r/Documentaries • u/BernieEcclestoned • Feb 10 '23
20th Century Style Wars (1983) legendary graffiti documentary [01:09:48]
https://youtu.be/7DXD1HBaLX021
u/RecklessHeckler Feb 10 '23
There's a great monologue in this doc by one of the prolific graffiti artists of the time.
Then one day I was watching a Netflix show called The Get Down (I think, it was pretty terrible) and there is Will Smith's kid playing a graffiti artist in the same era as Style Wars depicts, and he the doing the same damn monologue that was in the documentary. Except the the kid absolutely butchered it. I turned it off immediately. Sad to see what was supposed to be an homage to something great (I assume), fall so flat.
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u/mepo_pines Feb 10 '23
Do you remember who the writer is in SW?
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u/slipsect Feb 10 '23
He's probably talking about Skeme. I haven't watched the Jaden movie, but I watch Style Wars once or twice a year.
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Feb 11 '23
[deleted]
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u/mepo_pines Feb 11 '23
I meant the writer specifically the persons was referring too.
I know all those heads are there.
I especially like the scene with skeme and his mom
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u/RecklessHeckler Mar 28 '23
I don't, it was quite some time ago but his commentary resonated with me.
It was the one that was talking about how many people in NYC of all walks of life see his name every day up on the trains even though he's just some punk from the hood.
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u/BernieEcclestoned Feb 10 '23
I remember watching this as a little dweeb learning to do windmills on cardboard listening to electros albums.
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u/mega_desu Feb 11 '23
Same but I wasn't a dweeb. I was dope af and still am lol.
Jokes aside, good share! Haven't watched this in forever.
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u/mepo_pines Feb 10 '23
Maybe we could negogiate somethin. I can’t remember who said it but that kid was funny af.
Also lol that scene with skeme and his mom is awesome, it reminds me of what my mom and I went through too lmao.
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u/doubledeckersupreme Feb 11 '23
I still have the DVD that I never returned to Netflix back in the mail-in days
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u/IcantSeeUuCantSeeMe Feb 11 '23
I'm stoned and read the title as Star Wars Legendary Graffiti, I click on the link expecting Star Wars graffiti.
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u/pieceofpecanpie Feb 11 '23
Big fan of this documentary.
This song by The Radio Department samples a bit of it around 1:40.
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u/cadomyavo Feb 11 '23
Check out Quality of Life on YouTube for a modern NYC graffiti doc that covers the 80’s to now.
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u/musicmaster82 Feb 11 '23
I rave about this movie and recommend it to people a lot! Such an amazing snapshot of hip hop and the 80s in NYC.
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u/Haiku-d-etat Feb 11 '23
I own this on DVD. For more hip hop chit, check out The Freshest Kids and Scratch. Great documentaries.
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u/plexaro Feb 10 '23
Fuck these guys and anyone doing this garbage, graffiti makes everything look like shit and brings down places,and literally 99.9 percent of the people who live around what these dickheads do, hate it and don’t care.A bit ranty I know but fuck those guys for forcing their shit onto everyone.
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u/TheFAPnetwork Feb 10 '23
Yeah fuck the Egyptians, Mayan, and Inca too. While we're at it, fuck those who left their dirty ass flag on the moon
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u/klone_free Feb 10 '23
Maybe if that's how you feel you should tell all the landlords to live in their buildings and actually be an asset to the communities they profit off of instead of milking the money out of those areas. Why are giant advertisements ok to bombard us? Because they paid somebody? Would you let heroin dealers have paid advertisements? No? But beer and liquors ok? Everyone's forcing shit on you, you just think these dudes are lower than you so you cathartically punch down. What a fucking tool
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u/plexaro Feb 11 '23
So then tagging and graffiti solves that issue, fuck great well done, let’s make the area look 10x more shit because of landlords and billboards fantastic well done and also I didn’t ever use the term lower than me so I don’t know where that came from. So get on your high horse and go fuck your self.
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u/klone_free Feb 11 '23
My point is to write these people off as vandals and nothing more is narrow-minded. To be upset by someone finding their own voice is ignorant. Also, maybe your graffiti artists just suck Lots of graffiti artists do murals and are (or least where I'm from) have been seen as beautifying their city to some degree, or at one time or another. What else do you do with burned down abandoned buildings?
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u/roughtimes Feb 11 '23
Who crossed you out?
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u/AbyssOfNoise Feb 11 '23
Everyone's forcing shit on you,
So fuck everyone forcing shit on other people. Let's be consistent
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u/klone_free Feb 11 '23 edited Feb 11 '23
Aint that the truth. The difference to me is one (graffiti) could be a means of self expression, where as ads exist to get us to buy crap and invade our minds with corporate meme. So to me, one of those Fuckers is a fucker just like me, and the other fucker is destroying the planet and only cares about profit
The world's a tough place. Sorry your composite structures have some paint on em. The irony is if you just ignored it like you do advertisements, it wouldn't bring down property values and alot of arguments against it would dissipate
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u/BernieEcclestoned Feb 10 '23
Maybe it's art and it reflects the socio economic hand they've been dealt.
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u/hugo_mandolin Feb 11 '23
It’s sad that people won’t look into the root cause of artistic expression.
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u/Icy_Law9181 Feb 11 '23
One of my fave graffiti films ever made.I watched it when it came out and again a few years ago.Might give it another watch now,thanks for the reminder.
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u/KomplexKaiju Jan 23 '24
Anyone know if the Style Wars Blu Ray contains the footage on SW Revisited?
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u/Lucha_Bat Feb 10 '23
A great companion piece to this is the film Stations of the Elevated (1981) which contains amazing shots of these trains scored by Charles Mingus.
Edit: here we go: https://archive.org/details/stations-of-the-elevated-1981-1080p-web-dl-dd-2.0-h.-264-alfa-hd