MovieChat Forums > Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) Discussion > I CANT BELIEVE YOU GUYS DON'T GET IT

I CANT BELIEVE YOU GUYS DON'T GET IT

posted 15 years ago by csenoner
256 replies | jump to latest

The movie is a satire. It is a critique of the contemporary art world. The over-commercializtion and exploitation of street art. why do you think its called exit through the gift shop? that should tell it all right there.

It is not a documentary.

They set everyone up with the stupid Mr. Brainwash Show in LA and convinced a bunch of sheep that the BS 'art' they made was brilliant. all those people, thousands of them were there because they bought into the hype machine and turned a joke into a success.

I am not quite sure if the art really sold for as much as he said. It could have, or maybe its an exaggeration, but it doesnt really matter.

what matters is that all those people didnt look at the crap on the walls and say 'this is not art, this sucks', they bought into the hype and loved it. Why? cuz they go with the flow, they dont develop their own opinions, but rather follow popular opinion.

The experiment proves that if you take a bunch of garbage, throw it on the wall in a huge 'gallery' and have big artists say its the real deal, people will show up and love it cuz they are idiots.

the movie just chronicles this. who knows if guetta is a real character or not. it doesnt matter. he was in on it weather thats his real name or not. The whole thing is a farce. I can't believe no one gets it. I mean by the end of the movie its almost as if they are not even trying to keep up the guise of the documentary going. it gets so out of whack that it should be obvious that its all a joke.

Guetta supposedly started filming in like 2007. he wasnt documenting the birth of street art. he was documenting the death of street art. this has been going on for years. and no i dont mean grafitti. i mean street art, stencils, print outs wheat pasted up. all of that filming happened over the last few years after all of those artists were well established. that footage wasnt home movie footage. it was shot for the purpose of the mockumentary, to make it seem like this guy was a filmmaker documenting street art (i didnt see any old school footage of old school grafitti. how can you tell the story of the birth of street art without telling the story of grafitti. just shows that wasnt the point of the movie). all of the footage was shot to etablish the creation of a fictitious character. this is what creates the whole story. this is the foundation for this supposed documentary. if guetta is the filmaker then why is the camera on him the whole time, even before banksy flipped it on him. who is the guy really behind the camera? ever think of that? the whole storyline about guetta's youth and how he filmed everything in life etc- its all made up.

you think if you show a bunch of video cassettes scattered around a room in boxes that that means its all full of actual footage, years of footage? of course it isnt. it helps to create this ridiculous character and this ridiculous fake movie that he was making (or not making as he shot and shot and didnt edit)so that Banksy could takeover the project. It was all a plan from the beginning.

sorry, maybe life remote control was weird and insane, but it was supposed to seem like that. again, to create a reason for banksy to take over. a guy who has never edited video in his life can not make that movie. it was strange but the editing was no amateur *beep* that was professionally made to look kinda crappy. why? to give a reason for banksy to take over. Why? so he could 'turn the cameras on guetta', who was supposedly a far more interesting story.

he wasnt an interesting figure that needed to be filmed. it became an interesting story after they started filming him , once he became a star. So why did they start filming him in the first place? why would banksy take so much interest in this guy? cuz he didnt give him up to the uber dangerous Disney Land security??? No it was because the clever, unpredictable ending was planned form the beginning. he was a cartoon character. the whole point from the beginning was the build up to the big art show where everyone gets duped. guetta is a symbol of all thats wrong with art. the way he acts on the day of the show, not giving a damn where any paintings go, just telling people build me this build me that. and thats's his art? this is a criticism of an art world in which many artists dont even create their own work. they conceive the piece and have assistants actually make it. yeah, artists dont even paint their own paintings these days (obviously not in all cases but this is prevalent in art culture).

i thought it was obvious, but now the moviegoing crowd is getting duped too. all of these people think its a breathtaking view of the birth of a genius street art form and the birth of a great artist which no one could have predicted. yeah, because hes not an artist. (unless he really is banksy, which i doubt. the french accent is too good. unless banksy really is a french englishman. ha. yeah right)

this is banksy's prank on the world. this is his original piece of art. everyone kept copying his style and it became all commercialized and all the money got involved, so banksy flipped the script on the whole thing. its a joke on fake artists, unoriginal copycats, bogus art critics, the hype machine, fickle 'art' fans who cant make their own opinion, and now the movie-going public that doesnt get it. i thought he made it pretty dam obvious, but not obvious enough.

[–] tyrexden 11 years ago

YOU don't get it... Nobody is denying that Mr. Brainwash's art is a sham... Thats the whole point of the documentary... But that doesn't mean the documentary, itself, is a sham.

The documentary is a real thing that covered the events that depict Mr. Brainwash as a sham artist.

[–] Aswinning_11 11 years ago

Well that's the thing about art, it's subjective, it doesn't obey any rules. Take a famous painting like Picasso and imagine someone painting it today, no one would pay millions for it. People don't know art because art comes from blank, it builds itself and has a meaning or value only because it's compared to other art.

About the movie: not sure if it is really a "prank" by Banksy or whatever, but Mr Brainwash's "art" did sell well and maybe Banksy just doesn't want to acknowledge it. Of course MBW's art is rudimentary and seen as cheap but art isn't about making fancy stuff. Plus Banksy's art is seen as great partly because of the mystery surrounding the artist.

[–] two_head_2 11 years ago

So the OP really thinks MBW is staying in character until now?

That's absurd.

