Exit Through The Gift Shop

Last week, part of my Fellows class had a dinner discussion with Professor Nolan of the Honors College. Our talk was centered around the documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop. The film is about the evolution of street art. The main figure, Thierry, is a documentarian looking to capture the identities and behavior of popular street artists. He follows them to document the way they present their work, where they go, and how they approach art as a whole.

He follows major street artists that have made social statements through their artwork. The main artist that is portrayed is Banksy, an artist who does not reveal his identity but is one of the most widely known street artists in London. Thierry makes his first documentary, but the product is a complete flop. Exit Through The Gift Shop is a documentary based on Thierry’s transition from documenting other street artist’s work to making his own street art.

Banksy is a mysterious figure manipulating art as a medium to portray his ideas. When we were discussing the way he reaches audience, we came up with an interesting perspective about the documentary. Because the documentary was actually about Thierry, who developed a street artist alias called Mr. Brain Wash, we suggested Banksy could have made the documentary himself. Developing a street artist that had the power to “brainwash” an audience by taking advantage of an art fad would be exactly the type of statement Banksy would try to make. The documentary could easily have been a staged message that Banksy developed to impact an audience. There is a great possibility that we were incorrect in our mindset, but we began questioning the line between fact and fiction.