The Banksy TV Program Aired Saturday ***** Stars
This is Banksy’s first attempt at producing a full length feature for the small box and it makes highly entertaining viewing. In the program, which is really a clips style show with interviews and narratives he encourages urban pranksters to push themselves to create challenging, disruptive pieces and to elevate the form away from mere humor to make worthwhile political statements. This hour-long special charts the history of people behaving badly in public, from anarchists and activists to attention seeking eccentrics. Banksy working in collaboration with Jamie D’cruz has produced this hour long documentary special. The film is Narrated by award winning actress, Kathy Burke Contributors include Michael Fagan talking about breaking into the Queen’s bedroom: ‘I looked into her eyes, they were dark’; and Noel Godin, who pioneered attacking celebrities with custard pies: ‘Instead of a bullet I give them a cake’.The program, aired on Saturday on across the UK, and was a tongue-in-cheek look at the history of public pranks, and their inspirations. Russian performance art group Voina using distraction techniques to draw a giant phallus on a draw bridge facing the former KGB headquarters was a brilliant stunt. The program also interviews Michael Fagan the palace intruder who crept into the Queen’s bedroom and Aaron Barschak the comedy terrorist, get the drift? The pranks often have the same spirit of provocation as Banksy’s own work. The Yes Men going on the BBC in Paris masquerading as Dow executives to declare that Dow Chemical was prepared to settle the Bhopal disaster to the tune of $5 billion, really was a classic. One particularly fascinating aspect of the program is the sheer joy one gets by seeing Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates for that matter, getting a custard pie in their faces. This was television worth watching . Hopefully it will be developed into a whole series at some point.
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