Last Tuesday’s lecture about graffiti and the documentary “Bomb It” I found to be very interesting but did not change my negative opinion about graffiti overall. To me Graffiti is vandalism, not art. If you look up the definition it says that graffiti is “unauthorized drawings or words that are scratched, painted, or sprayed on walls or other surfaces in public places”.
During the start of class Mr. Z asked the class to vote whether we thought graffiti was good or if we thought graffiti was bad, and I was very surprised to see that 21 students voted Graffiti good and only 4 (including myself) voted Graffiti to be bad.
Graffiti consists of gang symbols, bad words, and sometimes pictures you see painted or scrawled on fences, bridges, in subways, on the sides of buildings, houses, and elsewhere, otherwise known as tagging. Most of it is junk that looks like 5-year-olds have done it. But some of it is colorful and might look artistic if it hadn't destroyed someone's property. That to me is the problem with graffiti — it is “unauthorized”, as the dictionary says, and it destroys someone's property. It is a crime, like stealing, because it steals the property owner's right to have their own property look clean and nice. It also makes repairs costly for the property owner. Graffiti scribblers never offer to pay the cost of repairing their destruction, which may cost thousands of dollars.
Mr. Z also brought up that some graffiti is legal versus some being illegal. Some people pay to have colorful murals and other large-scale paintings on their walls and fences, which is perfectly legal. Although some people try to say that is graffiti while the unauthorized scribble is “tagging”, the dictionary does not make a distinction. That's because graffiti already has a bad meaning in people's minds, so people who think they are “good” graffitists will need to find another word if they hope to ever make a positive impression.
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