| Current
writing:
Graffiti entry for Encyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife,
Locke, Liz and Theresa A. Vaughan. Greenwood Press, Westport CT, USA,
forthcoming 2008.
Graffiti
Writings,
drawings, or markings on the walls of buildings; a single such mark is
a graffito. Grafitti is probably as old as handwriting; we have examples
from Pompeii and ancient Rome and from early mediaeval Russia. Four compilations
of graffiti were published in England in the 1730s under the title of
The Merry-Thought: or, the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. The
compiler, under the wonderfully contrived pseudonym, Hurlo Thrumbo, includes
a few items noted as written "in a Woman's Hand." One example,
dated February 18, 1725, is "From a Tavern in Fleet-Street":
Since cruel Fate has robb'd me of the Youth,
For whom my Heart had hoarded all its Truth,
I'll never love more, despairing e'er to find,
Such Constancy and Truth amongst Mankind. (Part II, p. 12)
Graffiti is usually anonymous, although coded names that identify a "tagger"
or "writer" (graffiti artist) may actually constitute the art
itself in the work of some contemporary spray-painters who decorate subways,
busses, and other public places in blighted urban areas (Young). Women,
including "Barbara 62," Poonie 1," and "Suki,"
were among the most notorious taggers in New York City in the 1970s (@149thst).
Since then, the controversial art form is practiced predominantly by men
(see Cooper and Chalfant).
Much of the debate surrounding graffiti asks whether it should be considered
art or vandalism, but a more interesting approach looks at graffiti as
communication. Jane Gadsby (1995) has developed a taxonomy of six different
types of graffiti, which perform different functions for the writer, whether
male or female.
What are "women who write on walls" trying to say? Women write
both public and private graffiti, and, most typically, their private communications
are written in restrooms ("latrinalia"), where laments for love
lost are especially common. Emma Otto's 1990 Brazilian study demonstrated
that women's main concerns were personal problems, romance, and morality.
Gwenda Beed Davey's study of women's graffiti in Australia in the 1990s
identifies cries from the heart, dialogue and debate about religion, politics
and sexual preference, philosophical pronouncements, and advice to the
lovelorn. The biggest single group of graffiti included "pronouncements"
about the writer's favorite topic, and, like many of the eighteenth-century
items published by Hurlo Thrumbo, some are in rhyme. An ode to a mammogram
was found attached to this valuable but hated machine in a women's hospital:
This machine was made by a man
Of that there is no doubt;
I'd like to get his balls in here,
For months he'd go without.
Today, women's informal written public communications are more likely
to address public social issues than private romantic ones. British researcher
Jill Posener writes that "the feminist movement, No Nukes campaigners,
the anti-smoking lobby and anarchists have all become street writers"
(1982: 11). Some of their graffiti consists of simple painted slogans
such as "Dead men don't rape," but other examples "reclaim"
billboard advertisements with rewritten corporate slogans, often to humorous
effect. Posener includes, for example, a photograph of a billboard advertising
a sports car with the message, "If it were a lady, it would get its
bottom pinched." The graffitist has added in spray paint "If
this lady was a car she'd run you down."
Gwenda Beed Davey
See also: Hip Hop Culture/Rap; Humor
References
@149st. "Female Writers." <http://www.at149st.com/women.html>
2001, 2003. [accessed January 14, 2007]
Bushnell, John. Moscow Graffiti: Language and Subculture. Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1990.
Cooper, Martha and Henry Chalfant. Subway Art. London: Thames and Hudson
Ltd., 1984.
Davey, Gwenda Beed. Women Who Write on Walls.
<http://www.gwendadavey.com> [accessed April 25, 2007]
Gadsby, Jane. Looking at Writing on the Wall: A Critical Review and Taxonomy
of Graffiti Texts, 1995. <http://www.graffiti.org/faq/critical.review.html>
[accessed January 12, 2007]
Otto, Emma. "Graffiti in the 1990s: a study of inscriptions on restroom
walls." Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 133 (1993), no. 4: 589-590.
Posener, Jill. Spray it Loud. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
-----. Louder than Words. London: Pandora, 1986.
The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, London,
J. Roberts in Warwick Lane, 1731-?. Facsimile edition. The Augustan Reprint
Society Publication Number 221-222, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library,
University of California Los Angeles, 1983.
Young, Karl. "Names: The Basis of Graffiti Art." Free Graphz
<http://www.thing.net/~grist/lnd/graffiti/tags.htm> [accessed
January 14, 2007]
(click
here to download the above document) - 28k
- graffiti
entry us encyclopedia
|
