What Banksy did next
(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing. See also Charlie Brooker: Supposing … Subversive genius Banksy is actually rubbish)
Prankster and guerrilla graffiti artist, Banksy, got himself into trouble this week when his painted live elephant – the star of his ‘elephant in the living room’ art installation in Los Angeles – was ordered to be hosed down by the Los Angeles department of animal services.
The thing is, right, the ‘elephant in the living room’ is a metaphor, yeah? It’s a figure of speech for a subject that nobody wants to talk about. The deconstruction of that metaphor says what exactly? Other than that you’ve got the balls and resources to paint an elephant red?
In a TFT exclusive, we can reveal what Banksy has planned for his next exhibition…
- Demonstrating the cavalier attitude to human life displayed in the liberation of Iraq, Banksy paints the faces of Iraqi civilians on a load of eggs and then makes an omelette with them.
- To highlight the scandal of terrorist suspects being held without trial, Banksy holds a robin while two others, dressed in tiny orange jumpsuits, call out from inside an effigy of the US president.
- Banksy forces the Leader of the House of Commons and his family to climb, one by one, aboard a dromedary with ‘DEMOCRACY’ painted on its side. The last one to manage it before the unfortunate animal’s spine gives out is declared the winner.
- Banksy gets Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein, Anthony Worrall Thompson, Gary Rhodes, Ainsley Harriot, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Ken Hom, Nigel Slater and Delia Smith to make soup in a pan with ‘THE WAR AGAINST TERROR’ painted on it. Banksy tastes it and declares it to be crap.
- Banksy researches his family tree to see if his mother’s brother really is called Robert.
Posted on September 22nd, 2006 at 3:54pm under Culture, media and sport, Off Yoghurt, The Friday Thing
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Have The Friday Thing been watching their old copies of The Day Today with Brant, the physical cartoonist?
[...] Banksy and celebrity September 22nd, 2006 | 7:04pm by Jim Over on Chicken Yoghurt Justin highlights the pointlessness of Banksy’s latest work. Now, I have to say that I like some of the stuff that Banksy has done. The graffiti on the Israeli defence wall was particularly good in my view. Of course, not all of his work attains that high standard, and as Justin points out, the elephant in the room does seem particularly pointless… though from a purely aesthetic viewpoint there’s something quite groovy about it as an image (ethical issues about the use of animals as artistic “props” aside). And was I the only one to notice a very subtle backfire of the Paris Hilton CD stunt? The prank seemed to be about highlighting the absurdity of Paris Hilton recording an album based purely on the fact that she’s “a celebrity”. In other words; “the fact that you have public name-recognition means you get to do what you want”. [...]
The deconstruction of that metaphor says what exactly? Other than that you’ve got the balls and resources to paint an elephant red?
A valid point, crassly made.
But couldn’t Banksy’s (equally blunt) artistic comment have more to do with the recent internal Downing Street “victory tour” memo leak than a crap deconstruction of a metaphor? Is he commenting on Iraq being so fucked up that now even No 10 talk in those terms?
As the Mirror reported it:
IRAQ also continues to cast a long shadow over the Premier’s record, the document openly acknowledges. It says: “We need to incorporate this into our media plan. It’s the elephant in the room, let’s face up to it.” The memo concludes: “Most importantly, are we up for it? Is TB up for it?”
It is only two weeks since this memo was all over the press, making us all howl with laughter over ‘He needs to go with the crowds wanting more’.
Number 10′s assessment of Blair’s greatest political failure (and by extension, the political disconect it has caused to a now utterly disbelieving electorate) seems to have fallen off the radar faster than even they could have hoped.
bb writes: Number 10′s assessment of Blair’s greatest political failure (and by extension, the political disconect it has caused to a now utterly disbelieving electorate) seems to have fallen off the radar faster than even they could have hoped.
But bb, it was a leaked memo stating the bleeding obvious. Why on earth would it stay in the news for more than a couple of hours?
So No. 10 see Iraq as a stain on Blair’s time in office? So what? Isn’t that the view of the vast majority of people on the planet? (leastways of those who know who Blair is).
The unintentional humour of the memo was the only vaguely interesting thing about it. Otherwise it was just a bunch of powerless lackeys telling each other what the rest of us already knew.