The Guardian should be ashamed to publish such irresponsible journalism and the Bahamian media should start calling a spade a spade. Whether the topic focuses on reckless acts of vandalism or pre-meditated murder passing as manslaughter, the media, the watchdog for truth in any democratic society, shouldn't try to call something by another name. You'd be offended if someone repeatedly called you by the wrong name, wouldn't you?
The Bahamian media, The Guardian especially, needs to step up the quality of their journalism and realize that hiding the truth and sugarcoating the news only works in communist countries. So please, step up your reporting. Of course, if you don't, I won't have to drive to the supermarket to pick up The Guardian anymore. I can just read the garbage scribbled on the side of an abandoned daycare centre, call it news, and save myself a few bucks a week.
Posted by admin at September 20, 2005 06:01 PM | TrackBack