Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Style Wars

Today in class we watched about an hour of the film, "Style Wars." Take a moment to anaylze the structure of the film--write a treatment which is a narrative plan for a film. Style Wars is a great work depicting the rise of the movement called hip hop culture and the "writers" or grafitti artists. The director puts "writers" in the context of the movement. Style Wars is a template for academic research and writing. Both sides of the argument are presented, even though, at this point some of the evidence is outdated. It is here that films like Piece by Piece augment the documents and expand it regionally, as Style Wars looks at graffiti in New York.

Post you comments and response to my query here.

6 comments:

Jermaine said...

In that we were unable to finish this will be a rough take on what the fild completely accomplished and still needs to. The film Style Wars did well at documenting the current state of grafitti at that time. Its ability to catch up with actaul artists that were well known around those areas was astonishing. The interviews gave outsiders insight into both the thinking and lifetstyles of grafitti artists. The aesthetics of grafitti was also high-lighted via visuals and dialogue. The appearnaces by government officials was a valiant effort to place grafitti in the most well-rounded perspective possible. Their opinions are validated and viewed through a critical eye. The virtue that lies within the artists was given a platform as the "Kase" was filmed drawing and lving in the absense of an arm, and in some eyes, a fair chance. Without going around the entire country, this view showed how this contagion had the power to be caught and spread by many. The morality within the grafitti culture was displayed as "Cap" went around crossing out great pieces of work and this hinted at the humanity of it all.

Anonymous said...

Itzel Diaz
English 1B

Style wars is a film that shows graffiti’s history and its meaning through graffiti artist point of view. The film shows that there are many styles of graffiti and that the different styles keep on developing and changing every day. Graffiti artist can be seen as writers that put real art into their work; they enhance letters putting color, shades and figures as a part of them taking writing to a whole new level. The film also showed the effortless work that the government was doing to stop graffiti from expanding; it seem like no matter what the government did, graffiti writers would find the way to keep on doing their art.

Nicole G said...

Style Wars is a film documenting the history as well as the movement of graffiti. It was interesting learning about the movement through the voices of those who had lived it. The writers of graffiti had many different, but respectable reasons for partaking in the movement. One writer's story that stood out to me was Taki 183. One could probably consider him the pioneer of the movement, even though he was not the first to tag. It all began when people began to see "taki 183" on virtually everything. "Who is this person?" is a question many people in the city began to ask themselves. After seeing his name in so many places, many others thought it was a cool concept, and began to paste there names up on various surfaces.
This is when graffiti really began to take over New York city. Writers began to compete and see who could have their names up in more places. Writers then decided that instead of having more pieces, they were going to have bigger, bolder, and brighter pieces. It then became a competition to see who could throw up the most dope piece of art.
New York City served as sort of a role model for other cities. Soon after the subways of New York were covered in crazy colors and script, other cities began to follow. San Francisco was one of them. A lot of the influence Bay Area writers sought was from the New York writers.
I think it was cool to learn that the writers weren't necessarily doing this to vandalize the city. It gave kids a creative thing to do, keeping them away from violent crimes. I think it is important for us as human beings to look at the doings of others and be open minded, rather than disrespecting aspects of others culture.

Muno said...

Munkhjin Munkhbaatar
English 1B
Professor Sabir
“Style Wars”

The movie named “Style Wars” is about graffiti and graffiti writers history and movement. I think Graffiti is an art because everyone can’t do graffiti, it takes skills and talent. Also it is a one way of expression. In the film there are many different kinds of graffiti but mostly it shows graffities in New York City. It was interesting to watch and learn about graffiti because before I didn’t really understand why people wrote those things. Every graffiti writer has his or her own way of doing or writing graffiti. Also the film shows how and why the laws against vandalism came from. Government proposed vandalism laws because graffiti writers started tagging private and public properties like stores, office buildings. But if we think about it, every place is either private or public, so there are really no places to write graffiti for graffiti writers. But people always find a way to do something that they want. Graffiti writers are becoming more and more thoughtful and artistic. If we compare ten year old graffiti to those new graffities, we can see a huge difference. It became more colorful and it looks better even some graffities make some places look better. So the graffiti will never die it will keep getting better and better.

Mar`Queshia Wilkerson said...

The film "style wars" was a film about graffitti. the film showed how many young people figured out a way to show their creative sign on trains and builds. These young people in the film was very creative with their particular style of graffitti , no ones ever loooked the same even it the colors was the same or the letters were similar. Many adults couldnt really understandwhy the graffitti artist choose to write their art on trains and builds but i think they did it so that it can always be seen by anyone who live by the train or while walking down the street. It seem to be a war between certain people but nothing phyical instead they just wrote on their drawings whether it was on a train or building and they made sure that certain artist knew who destory their art work. Many that did not do graffitti didnt really understand the purpose and meaning behind their art work but watching the film give you a little in sight into why many choose to express them selves with such beautiful work. Graffitti was very big when it came to the young people in the NYC because many had struggles that many never knew but when you saw their graffitti it kind of tells you a little story abiut their life or struggle all in one.

Anonymous said...

Jose Vasquez
Response to Style Wars

Style Wars is a short film that talks about the history of grafitti.They spoke with many grafitti artist that started the grafitti art in the San Francisco bay. Grafitti started in New York but it spread around the United States really fast. At first Grafitti was not considered a form of art by people but once more and more people got involve in it more people started to like it. In San Francisco young people started to come up with their own style of grafitti. One of the first Grafitti in San Francisco was the "Cholo" grafitti which started in Hispanic Neighborhoods. After a couple of years younger people started with a diffrent style of grafitti.Every generation creates a difrrent style, although some people complaint that grafitti makes their neighborhood look ugly some feel that it makes their neighborhood look brighter and better.