This was a documentary of real events to show the sheep-like mentality of the modern art world.

I believe MBW is a real dude, and Banksy's friend, though Banksy is using him (and his complete lack of self-awareness) to show how the modern art world is full of sh!t. MBW is still selling shows, not because he's staying in character, but because he is a crazy Frenchman who wants to be a legit artist. Remember all his quotes about how people should wait to judge him on his artistry until time has passed, as time is the real judge of true worth as an artist? Well, he's staying true to form, trying to forge his name as an artist.

Banksy could care less that the masses buy up all MBW's stuff. In fact I think it helps him prove his point even more. In this way, this is his prank. But his prank is NOT the creation of the MBW character. He's simply using MBW to elicit the predictable responses by art consumers and displaying this to the world via documentary.

[–] drei85 10 years ago

I thought I got it, the title's Exit through the gift shop, after all.

I didn't know what it was about, so Thierry suddenly becoming Mr. Brainwash was a surprise.

There was clearly some irony being pointed out in that there was this guy who was supposed to be documenting the true meaning or true story of street art, who was supposed to make a documentary about how the artists now succeeding financially aren't sell outs... proceeds to completely miss the point they wanted to make, that it wasn't about money or validation or selling out.

But then again, was that the point Banksy was making? He pretends he doesn't know what the moral is when that moral is very easy to spot.

Is the guy's work art? It's easy to say no, it's not, and everyone who said so were pretentious, gullible idiots and Thierry is full of *beep*

But the guy called himself Mr. Brainwash and right at the start, his artistic vision was that art was all about brainwashing people, and then immediately connected it with consumerism and celebrity.

And then he went and produced a show which displayed that. And his audience was all of the artists who supposedly now hate him because of it. The show, the spectacle, the hype, the art enthusiasts and art collectors who completely bought into the art... maybe Mr. Brainwash didn't intend it, but that entire thing was the real art show, and his street artist friends might have been his unintentional audience.

The guy basically ended up telling every artist who knew him what he really thought about what they did as street artists. All while saying the opposite. I think Banksy and the other artists clearly got the message, the "joke", the moral. And if they seem uneasy, it's because maybe there's some sort of dissonance in that maybe they do say and think it's not about validation, or money, or acceptance. But then they look at this massive invalidation of their life's work, and see all these people who appreciated their work saying the same nice things about this guy they think is kind of a joke invalidating the nice things they've said and then they see how the money is also a joke... and then they realize they did like the validation. But all the validation they got was from people and things that clearly weren't .. valid.

And how can you argue with how successful at brainwashing the guy actually was? He was kind of right, and that is just irksome to the "real" artists. And perhaps they hope that maybe that's what Mr. Brainwash's real statement was, which is bad enough "Your work is kind of easy and a joke. But I still respect you." But what if Mr. Brainwash doesn't even realize that he's done something actually meaningful because he doesn't actually know what he's doing? That's even worse!

Nr. Brainwash saw something and he managed to convey it using his art. Did he do it on purpose, or did he do it by accident? What was the art show, and who was it for?

If the guy does exist, and he really did do this, it's no wonder the other artists turned on him. This was their accomplice, their "guy", a person they trusted. But this guy was also the guy that followed them around, recorded everything they did, scrutinized them, kept questioning them and sometimes getting confused about what he's being told. He's loyal and also a liar. He's also the guy that drew attention to them, and sometimes shone a literal spotlight on them when they were trying to be discreet.

The guy could be a representation of every artist's fear, that what they're doing is just *beep* that they don't know what they're doing, and maybe they're just sell outs inside, that they're not doing it for art, they're doing it for attention. And that guy is their friend, but also someone they kind of hate, and want to say "go *beep* yourself" to every now and then. WIth his unlabeled tapes of their artistic endeavors, he's the memory of every thing they are proud of and are ashamed by. He's a ghost.

You almost want him to be made up, and you can't help but make things up about it like I'm doing now, exactly like the people in his art show who were saying things like "He's as good as banksy." But then, who's to say he isn't was kind of his point, wasn't?

Mr. Brainwash is hilarious in that it seems like he succeeded in saying what he was trying to say, but you can't help but think he did it by accident and you can't be sure if he's only pretending he's clueless about that or not.

I can see why people have no clue whether or not to believe the guy isn't just made up. And if he is just made up, is Banksy also just made up? Can we believe Thierry when he said Banksy is just like how he is in real life? We can't, can we? And if Thierry, whose fsce isn't pixelated might be made up, are the other unblurred artists also made up?

But then again, is anyone really, in a way, partly made of fiction? We all present a slightly different version of ourselves to the outside world, and maybe that's also one of the points of the film. It makes you ask "Is Banksy a real person? Is Mr. Brainwash a real person? They all seem to use street names. But then, are those people who didn't use street names real people? Are they like that when they're alone? Am I a real person to other people? I could just be part of the fiction other people, strangers, make up about their surroundings. And surely, that guy with that scarf, and that ridiculous hair isn't like that for real, it's just an affection right?"

It's great. I think it's possible everyone gets this movie. It's just everyone also gets it completely wrong at the same time, everyone gets it completely right. You can make everything up about it, pretend you know why it's good, and then pay for something related to it. And that either makes the movie's shallowest point true, validating the movie, or it makes the movie deep. Is it pointless, is it not pointless? It's like, in a quantum state. It's in the box with that cat and the vial of poison gas. It exists in both states until you open the box.