Sunday, July 13, 2008

Banksy Unmasked. Again

Yes, he is Brad Pitt. I may have got that wrong; I tend only to look at pictures and headlines. And, wait a minute, he is 'perhaps all too predictably, a former public schoolboy brought up in middle-class suburbia'. What does that mean? Are people around the country nodding knowingly through the haze of their metabolic syndrome? 'Ah yes, wouldn't you know it? A former public schoolboy.... Another muffin with extra sugar please.' Unlikely. I suppose the point being made is that radical subversives tend to come from the most privileged classes, which may be true. This, in turn, means they are not really radical or subversive, they're just playing at it, which may also be true. The working and proper middle class, meanwhile, are doggedly conformist and would like nothing better than to die for their country in a daring but futile raid led by a colonel with an unlikely name that isn't pronounced as it's spelt and whose ancestors drove the Neanderthals out of Northern Europe. Mind you I bet that Bansky, when push came to shove, would make a pretty decent dead lieutenant mourned by his potato faced underlings There's nothing like the class fantasy to hold us all together as a nation.

7 comments:

  1. I feel a Spartacus moment imminent.
    My favourite stunt was the primitive art shopping trolley on an ancient ceramic which he hung in some museum, complete with ''authoritative'' explanatory caption. Some people actually thought it unremarkable, which is great!

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  2. Bastard. I was going to do this on Nigeness. Hey ho...

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  3. The media loves to nail 'em as toffs/ semi toffs in disguise, poor old John Peel "not a real west midlands accent you know, he went to public school".

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  4. Oh, why do they have to spoil everything?

    As a Bristolian I feel a sort of patriotic pride about Banksy.

    When the astonishing 'Mild Mild West' appeared in Stokes Croft I rushed home, interrupting my walk to work, to grab a camera, thinking the council would remove it. That was 8 or 9 years ago I think - it's still there and is probably protected as a heritage site.

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  5. A day of revelation: Egon Schiele

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  6. How disturbing, Anonymous - i don't even know exactly who Egon Schiele is.

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  7. Hmm, having Googled him i see we have similar hair and a rather macabre expression.

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