The Case for Fast Exits and Misspeaking

First off, Paul Henry.

Moosetastic has already gone into this. The Greens are outraged. Commentators are out for blood - though perhaps the cry of Tall Poppy Syndrome is not far away.

At first, when I was unsure whether the Governor General was a naturalised New Zealander or not, I was just mildly offended by Henry's statement. Then, upon hearing what the Governor General sounds like (he sounds more Kiwi than me, I think; and in fact, he probably IS more Kiwi than me), my offended setting went from mild to well done.

The reaction "out there" though has been the more interesting thing. New Zealanders should be able to say what they think, and it is encouraging to see that a lot of people are outraged. TVNZ should be shot for claiming Henry is saying what a lot of people are thinking, as blaming the "silent majority" is never an excuse for allowing extremist views, when saying that he just has extremist views is (in my opinion) a completely valid reason.

This is a great chance to actually debate and discuss this kind of thing, to expose some of the underlying assumptions made by people who really don't think about this a great deal and so can say some fairly hurtful things they might not necessarily mean. It's perhaps time for the shock jock to realise what most people know: that there are repercussions to saying things like this, and so you better be ready to face those consequences or else just stop.
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I wasn't - and perhaps am still not - quite sure what to make of Exit through the Gift Shop.

The film was a festival hit, now on general release, and had even inspired the Lighthouse in Petone to such an extent that they had an artist paint their exterior in homage to the film. It wasn't one of my first choices at the festival, but the premise sounded interesting enough to warrant a view, and so in I went, expecting to learn a bit more about street art and the mysterious and famous Banksy.

Straight off, I was wrong. I learned next to nothing about street art - origins, motivations, influences - though I did get a good dose of what it looked like. The film introduces a few of the more well known artists, though only one or two are actually seen, as the rest had their faces covered and voices altered to avoid the authorities knowing who these graffiti artists are.

Instead, the film actually seems to follow the video documenter of the movement, a roguish Frenchman living in the Los Angeles with a knack for turning rubbish into highly desirable objects for the trendy, and obsessed (for a while at least) with filming things and people, eventually stumbling on this artistic niche through a relative. Unfortunately, for me at least, his early life is quite dull, and thus a lot of the first half of the film is too, with lots of images of people posting art in public places - and that's about it.

The film gets more interesting when Banksy gets involved, his political statements making thought provoking viewing though these are not really discussed in any meaningful way besides the "how we made it" detail. The interest level increases again when the Frenchman leaves the filmmaking behind to concentrate more on developing art himself, though the film also gets a bit surreal, and I found it hard to take the "documentary" seriously. Really, it seems to turn into a more subtle Borat, where the most interesting characters are no longer the subjects of the film but rather those the subjects encounter, the world out there starting to appreciate street art in the way it knows easiest to do: as a means of making money. One woman wanders through her house, proud of her (expensive) collection, but admitting that she actually dislikes her prominently displayed Keith Harring artwork, whereas her (supposedly) cherished Banksy is hidden in a cupboard somewhere.

The film publicity describes it as watching a train wreck, but for me, the whole "Frenchie-finds-art" ending, foreshadowed as it was by his history in clothing, felt too staged to be real, and so the train wreck itself ended up like watching an episode of the Office rather than of real people, in that there probably are people and situations like that out there, but that this was just an approximation. Some of the comments too felt entirely scripted, designed to be funny rather than incidentally so.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. It could all have been utterly real, the story organic. If so, then the documentary is actually a bit rubbish, and fairly unenlightening. However, as a story, as a work of art possibly designed to make people think about how we view art, then, for me at least, it worked a lot better.

Verdict: It's hard for me to rate Exit Through the Gift Shop, as I am not altogether sure I really understood it. On face value, it is unenlightening if occasionally amusing, a documentary with no depth as it were. If I try and put more into it, it is again fairly unenlightening about the subjects, but more interesting in what it says about how street art is viewed. I did laugh a lot in the second half, but my brow was furrowed trying to figure out if I was laughing at reality or just a well executed scene. That furrowed brow extends to my final rating: 6.5 OBEYs out of 10.