Overdrawn Banksy

If you hurry, you may still have time to cross the Pond and visit “Dismaland,” open to the public through Sept. 27. No I didn’t stutter; it’s not the theme park with the friendly mouse in Florida but the vision of British graffiti artist Banksy, situated on 2.5 acres in Weston-super-Mare, just facing Wales.

While natives of the Bristol Channel town waited in suspense last year for its unveiling, pseudonymous Greta Garbo–like Banksy took a derelict former seaside resort and turned it into … a derelict former seaside resort with a grimy decomposing Disney-like castle on it. Great, just what they needed in that depressed area. But this is art in the 21st century, folks, and to give you a heads-up, “What in the world is art anyway?” will be the preoccupation of the rest of this essay.

Other features of the “bemusement park” include a murky moat, an NSA-style entrance gate where you get hassled, a crashed Cinderella carriage with the blond-tressed princess’ lifeless body folded over the door, allusions to Europe’s horsemeat scandal, a giant pinwheel entangled in plastic, a migrant boat crisis bumper game, anti-consumerist messages, morose and unfriendly employees, and a Ferris wheel, for that special touch of the macabre.

Exhibits like this are always hard on people of my socio-economic level because we feel pressured to be able to tell, with all our education, whether we are looking at real art or are being had. Nobody likes to be had. In fact, if I may go out on a limb, I would say that the desire not to be had, and correlative desire to be thought deep, are the predominant modern Western motivations, surpassing food, shelter, and sex in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Is Banksy profound, or a carnival snake oil salesman? Is his exhibit a lark, a manifesto, or the twaddle of college freshman philosophy majors?

Why are misery and evil thought deeper than joy? Not to God.

On the one hand the artist’s pieces have fetched over £100,000 at Sotheby’s; on the other hand, Transport for London painted over a Banksy image of a Pulp Fiction character clutching bananas, claiming the “graffiti” fostered “a general atmosphere of neglect and social decay which in turn encourages crime.” The local governing body overseeing London’s transport system defended its staff as “professional cleaners not professional art critics.”

These indeed may be the first to see when emperors have no clothes. Comments on Dismaland seem to break even between those who call it prophetic and those who say things like “Somebody needs to go to the real Disneyland.” The official brochure promises: “Are you looking for an alternative to the soulless sugar-coated banality of the average family day out? ... escape from mindless escapism.” But the grounds are crammed with clichés (there is a Grim Reaper in a dodgem car) that are the stock-in-trade of many a hackneyed social critic—which is banality too.

If you don’t have anything good to offer society, you can always be a social critic. That’s fun. But it’s not as if Banksy and the other 58 graffiti contributors offer answers. Smugly, they have us regard Dismaland as “a theme park whose big theme is: theme parks should have bigger themes.” But that’s a cheap shot. What is the theme? And for all Banksy’s contempt for capitalism, the exhibit still exits through the gift store. Just sayin’.

I had a friend who used to sigh, “Beauty is such a relief.” She was a child in Germany during World War II and must have seen the brittle, confection-like Berlin skyline with her own eyes. It was enough for a lifetime. Why are misery and evil thought deeper than joy? Not to God. My grandmother, who also saw her fill of hard times, never was interested in being a tourist to visit more: “Why do I want to go see a lot of decrepit buildings?” she would say to me. (I thought she mustn’t be very deep.)

If you do make it to Dismaland before it closes, be sure to observe the rules, especially the brochure’s prohibitions on knives, spray cans, and illegal drugs. It’s okay for Banksy to vent, but don’t you try it. He gets to splay his soul on every wall and bridge in town. You get to pay your money and admire. He’s deep; you’re not.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org