Style Wars

The movie seems really outdated and I can't help but wonder if this is still true today. I found it hilarious when the detective said "this is not art it's the application of medium to a surface". Funny, I thought that was what art was exactly? The way it is narrated kind of made it hard for me to take it seriously because it seems like the people who made this are really out of touch with the actual scene. Also the portrayal of some of the people made it a little harder to take it seriously as well. I think the perspective of actual graffiti artists is interesting. How they want to look and see what they've done later or to liven up the metal and concrete that is all over the city. Interesting how the government is quick to punish graffiti artists or just blame the parents for not doing anything about it when clearly the mother they interview is so against her son doing it but can't stop him. I also found it interesting they people peg minorities as doing all of the graffiti when whites do a lot of writing as well. It's a little frightening that much younger people were doing graffiti along with some of the older kids. They were actually putting kids in jail/juvenile detention centers which, if a younger kid got in, would probably ruin their lives in terms of education or other aspects of their future. The steps they took to stop graffiti is kind of laughable. The reason they want to do this is only to "clean up" the image of the city. It doesn't seem as if people against the graffiti has bothered to understand it. I found the contrasting viewpoints of graffiti on canvas interesting. I agreed when the woman spoke about the character being taken away from it because it seemed a symbol of the city but then again it is good for it to be recognized as an art form and for kids to actually feel that their graffiti is actually worth something,that doing something you love that you once told was worthless in terms of society is actually worth something in the art world. There is clearly a lack of respect and a sense of superiority on behalf of the officials that are against graffiti artists, one man said "I found them surprisingly articulate". Clearly, he has some sort of stereotype that he casts onto these people and looks down on them as common criminals that I certainly do not approve of. Lumping graffiti artists into a negative stereotype has done nothing to help. Also, the guy who destroyed other people's graffiti art is like the kid in elementary who scribbles on your beautiful drawing on your family just because you wouldn't let him use the green crayon-to me at least. What he's doing doesn't seem to have a point other than to piss other people off.