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.

[–] elliottgone 13 years ago

You can't be real. You're far too moronic to be real.

I have no opinion on whether the film is a non-fiction doc or moc (there isn't much of a point to me), but I believe you are dumb. And, I just wanted to share that, for as little as it's worth.

You realize that citing Wikipedia for basic identifiers, or lack of them, pertaining to newly emerged artists is shoddy research?

You're a fake, a hoax.

You can't be real.

[–] TheManInOil 13 years ago

I took it the same way.

"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."

[–] Dr_Greenthumb 13 years ago

This movie is literally a Banksy art piece.

Anyone who has a Mr Brain Wash is exactly that, BW'd.

[–] rupertbreheny 13 years ago

Continuing a theme here, I'm going to cast my hat in with those that reckon that this entire, lovely, challenging movie is one big, glorious hoax.

Banksy's modus operandi is to take corporate, commercial communications (advertising hoardings and logo spattered civic spaces) and subvert their messaging to make art and cutting social commentary. It's not a great way to make money, but you sure can build a personal brand with all the credibility that penniless anonymity brings.

Surely then Mr. Brainwash is the antithesis - he has taken the lawless and ascetic art-for-art's-sake ethos of the street-artists and industrialized its manufacture and commercialized its distribution, effectively subverting the art critics and buyers who are throwing down money for their own set of the emperor's new clothes - factory fresh. I don't doubt that Thierry Guetta is real - I'm not sure Mr. Brainwash exists though.

To believe in great artists is to believe their cult of personality. There is after all an historical precedent to all this. Remember that all the masters had their ateliers, and apprentices who would paint the boring parts of their canvases. Damien Hirst doesn't paint dots anymore, but he's still selling the paintings. And Rembrandt himself resorted to the commercial production of signed etchings to pay his mortgage.

I think the helter-skelter takes us one turn further though. Accomplished media-hacker that he is, I have no doubt that Banksy is savvy enough to take the well-trodden path of the reality documentary, hoodwink the media to report it as a true story and use it to shill the second-rate output from his workshop, making it commercially viable under the "Brainwash" brand without diluting Banksy as artist folk-hero, just as Proctor and Gamble sell Herbal Essences to the classes and Head and Shoulders to the masses.

Let us not forget "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a barbed reference to the way that even the great galleries of the world will round off your time with the grand masters by squeezing you out through the shopping experience, where you can buy Da Vinci paper-weights and Degas jigsaws. The clue is in the title.

In fact I doubt even the cowled figure is Banksy himself (playing up to the Bristol Art College thing with the obvious Bristol accent). My money is on that big, shaven-headed chap from the workshop footage back at the London HQ. Best place to hide a tree is in the forest after all.

So what are we left with - probably the biggest gag Banksy has pulled yet - having now added avant-garde, Oscar-nominated, film-festival favourite to his list of not inconsiderable accomplishments. Well played Banksy, well played.

www.breheny.com

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] [email protected] 13 years ago

Satire or not, MBW's stuff sells for lots of cash on eBay. It means 1 of 2:

1. People don't get the joke
2. People don't care it's a joke, they just want the *beep* art.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] LarryIrwin 13 years ago

can anybody explain the meaning of the title?

[–] Milevskiy 13 years ago

Gift Shop as in Disneyland.
Gift Shop as in buying pieces of art at a gallery or show.

This thread is pretty interesting, but most people seem to be missing a key point: we don't know who Banksy is.

He wouldn't just have said 'yes' to a filming French madman, only because that guy happens to be the cousin of a fellow artist (yes, I know some other reasons too are offered in the film). Banksy must have had total and complete control over this project, or he wouldn't have done it. Period.

And if that makes this film a hoax, fine. Bottom line is I enjoyed it and learned a thing or two. Mission accomplished. Well done Banksy!

Ignore people with ignore lists in their sig.

[–] bsharporflat 13 years ago

Exactly! I agree with the OP in all regards except for his contention that all the art in the show was crap. It wasn't. Some of it was kinda cool (love the TV monster).

But the whole movie was a hoax. The art was created by Bansksy and probably a number of other artists contributing. A guy who can't even create a coherent 90 minute video isn't going to be able to produce hundreds and hundreds of pieces of art in a couple months. One should be equally skeptical of Thierry's ability to fund such a major exhibit as his artistic talent. (re-mortgaging his little house, as the movie explained it, would not create a fraction of the capital needed)

[–] The_Statistician 12 years ago

Of course it's a hoax.

[–] JustDimmy 12 years ago

My take on this matter is :
If you paid for this movie (Cinema, DVD...) then it's a hoax.
If you watch it for free (web downloading, @ friend's place...) then it's documentary.

The fun part is if you watch the movie with a friend who bought it. ^^

Like a lot of things about movies, the important part is the audience.

[–] MachoManRandySavage 11 years ago

Huh?

[–] dan_nico17 12 years ago

Surely this was a piss take out of banksy himself. I mean I looked up 5 minutes of banksy art stuff on google image and it's obviously just the same formula over and over. 1 innocent symbol + 1 violent symbol. Or 1 innocent symbol + 1 corrupt symbol. That's it, over and over, they did that in the 1970s.. The fake princess money stunt was a direct rip off of Abby Hoffman throwing fake dollars onto the stock exchange floor. I mean what is street art doing in a gallery, the clue is in the name. One of the lines was funny; "all the street artists show in galleries now, so terry has some catching up to do ", sounds like a Yogi Berra quote. The whole film subject matter was a Yogi Berra quote.

[–] mr_x350 12 years ago

if you like that street art crap in the first place you're most likely already a sheep

[–] Irishmonk 12 years ago

The OP lays it out with precision and conviction what the essence of this film is: mockumentary, media stunt, cultural satire, an elaborate meta scaled social statement. Whatever it's methods, it is brilliant. And if the whole thing was concocted and orchestrated by banksy, then I believe the OP might be written by him as well.