Thoughts Wanted. (1 Viewer)

[le Mali]

I'm doing my Major about the importance of Graffiti to modern history. I'm at a sticky point in the essay and I think I just need a bit of fresh air into it.

What I'm looking for are opinions about graffiti, do you like it, love it or hate it? Do you think it is destructive? Do you think it should be illegal?

Also, as i'm going to assume most of you reading this are history students, do you think graffiti is a good and an important historical reference.

Any opinion would be great, positive or negative.
=)

 

[jblack01]

i think your doing a pretty interesting topic. I really doubt anyone else would have done that before.

I live in an area where graff is pretty big so im used to it. I rekon peaces are can be awesome but some can just be crap. Apart from that i.e. normal tagging i dont really see the point. Your vandalising public property for what? To be seen? I just don't see the point.

But yeh peaces are awesome.

In terms of historical reference i rekon yeh it can be good. It just depends really.

Btw what topic you doing for your personality for ext hist?

 

[le Mali]

I'm so annoyingly pedantic about being original.
Thanks for your comments =)

Don't know what you mean by personality, but we do JFK(as does most of the state, yuck) and my class does the Indochina debate and his public and private life in regards to health.

 

[jblack01]

righto

 

[LuciLikeWhoa]

I dont know if this will help or anything.

But when Pompeii was discovered, there was some graffiti found on the walls.
You could possibly analyse how the grafitti on the walls of Pompeii has helped historians find out what life in Pompeii was like.

But you may have to ask an Ancient History teacher about that cause it may overlap a bit with the core topic of Pompeii.

 

[tom_swell]

I dont know if this will help or anything.

But when Pompeii was discovered, there was some graffiti found on the walls.
You could possibly analyse how the grafitti on the walls of Pompeii has helped historians find out what life in Pompeii was like.

But you may have to ask an Ancient History teacher about that cause it may overlap a bit with the core topic of Pompeii.

i'd expect that would clash a little bit to much. An examination of the epigraphic evidence in Pompeii is a major section of that topic. You could touch on it but i would avoid an in depth analysis of pompeii, despite its obvious historical importance.

 

[earlymodernusyd]

Hi

Interesting topic. Have you considered looking at graffiti in the context of New Historicism - if your're not familiar with the term check it out - Wikipedia has quite a good entry. Reading Graffiti as historical artifacts also challenges the privileging of particular source formats - you can relate this back to the place of postmodernism in history.

 

[Blue Suede]

as far as australian history goes, sydney university students started a lot of graffiti in the late 60's as a form of student protest against what was happening in vietnam, and conscription during the vietnam war. nowadays, a lot of it has been erased, but there remains a graffiti tunnel where it's allowable for students to graffiti. this becomes a strong form of expressionism and student campaigning in the university. personally, i think it's great, and having done some graffiti there myself, it's an awesome part of the culture of the uni.

outside specified graffiti areas, i find graffiti can be quite offensive though. i mean, someone doing graffiti signatures on a train, or wall somewhere, who really wants to see that?

 

[-may-cat-]

i'd expect that would clash a little bit to much. An examination of the epigraphic evidence in Pompeii is a major section of that topic. You could touch on it but i would avoid an in depth analysis of pompeii, despite its obvious historical importance.

Graffiti is found EVERYWHERE in the ancient world, you could use another site that didn't clash so heavily if you wanted.