Mr. Brainwash Spits About Banksy And Exit Through The Gift Shop.

In a daring move, I’m pretty sure that Exit Through The Gift Shop was my favorite movies of all the bullshit I caught last year. See that qualifier? Good. I enjoyed its dissection of what happens when the underground is embraced, and then commodified by mainstream culture. Street art went from a subversive means of getting across ideas, or just drawing shit, and became a popculture staple. What the fuck is the response to your own success? At the epicenter of this conversation was the documentary’s star, Thierry Guetta or  Mr. Brainwash. He was the point made literal; the bastard who bastardized Banksy’s motives and shoved it down the gullible masses’ throat.

But the question’s always been, is Brainwash even fucking real?

Dude to talked this week The Envelope, and Slashfilm has wrestled out some interesting nuggets.

This  movie is 100% real. Banksy captured me becoming an artist. In the end, I became his biggest work of art.

In some Socratic manner, the concept of what is even real, the nebulous and flimsy term can be exploded to mean a variety of different things. Did Banksy film MBW? For sure. Was there actually an art show? For sure. But was MBW conjured up by Banksy, was he a friend of Banksy putting on a ruse?  Thierry Guetta’s revelation that he was Banksy’s biggest work of art is most telling of all.

He gives me a brush and a can, and he took the camera. ‘Go make your own show and have people filming it.’

Interesting.

We’ll never know the truth about Exit Through The Gift Shop, and who the fuck really cares? The vagaries that surround inspiration and creation is a crucial point of the flick. Where does being inspired by someone end, and being a hack and a repetitious derivation vomited into the world begin? Is co-opting a movement the death of the movement? Is there a way to salvage a scene ravaged by people who are just looking for the hotness? And perhaps the most loaded question of all: is any of this even bad?