LA Times Writer Advocates Defacing Advertising with Graffiti

The LA Times’ Crispin Sartwell claims advertisers monopolize public space and people should be able to freely deface advertising images with their own thought.

“Advertising is the public expression of wealthy people and organizations. Graffiti is the public expression of people who are more or less broke. And that is exactly why advertising is authorized and graffiti is eradicated…

What I do endorse is the art of graffiti and the concept of culture jamming. If advertisers feel free to monopolize public space – from highways to the airwaves to the Internet – with their commercial messages, we ought to feel free to deface these messages, critique them and replace them with our own.”

So logically, I guess it’s OK for an advertiser to respond to that by placing their big-ass logo on the hood of some homey-boy graffiti writer’s tweaked out ride?

Let the war begin.

Picture of Steve Hall

Steve Hall

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