Discourse and discourse communities have always and continue to play a very dominant role in the lives of every single person, every day. Every person belongs to multiple discourse communities that involve their own type of literacy. In the film documentary, “Exit through the Gift Shop”, we are introduced to many discourse communities and forms of literacy. One gets to see further into the discourse of street art and how things actually work in that community. Theirry is one of the main focuses of the documentary and is the one who seems to belong to most of the discourses mentioned, but the underlying question remains, is he an artist? Does he actually belong to the main discourse in this documentary like he thinks he does? Through the readings of Gee and Swales along with the information presented by Banksy, those questions will try to be interpreted and answered.
Theirry belongs to many discourses already at the start of the film such as, father, husband, entrepreneur, store owner, camera owner, and filmer. He thrived in his store owning discourse, taking a 50 dollar bag of clothes and selling them for thousands of dollars giving them the label of “vintage” which he knew would appeal to the current generation and their trends. Being an entrepreneur and store owner the way he was revolved souly around money and hype. Regarding Gee’s definitions of big “D” and little “d”, Theirry had a good concept of big “D” in the terms of he understood the literacies of each discourse he belonged to, he understood how to buy and sell clothes to gain a larger profit, he understood how to use a camera and film everything and how to change tapes. One thing he didn’t seem to understand, though, was the big “D” of the street art discourse. Also, with his broken language and unique sentence forming, I’m not too sure he understood the concepts of little “d” either. According to Gee, “”discourse” with a little “d” for language in use or connected stretches of language that make sense, like conversations, stories, reports, arguments, essays, and so forth. So, “discourse” is part of “Discourse”—” Discourse” with a big “D” is always more than just language” (pg. 154).
Theirry seemed very, almost unusually interested in the discourse of street art, starting out with his interest in the Space Invader. His interest grew as he was introduced to other artists and their unique form of street art. Theirry filmed everything in his life before he was interested in street art, and continued to film everything after. Swales has stated that there are 6 defining criteria associated with being a real discourse community. The sixth, as he stated,” A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. Discourse communities have changing memberships; individuals enter asapprentices and leave by death or in other less involuntary ways. However, survival of the community depends on a reasonable ratio between novices and experts” (pg. 473). Sawles follows this statement with a personal example of how he tried to fit into a discourse community without fully knowing and understanding the literacy and that having a bad impact on him, and the community pointed him out as not understanding the literacy very easily. This was an example of how he thought he was in the discourse but was proven that he wasn’t quite yet. I think the definition of the sixth rule followed by his example exactly matches how Theirry acted not only in the discourse of street art, but also the discourse of film making. Yes, Theirry was in the discourse of owning and operating a video camera, but not quite in the discourse of film making, though, he mush faked his way through that and told the street artists that he understood the literacy and belonged to the community. After his attempt at making a movie from his tapes it was obvious to Banksy that Theirry did not belong to that discourse right away. So, not only was Theirry not a part of the film making discourse as he so claimed to be, it also became clear to all of the street artists he had interacted with that he was not a part of the street art discourse either. Banksy suggested that Theirry make more art and have a small show, which Theirry then blew out of proportion. Banksy stated that street art and art in general is not about money or hype, never has been and never will, to true artists that is. Street art as a discourse community understands that aspect of literacy and every artist recognizes and respects that literacy. Theirry, however, didn’t seem to understand that aspect. Theirry’s show and promotion for his show proved that in his mind, street art and shows revolved around money and hype. It was then very easy for banksy and the other artists to realize that Theirry was not in the discourse and didn’t understand the literacy; in addition, his art looked like everyone else’s.
In response to the question on if Theirry is an artist or belonged to the street art community, I’m going to have to answer no. Theirry observed the street art community and clearly mush faked his way through being a street artist and was pegged very quickly by the actual discourse community as being a fraud. It is clear that Theirry, belonging to the discourse community of entrepreneurs, tried to bring his literacy of that discourse community to the street art community where it didn’t belong. His combination of mush faking and literacies of other communities clearly doesn’t make him a street artist, or a part of that community. He left people wondering, and made lots of money on his art that was a play off of everyone else’s, but in the end everyone described him using the term “retard” and to the ones that belonged to the discourse it was clear Theirry didn’t belong. Theirry is a true entrepreneur, and should stay true to that discourse.
kjuncal 