Wild Style: Street Art

OUTLAWS & VIGILANTES

In chapter three of The Tipping Point (2002), Malcolm Gladwell postulates a theory about the "Subway Vigilante" case--the incident in which Bernie Goetz shot four alleged muggers on the subway on December 22, 1984. He does not condone Goetz's actions, nor sympathize with them, but he does interpret this incident as the inevitable culmination of an urban crime wave that had been in formation for over a decade.

Gladwell suggests that the solution to the crime epidemic lay in altering context--in other words, in trying to make changes in spaces as opposed to trying to make them in people. A healthy chunk of the chapter, in fact, is devoted to examing the results of the NYPD's strategy of cracking down on graffiti. According to a corollary of the "Tipping Point" theory, the "Broken Windows" theory, graffiti telegraphs a message to people that no one cares about the environment so graffitoed--that if people have been allowed to deface the property and no one has cleaned it up, then anything goes. The analogy at play: imagine an abandoned house with lots of windows. Once one kid throws a rock through the window, others will quickly follow suit--because the broken window communicates neglect. And once you've got one abandoned house with broken windows... there goes the neighborhood.

Or something to that effect.

So if you consistently punish the train painters, say, and routinely repaint trains that have been tagged, it functions as a means of illustrating that someone is on the lookout, someone is always watching. Someone cares about the little things and therefore cares exponentially about the big things.

SUBWAYS CAN BE SCARY--BUT GRAFFITI AIN'T WHY

I'll admit that I found the subways in the era Gladwell examines ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING, and will only reluctantly ride the subway to this day (ask anyone--I'll gladly walk three miles in the rain to avoid it). For this irrational fear, I blame a subway scene from the movie The Wiz (the glorious 1978 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and a comically inept Toto) in which the fearsome foursome is variously imperiled by giant puppets, hungry trash cans, and dislodged columns.

Here--some stills from the film, submitted for your edification:

Traumatizing? Absolutely. And surely the filmmakers are playing with the idea that subway stations can be menacing, even terrifying places. But man, at least in these shots, these subways are clean. You could practically eat off the Yellow Brick Floor.

Of course, pictures I've seen of the subways in the 1980's certainly lend credence to Gladwell's theory that context contributes far more meaningfully to human behavior, be it bad or good, than we have previously understood. And he provides some pretty compelling evidence to support a very tidy theory about how crime rates plummeted as subways and stations got cleaner.

Nevertheless, there's something unappealing about Gladwell's conclusion--something vaguely fascistic. Perhaps it would be instructive to pair a reading of The Tipping Point--or at least this chapter of it--with  the 1983 film Wild Style. which importantly documents the subversive street culture movement that was already fully underway that fateful night in December when Goetz pulled out his gun in a dispute over (allegedly) five dollars. This artistic explosion is itself an expression of discontent and a cry for change--but a life-giving, life-affirming one. Por ejemplo:

ART FOR THE PEOPLE

As the photos below make clear,  real street art can enhance a space, even redefine it---it says that someone cares enough about it to beautify it, to take ownership of it, even when those who inhabit that space may be politically and economically marginalized. And yet even as it beautifies, it protests the very conditions it transforms.

Need proof? See the images below. Just a smattering picked up from the interwebs.

 

As with many things I love, I know the boat on street art sailed long ago. It's far from the politically subversive force it was even ten years ago. Space Invader gets commissioned to create installations for people's homes. Shepard Ferry is now on the museum circuit. Exit Through the Gift Shop was a huge hit (and awesome!).

But no matter how mainstream it's become, it still functions as voice of discontent. An expression of the will to adorn in circumstances that demand adornment as a principle of survival. And as a means of expressing urgent messages that need to be heard, and are often heard too late.