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Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.
by periodjet 5mo ago
Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality.
- rvba 5mo agoReally riles up PE types and "patriots" though.
- vkou 5mo agoThis criticism would carry more weight if the people this statue criticises had the intellectual and emotional maturity beyond that of a teenager. Unfortunately, they often don't meet that bar, so the message has to be in a form they can understand.
- 9dev 5mo ago"They'd be pretty angry if they could read"
- krapp 5mo agoYou're being downvoted but honestly the "everyone is twelve now" meme explains our collective societal dysfunction perfectly. There's no point to complexity or subtlety in art anymore, or even any kind of symbolism at all. Anything that needs to be interpreted, that doesn't have a single objective meaning which gets spelled out for you. Flag man is silly. Everyone is twelve now.
- Lerc 5mo agoLana Wachowski has said that the Red Pill movement taught her that no matter how unsubtle you are, it's still too subtle for some people.
- tialaramex 5mo agoHuh. I hadn't thought about how the "Red Pill movement" would feel for the Wachowskis, yeah, there's truly no limit to how oblivious people can be and this thread is illustrative.
- mindslight 5mo agoI think the deeper dynamic is that any time anyone experiences a red pill, it's akin to a higher energy state and they become extremely receptive to sliding right back down into a different blue pill paradigm. In fact it's natural to eagerly crave it, as turning the deductive-reasoning crank forwards yields a whole batch of new fresh "insights" without having to do much work to obtain them. In the context of the movie, imagine - shortly after Neo takes the red pill, acclimates to the real world (rough), starts his training, says "I know Kung Fu", and then refuses to leave the training sim because it is so damn stimulating in new ways he isn't used to.
- toomanyrichies 5mo ago100%. One can't advocate for the dismantling of the Dept. of Education, the tearing down of "educational elites", and the wholesale banning of books, while at the same time crying foul when people say they have the intellectual capacity of a 12-year-old.
- have_faith 5mo agoAre you from the UK and know what the piece is a reference to? It’s topical and unpretentious and comes at a time where the country is splintering. Feels a like a bit of a distant midwit take to take shots at the appeal it has.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo agoSplintering? You have two zombie parties that are really the same in different colours. Of course people are going to vote for other parties that seem more left/right wing. Predictable consequence.
- danparsonson 5mo agoSplintering because some are going one way and others are going the opposite direction. Heading to opposite extremes.
- andai 5mo agoExplain like I'm 13 and don't live in the UK.
- dijksterhuis 5mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001630
- TehCorwiz 5mo ago"Blinded by nationalism" I don't know, seems like a clear concise message that has relevance in today's world.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo agoIs it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism? It is vague enough to appear deep to those trying to find something deep but not concrete enough to appear as anything that will stick in people's minds for more than a week. Unfortunately a lot of modern art is like this.
- cm2012 5mo agoBoth Israel and Palestine are blinded by ideology. It is a very common failure mode for people.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo ago[flagged]
- lukan 5mo agoSo ... Hamas does not want to do ethnic cleansing and attempted that a couple of times, but simply were not as powerful to have a bigger impact?
- infinitewars 5mo agoI think it deserves credit for being both simple and original.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- odyssey7 5mo agoMaybe, but in 100 years, people looking back on the current era will easily understand the work. It symbolically communicates something about the spirit of the age.
- ryandrake 5mo agoHeaven forbid someone tries to communicate a point with art.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- IshKebab 5mo agoHe wasn't objecting to that. He was saying the "point" is about as sophisticated as "we should just, like, all agree not to fight wars man". Personally I don't mind it. I think it would be difficult to convey well thought out points in art (the world is too complicated) and it's fine that they're just fun visual wordplays. You wouldn't criticise a newspaper political cartoon for taking liberties with reality; these are basically the same.
