On Banksy’s Rebel Rocket Attack
Thoughts on the artist’s latest piece of multimedia commentary.
Early Sunday afternoon Banksy, the renowned British graffiti artist and infamous recluse, uploaded his first ever video onto YouTube — the short clip Rebel Rocket Attack. The video, of what appears to be on-the-ground footage of unknown insurgent fighters, is assumed to be part of the artist’s recently started month long exhibition in New York, “Better Out Than In.” But, like nearly everything surrounding Banksy, cryptic is about as clear as you’re likely to get.
The short video makes heavy use of images that have become synonymous with the American war on terror in recent years — grainy handheld footage of a turbaned, camo jacket adorned, kameez wearing, rebel fighter shrieking “Allahu Akbar” ad nauseum as he points an RPG at what is assumed to be a US army helicopter or drone. It is our collective familiarity with this oft-televised scenario that Banksy exploits when he delivers the video’s twist in the end.
But beyond the chuckle that comes from the video’s gotcha moment finale, it is hard to tell what the artist was trying to say with this piece. Is is a commentary on a corporate mascot’s role in the ever-expanding globalization of our world? Is it an on-the-nose caricature of what some call the “Clash of Civilizations?” Or is it merely a showcase of what a man can do with some Flash, after effects, and the monotonous clatter of CNN in the background? Granted, while Banksy is known to have some ambiguous works in his catalog, many of his more popular works have a clear sociopolitical message behind them. From the image of a child swinging on a tire-swing made from a lifesaver stenciled on the side of a building in post-Katrina New Orleans, to the series of images of fake cracks and holes showing a tropical wonderland just out of reach painted along the West Bank Barrier in Israel, it is easy to tell what the artist was trying to say and the criticism he had with the world. But clear criticism is exactly what is missing from Rebel Rocket Attack, and it is the vacuum left from a lack of clear meaning coupled with the one-sided villainy of the insurgent fighters that leaves such a sour aftertaste.
The naggingly repetitive chorus of “God is great!” which lingers on a bit longer than it should, adds an eerie layer to the video’s end. Using the continuous chanting of “Allahu Akbar” to elicit a level of uneasiness from the viewer immediately calls to mind the recent kerfuffle at the Fox News morning program Fox & Friends back in the beginning of September. Brian Kilmeade, one of the program’s many co-hosts, showed Sen. John McCain a video of rebels in Syria watching what Kilmeade suspected was a Syrian Army fighter jet getting shot down from the sky, the rebels react by repeatedly proclaiming “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” The incident made headlines when Sen. McCain barked back at the Fox host by saying that the rebels’ proclamation of “Allahu Akbar” was no more threatening than a flag-waving, apple-pie-eating American saying “Thank God.” Kilmeade and his cohorts were taken aback. To them, and to many others in our country, “Allahu Akbar” is a threatening phrase. As Lindsey Graham put it in his appearance on Fox & Friends a few weeks later, many see it as a “war chant.” It is this collective fear that Banksy taps into.
Incidentally, both the video shown to Sen. McCain and the one posted by Banksy share similar aesthetics.
Make no mistake: the Muslim fighters in Rebel Rocket Attack are clearly the villains of the piece, as seen not only by what they ultimately shoot down from the sky, but as demonstrated by the reaction of a small child privy to the event. This flies in the face of what we have grown to understand is a complicated a thoroughly grey conflict, so to show a group of clearly “bad” Arabs ganging up on one of the most pure and inculpable figures in American pop culture seems to be in direct conflict with the message found in a slew of other works by the artist where empathy for “The Other” is required of the viewer.
