Banksy, masked artist and media darling, gave an interview last month (via) in which he attempted to defend the veracity of his movie Exit Through the Gift Shop. Basically, enough of a stink has been raised about whether or not the film, and its precocious French lead, is all an elaborately planned hoax that the theory has its own footnoted section on the movie’s Wikipedia article. But just because it’s a prank, doesn’t mean it can’t be accidental.
It’s a kind of quantum prank, it’s both a joke and not a joke at the same time. It’s like truthfully telling someone that you’re lying to them. It’s what happens when, justly or not, no one trusts you. Whether or not Banksy and company hoped, or at least suspected, that people might think it was all a prank, once it happened they just went with it.
These are the words of a man looking right into the camera:
I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.
Now that the public has reacted, they can play around with it. Banksy is self aware enough to know that interviews like this make him sound like the aspirationally autobiographical main character of a bad cyberpunk wish fulfillment novel. Tens of thousands of such things are rolling around unfinished in the heads of the exact kind people who like to see street art movies and talk about them on-line. In this simple, e-mail(!) background article, he talks about being a messy drunk, believing in his art so strongly that he’s willing to be ostracized by his peers for it, and even the moment of humiliation when he’s sitting anonymous in the theater:
Unfortunately I haven’t seen it with an audience. The nearest I got was going to the cinema to see ‘Precious’. They played my trailer beforehand and someone two rows in front shouted ‘OH MY GOD, BANKSY IS SUCH A SELL-OUT’ and I shrank into my seat.
You can practically picture Peter Parker slinking down into his chair in the middle of a comic pane that went to large font and two exclamation marks for an all caps “Spider-Man is a Terrorist”.
Because when he’s not sneaking into Israel, shutting down Disneyland, or otherwise epically pissing off the squares, Banksy is just as much a character as Spider-Man or Batman. It doesn’t say “Banksy” on his passport, it’s not what his mother calls him. Whatever his real name, somewhere there is an awkward yearbook photo of this guy, just like the rest of us.
The entire thing is shot through with teasing references to falsehood like this one:
Besides, if the movie was a carefully scripted prank you can be sure I would’ve given myself some better lines. I would’ve meticulously planned my spontaneous off-the-cuff remarks. I love that famous Jack Benny come-back to a heckler – “You wouldn’t say that if my writers were here.” But I’ve always wondered – did his writers tell him to say that?
And this one:
I’d be lying if I told you the first time I met him I thought ‘this man’s life will deliver a good narrative arc’.
I’m not trying to paint this humble interview as some kind of carefully crafted word sculpture. Nor do I think anyone set out to create something fake in Thierry/Mr. Brainwash. This wasn’t a nearly decade long prank planned in advance that would require a ton of people, including a not yet famous Shepard Fairey and Thierry’s wife, to keep up with for years.
Instead, I suspect that somewhere in the act of making this, they realized that at least some people would think it was a fake. If they didn’t during, then they certainly realized it right after. Remember, these are people accustomed to finding inviting surfaces amid the harsh angles of a modern city, they know an opportunity when they see one.
I know the above sounds a little conspiratorial, but keep in mind that regular conspiracy theories require intricate chains of events and massive forethought on the part of the planners. The Birthers believe in a conspiracy that foresaw events forty years in advance for fuck’s sake. Whereas in this scenario, the only thing the people have to do is be themselves. After all, if at least a few people already suspect you’re lying all the time, why not tell the truth?
