(no subject)
I took these excerpts from an essay by James E. Walmesley, called “In The Beginning, There Was The Word”
Despite what many mayors, community leaders, and anti-graffiti campaigners will have you believe, writers are not vandalizing. They are advertising. It is no surprise that it was in America that the writing subculture began. In a culture steeped in advertising and promotion, where if your name is not up in lights then you haven’t succeeded, the marginalized and ignored saw a chance to advertise them selves, and, in so doing “…could represent the symbolic re-occupation of an estranged environment.”
To preserve their power, moral entrepreneurs have to convince the public that they have total domination, as well as fooling them into believing they are free to act as they wish. Areas such as “pedestrian malls, urban walkways, [and] shopping mall art exhibitions…”are all “…designed to enhance consumption, satisfaction and control…” They are representative of “…the pleasant face of authority, the comfortable flipside to barbed wire and jail cells,” and thus “…they mythologize ‘public’ space and art, seducing citizens into environments which are at least their own.” Consequently, when writers leave their mark on these places, it disrupts the authoritarian aesthetic and poses a threat to the dominant ideology. To regain control, the dominate class presents writers as vandals, implying through rhetoric and exaggeration that they are a real threat to society and the public [and thus] induces a sense of moral panic.
NY tomorrow...
Despite what many mayors, community leaders, and anti-graffiti campaigners will have you believe, writers are not vandalizing. They are advertising. It is no surprise that it was in America that the writing subculture began. In a culture steeped in advertising and promotion, where if your name is not up in lights then you haven’t succeeded, the marginalized and ignored saw a chance to advertise them selves, and, in so doing “…could represent the symbolic re-occupation of an estranged environment.”
To preserve their power, moral entrepreneurs have to convince the public that they have total domination, as well as fooling them into believing they are free to act as they wish. Areas such as “pedestrian malls, urban walkways, [and] shopping mall art exhibitions…”are all “…designed to enhance consumption, satisfaction and control…” They are representative of “…the pleasant face of authority, the comfortable flipside to barbed wire and jail cells,” and thus “…they mythologize ‘public’ space and art, seducing citizens into environments which are at least their own.” Consequently, when writers leave their mark on these places, it disrupts the authoritarian aesthetic and poses a threat to the dominant ideology. To regain control, the dominate class presents writers as vandals, implying through rhetoric and exaggeration that they are a real threat to society and the public [and thus] induces a sense of moral panic.
NY tomorrow...