Warner Music did a promotional campaign in Australia for 21st Century Breakdown, and they hired a company to put up graffiti around Sydney with the album’s artwork, which drew criticism from the city and from local commentators. But the most direct criticism is from a graffiti artist, who spray painted the words “Cash Cow” on one of the images.
I’m sure the members of Green Day had nothing to do with the campaign, and none of the criticism is aimed specifically at them. But the issue points out the fundamental problem of having something that is genuine (the band and their music) in the hands of an entity (a huge corporation like Warner Music) that treats everything they control as a means to make money, without a real understanding of and respect for the genuine, real-life inspirations that contributed to its creation.
Graffiti is mentioned several times in the album’s lyrics as a fundamental yearning to declare one’s existence. “You blast your name in graffiti on the walls.” “She puts her make up on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland.” It’s a way of crying out “I am here!” in a visceral and very public way. Graffiti has always been a way for people who are invisible in society to — literally — make their mark. It’s especially important in a society like ours, where if you have a lot of money you can scream out your advertising messages on huge billboards, but if you’re just a poor working class stiff you face huge penalties just for hanging up a flyer on a telephone pole.
It’s pretty galling when a corporation appropriates something that has meaning for people, something whose popularity has been spread by people marginalized by society at considerable risk to themselves. The corporation just piggybacked on the street cred earned by graffiti artists with their own efforts, and exploited it as a marketing gimmick to make some cash.
Like I said, this is not a criticism of the band. But when they signed to a major label, this is the kind of thing that punks were very wary of. It just comes with the territory, I guess.
When it comes to Green Day graffiti, this is more to my liking… (thanks to Diana for sending it in).
June 23, 2009 at 8:30 am [ Category: Uncategorized, Art, New Album ]
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Comment from Moonbeam June 30, 2009, 6:51 pm
Yeah I saw a 21cb graffiti ad yesterday in Dublin and someone had spraypainted “new low” next to it. The thing that annoys me is that people don’t seem to seperate the people in the band from their record company and they will use anything as an excuse to hate Green Day. It’s frustrating, people hate them for reasons that are completely irrelevant to the music.