- TacticalCoder 5mo agoHe's also king of the "I'll criticize the west but I'll turn a blind-eye to non-democratic countries' wrongdoings". A trait shared with virtually all intellectuals and artists in the west. There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing of 1200 young civilians who were enjoying life at a music festival "because it's resistance". Applauding the killing of young unarmed civilians, genitally mutilating women and turning a blind-eye to a regime slaughtering 30 000+ of its own unarmed civilians is where I personally draw the line and consider there are maybe more important things to complain about than, say, "the patriarchal western society built by heterosexual white men" or some other woke non-sense like that. Now to be honest Banksy did art criticizing war overall, not just war started by the west. So a generous reading could consider that he also criticizes things like the 800 000 deaths during the Hutu vs Tutsi war. But still overall: lots of balls from western artists when it's about criticizing the west, but tiny tiny nuts when it's about, say, attacking the ideology that is responsible for 300 people enjoying music at the Bataclan and then getting slaughtered. But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- constantius 5mo agoThat's a lot of imaginary flaws in imaginary people, with imaginary numbers as scaffolding. The moral posture you're criticising is not actually a thing, I personally don't know of any Western intellectual who criticises the West but is fine with FGM for example. But it seems that the fault you find in them is that when they criticise the West, for example, they don't also add a list of grievances against all the other countries (but surely they'd have to speak for 10 hours every time they open their mouths?). It's also funny how you take the 30,000 Iranian civilians killed at face value, but don't talk about the wrongs of the British empire. And you didn't even mention North Korea once. You see the issue with your reqs?
- delusional 5mo agoWhat do you want the artists to do about it? Part of art's power is shining a light on something we don't notice day to day. Most westeners are against mutilation, what would the art say? Art will always be about speaking truth to power, and that power will usually be the one closest felt. There's not much value in a swede speaking truth to Nigerian warlords.
- mihaaly 5mo ago[dead]
- jiriro 5mo ago> Banksy is the patron saint of the “I’m 13 and this is deep” mentality. You are wrong.
- Fezzik 5mo agoMost galvanizing statements have been pithy and comprehensible to 13 year olds. The general population is not doing a deep dive in to something like Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government,” contemplating the proper role of government, and then getting fired up to act. We need CliffsNotes, slogans, and visible art like this.
- touwer 5mo agoSo, you are 14 and you understand the world? Doesn't seem like it
- uncircle 5mo agoThey are 14 and in the ‘it’s cool to hate’ phase.
- stavros 5mo agoThis works really well these days, when the average person is 13.
- pippy 5mo agoThe irony is that the statue is being guarded by the London police.
- ungreased0675 5mo agoThat’s not irony. It’s a pro-establishment piece. If it was a piece about migrants raping British women Banksy would be in jail right now.
- rexpop 5mo ago[flagged]
- CPLX 5mo agoActually it’s a great example of something different, where the person who was original and eventually becomes ubiquitous and groundbreaking and widely imitated to the point where it's hard to understand just how original they actually are. There are many examples of the same thing: Andy Warhol and the soup cans and screen-printed portraits with different color backgrounds or Led Zeppelin and English folk hard rock songs that have hobbits in them are two of them. Eventually, it's hard to even process their work in the context of how predictable and trite it seems to be a few decades later.
- yakkomajuri 5mo agoIt doesn't need to be super layered to be impactful? Plus the execution is also part of the art.
- booleandilemma 5mo agoAccount created last year, is Banksy your patron saint?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- druskacik 5mo agoWhat truly deep art would you recommend for us laymans who enjoy Banksy's works?
- spiderfarmer 5mo agoEither that or Trump supporters are easily triggered.
- Arodex 5mo agoYou are the patron saint of "I'm doing jack shit except criticizing anyone that moves".
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoI disagree. There's plenty of adults going around plastering England's St George Cross flag on lampposts to project their love of the flag (along with the not so subtle messaging that immigrants and anyone non-white aren't welcome). If adults are going to behave like adolescents, then the art needs to go to their level. (I'm a fan of Banksy because he isn't afraid to speak out against the blatant murder carried out because of flags and nationalism)