Change Your Image
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Reviews
Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression (2011)
Interesting watch, albeit an incoherent one.
This was an interesting watch, albeit an incoherent one. The pro/anti- graffiti debate is fascinating, but only if one goes deep into the question of opposing rights of different-minded people. Here, much time is spent on talking heads overstating the obvious: "some graffiti is pretty", "tagging requires skill", "wall-to-wall advertisement is more damaging to the city landscape than graffiti, etc." Most of the talking heads stuff is of that nature. Thankfully, a lot of it is illustrated with thoughtful animation.
More interesting is the portrait of the buffers ("remover of graffiti") themselves and their motivations. Their zealous desire to rid the city of graffiti turns them into bigger graffiters themselves, perhaps the most active of them all. The irony of the situation is not lost on the filmmakers, but somehow does not alter their discourse on graffiti.
But if buffers are taggers, and tagging is art, then why come down so hard on the buffers? Shouldn't the right of someone to spray silver paint over a graffiti be as protected as the right to create graffiti in the first place? Unfortunately, when the documentary encounters such ethical dilemmas, it prefers to avoid the issues and simply portray the buffers as near or complete lunatics with personal problems.