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April 05, 2005
Graffiti as Effective Discourse -- or Not -- in Israel
I'm not really sure what good vandalizing gravestones does. For sure, graffiti is a valuable tool for getting messages across, and in repressive regimes, the anonymity and visibility provided by well-placed and discreetly drawn graffiti is a very effective way to speak out. (For more on graffiti as political media, see my presentation on John Downing's Radical Media.) But vandalism at Mt. Herzl Cemetery in Israel, which some think was done by Israeli ultra-nationalists, fails on two counts:- 1. Generally speaking, you're allowed to speak out against the government in Israel. That means that if you want to call the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin a "murderous dog," you can do it on the pages of the Jerusalem Post, assuming you word your letter well. That's not to say that political graffiti isn't necessary -- if it can be effective in the U.S., it can be effective in Israel -- it just means that you have to be more selective about where you put it.
- 2. While this act certainly gained visibility in the press, I don't think the vandals got across the point they wanted to get across. At its best, graffiti can be used for political discourse, and somewhere in the middle, where most graffiti falls, it states in few words an idea or message that is important to the message sender. At its worst, however, graffiti sends anonymous messages of hatred, which is what it did here.
Posted by josh at April 5, 2005 09:33 AM
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