TAnderson-cgs17: Week 15- Comparative analysis of Exit through the Gift Shop and Comic Book Confidential

For our final week of classes, we watched two different movies. The first movie was Exit Through the Gift Shop which is a film directed by the street artist Banksy. The film follows Thierry Guetta, a guy who films his every waking moment who decides to start filming street artists in their natural habitat. The second film was Comic Book Confidential, directed by Ron Mann, is a movie about comic books through the years up until the 1980s, when the movie came out. Seeing as Exit Through the Gift Shop was released in 2010 the movies definitely have some differences. For one, Exit Through the Gift Shop is directed by one of the artists that is featured in the film, somebody who is a part of the world being filmed. On the other hand, Comic Book Confidential is directed by someone who is not involved in the world that is being talked about. One gives an insider’s perspective and the other gives an outsider’s perspective.

Another thing is that Comic Book Confidential follows along a linear timeline of the development of comic books and how outside influences affected the content while Exit Through the Gift Shop provides a look at different street artists through the eyes of a main character in the order that he met them. Exit Through the Gift Shop feels more like a vlog of some sort and Comic Book Confidential flows more like a staunch documentary.

Also the type of artists that the films are about vary. Comic book artists like Jack Kirby or Harvey Kurtzman did very commercial work compared to people like Banksy or Space Invader, who did a more unconventional type of art that bordered on illegal.