What are you gaining by arguing this? What point are you trying to make? Do you really think an artist who hand-paints pieces on walls is comparable to a corporation that copy-pastes their flashing, carefully targeted, profit-seeking message onto dozens of billboards overlooking a highway? Are their motives and the results of their work not wildly different?
Your second example is valid. But your first example is a complete strawman. Bansky didn't sue, the property owner did, because they liked Banksy's thing and didn't like what the vandal did.
Banksy is a commercial enterprise, though. There is a financial benefit to putting their work in places where the public is forced to see it. By raising their public profile, they're also raising the prices they can charge for other work. It is, in a very real sense, advertising.
I'm a fan, but there's still a point to be made here. Banksy works on public sites do function in part as ads.
I think it's critically different from advertising because the art is also the product itself. You're meant to enjoy the art for what it is. An ad on the other hand, is meant to encourage you to buy a separate product; this can be effective even if you absolutely hate the ad.
A more apt comparison would be a company giving out free samples. If you get a free sample of a delicious new cheese brand, you might talk about it to others and raise their public profile. But that only works if the cheese is delicious. On the other hand, an ad might just rudely scream "KRAFT MAC AND CHEESE" at you for twenty seconds in hopes of subconsciously leading you to buy their product when you see it in the store later that week.
Trolling as protected speech is an interesting perspective. I’ve often felt that trolling is part behavioral issue and another part free expression. I wonder how these lines blur as they cross over into the digital realm.
> “Though I find him as annoying as many others do, I find him equally and strangely compelling,” Belisle wrote. “He is, in his own way, a placeholder. He prompts me to remember that not all hear the same music I hear; or respond the same way.”
> In a phone interview, Belisle, who specializes in family and preventive medicine, said The Whistler is breaking down barriers that people put around themselves, forcing people to notice what is right in front of them. He is, she said, a reminder that everyone marches to the beat of their own drummer.
> “The best thing you can do is have compassion for other people whose songs are not the same as yours,” she said.
And his quote in the top post is hypocritical, at least the advertisers pay for displaying the ads, banksy appears to use the anarchist non payment approach.
Maybe all his revenue goes to charity but I sense an artist complaining about capitalism while laughing to the bank.
A lot of times people who loudly yell "fuck the system" are also quietly using the system when it suits them, that's my point. Bansky is no "dismantle the capitalism" hero or whatever pedestal people have him on.
I hear you; the copyright case especially shows that he is no paragon of anti-capitalism. But I think it's worth maintaining that (1) some things are worse than other things and (2) motive matters and (3) imperfect people can still make good points.
I have never, ever felt like a piece of Banksy's art, or any original piece of visual artwork for that matter, is being shoved down my throat. They're quiet, static, relatively low in number, and easily avoidable & ignorable. I've never felt distracted or distressed because my local coffee shop has a new mural on their wall, and nobody has ever forced me to walk through an art museum in order to get to the grocery store. On the other hand, advertisements are loud, moving, insanely numerous, and totally non-optional. My local subway and subway stations are plastered in advertisements; if I want to transit anywhere, I must endure them.
Plus, the motives are different! Sure, Banksy or $artist_name likely want folks to find their art appealing and then compensate them somehow, via buying copies, commissioning new art, spreading their reputation, whatever. But advertisers do not care if you found their ad appealing; they just want you to buy their product. In fact, many ads are purposely obnoxious or abhorrent just because it's an effective way to bring your attention towards their product. How dystopian is that?
And yes, there's some irony in Banksy, as someone who occasionally benefits from copyright law, to be making this point. But that doesn't make him wrong! And, it'd be far more ironic if, I don't know, Sergey Brin or someone else who use hugely benefited from advertising and copyright law were making the point.
Multiply it times a billion. One Banksy is tolerable, a million people graffiting their opinions everywhere would be truly awful. Therefore what Banksy is doing is immoral.
I disagree with the scale multiplier being a metric of morality. If one ice cream truck drives down my street, it puts me in a good mood even if I don't want to buy any ice cream from them. A continuous parade of ice cream trucks would be maddening. But that doesn't mean the ice cream truck driver who actually exists is behaving poorly.
One Jesus of Nazareth is tolerable, a million people preaching their opinions everywhere would be truly awful. Therefore what Jesus was doing is immoral.
>I hear you; the copyright case especially shows that he is no paragon of anti-capitalism.
Does it, though? The linked TMZ article suggests the lawsuit was filed by the Los Angeles DA on behalf of the property owner whose property lost value because of the defacement. It doesn't appear that Banksy himself is involved in the lawsuit.
It is similar to the logic of nations desiring peace but having an armed force for defense. If you are attacked and you refuse to engage in that system, disarming unilaterally, you may avoid violence, but at a loss of other values. Using the system judiciously can enable you to disengage from it in the longer term.
The tradeoffs for choosing this path will be different for different situations, but I don't think it's fair to say that taking advantage of rules you claim to hate is always clear-cut hypocrisy.
Proxy wars are a wrinkle in this logic whereby strong belligerents pick their battles so that they have plausible deniability; deniable wins and losses, deniable assets and capital, deniable aims and goals. Deceit and détente have a fractious relationship, but often serve complementary purposes - managing perception of reality and control of time and space via control of individuals and groups.
The personal is political. Weak sides challenge stronger opponents all the time, just usually not militarily. By situating yourself in opposition to power structures, you may reframe the debate and win it on its merits in the minds of the public, thus causing friction when status quo attempts to reassert itself.
Defense forces in some places serve in other defense capacities outside of military conflict. I would say they are quite desirable even in places you mentioned
This argument, most of the time, is just bad and not smart. "If you hate capitalism, why do you use iPads? etc." It's dreck and it should stop because it's rarely constructive.
Sometimes it's a necessary tool. Sometimes people are experimenting. Sometimes people do actually sell out.
The problem with this argument is that it tries to shut down the above questions.
Details matter, and bad arguments like the above rarely help.
All these points are doing the stupid thing of presuming a clear controllable definition of capitalism; when in reality, no "ism" is a controllable unified entity.
People will always and forever make mutually beneficial trades, probably with money.
Now, will people also always have the opportunity to freely invest sums of money in imaginary chopped up pieces of a corporation without fear of financial liability should they cause a great deal of harm? Maybe not, because Gamestop is teaching us a lot of things.
Regardless of what happens, the dumb thing is presuming that these two things are both the exact same thing called "capitalism."
>There is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism.
That's such a useless statement that even were it true, it proves the parent's point. That moral judgement doesn't lead us closer to a world without capitalism. Go to any haven of anti-capitalism and ask for a link to the manual they have for getting from HERE to THERE. Not even a theory on how to dismantle what we have.
FWIW personally I think capitalism is the worst system, other than all the others. Rein it in, set principles in stone for what we expect and demand from our system, but markets shouldn't magically disappear because we've lost control once.
Your second example is valid. But your first example is a complete strawman. Bansky didn't sue, the property owner did, because they liked Banksy's thing and didn't like what the vandal did.