Everyone has a story to tell. Something like 900 million people (and apparently growing daily) self-proclaim their story via the Facebook thing. Others over a cup of coffee or other drink, some still at the office water cooler. A small sect of our society tell their story via cheap cans of spray paint and whatever canvas happens to be handy. Graffiti, that form of expression dating back to Romanesque Scandinavian church walls continues to thrive today. However, everything I see tagged I’m pretty sure makes of use of graffiti as an offensive expression. A recent study likens the offenders to animals marking their territory. I tend to agree. (Street Gangs as territorial animals)
I go from being disgusted to angry to feeling sorry for the authors. After all, many are simply trying to tell a story and may not have the means or other circumstances needed to utilize other methods. Mostly it just makes me sad as I see it virtually everywhere as I’m out on jobs.
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| Wall At Swimming Pool after Graffiti removed |
Of late it seems to be exploding into all parts of town, even ones where it would be least expected. Ongoing budgetary constraints put a squeeze on community policing which is often the most effective method of prevention. Law enforcement randomly around at any hour mixing it up with neighbors tends to drive down opportunity as well as help open up the eyes of the neighborhoods. We have a neighborhood watch. While we don’t have any serious crime to speak of, in fact we really don’t have any minor crime to speak of, I’ve noticed three instances of tagged signs in the last few months. That makes me feel violated; perhaps even more so now that I’ve become actively involved with our Neighborhood Association Board. Now it’s a bit more personal.
We each have our favorite methods of communication and how many would say yelling into a mobile phone while standing in line at the grocery store is any less offensive than seeing a message painted on a public building or sign? Isn’t adding highly personalized signature or auto-reply lines to e-mail as intrusive as a tagged bridge? In fact, might the bridge be less offensive when the communication is in symbol or code thus not even understandable? Culturally in a mere generation we’ve come to accept the often annoying auto-reply or signature block yet we still chase down and prosecute graffiti artists for their communications decades or hundreds of years after origin. Partly because of our bias toward expecting public space to be pure or unmarked and partly because of long held stereo typing of graffiti artists. In fact, many of us may be considered graffiti artists; especially if we utilize resources we don’t own to submit our phrase-of-the-week that everyone on the receiving end is subject to. Either way.
I remain personally offended nearly every day when I see my city marked up and marked on.
