Seconde Reading Comprehension Gentrification November 2024

SECONDE READING COMPREHENSION
How did graffiti become respectable? Nov 10th 2013 The Economist
FOR old school graffiti taggers, it may be the final proof that commercialism is destroying
their proud culture. Justin Bieber, the Canadian singer, has been accused of spray-painting the
wall of a hotel in Rio de Janeiro. But even before the baby-faced 19-year-old took to spraying
things, graffiti were going mainstream. In Britain, tagging and train painting—two of the
staples of graffiti culture—are in precipitous decline. Meanwhile, arts students are getting
into drawing on walls and some businesses have even started selling graffiti painted on their
premises. Why did graffiti suddenly become respectable?
Graffiti have been common for millennia. The Roman walls of Pompeii, when revealed in the
18th century, turned out to have vast numbers of names and lewd messages scratched into the
walls. To this day, the temples of ancient Egypt feature names written in by Victorian tourists.
But modern graffiti culture is generally thought to have emerged in New York in the 1970s,
together with hip hop music. Painters went around “bombing” subway carriages with
tags—competing with one another to be seen by as many people as possible. In Britain,
teenagers picked it up at school, drawing bubble letters in textbooks and writing in
playgrounds with permanent markers, says Darren Cullen, a British graffiti artist. Over time,
the quality and quantity improved as rival groups of kids competed to write in more elaborate
ways. Magazines and documentaries which recorded the best graffiti followed. Some taggers
seemed to get addicted to drawing on things, going out every night until the early hours to
“bomb” anywhere they could.
By the 1990s, however, the artists were growing up. Some graffiti artists such as Robert Del
Naja, better known as 3D, turned to music: 3D became a member of the trip-hop group
Massive Attack. Others had their work exhibited in art galleries. Custom-made spray paint,
which allowed more intricate paintings, increased the quality. Others invented new
techniques using stencils and stickers, which allowed more elaborate drawings to be prepared
in advance and applied quickly—important when trying to avoid getting caught. And then in
the early 2000s, the Banksy effect hit—Banksy, a Bristol-based stencil artist, rode a wave of
media publicity. Street art suddenly became a way of making money, says Ben Eine, a graffiti
artist who turned to street art in the 2000s after getting caught tagging once too often.
Teenagers getting into the art stopped trying to impress people by breaking into train yards
and started trying to draw things that would get noticed online. The odd anonymity of tagging
disappeared, as people tried to build reputations under their own names. Art college students
began trying it out. Meanwhile, the authorities cracked down on the more vandalistic types of
graffiti hard, says Keegan Webb, who runs The London Vandal, a graffiti blog. Nowadays,
only hardcore purists still try to paint trains.
Today it is in a generation change, says Jim Rockwell, one of the founders of End of The
Line, a commercial street art and graffiti company. “It has been gentrified”, says Mr
Rockwell. Fewer young people are getting into it in the way that the ‘80s and ‘90s generation
did, but those that do want to push it further into the realm of street art, rather than tagging.
Commercial commissions means that it is possible to make a living from painting walls—and
acceptance means that it no longer need involve running away from the police. But whether
the culture will survive is quite another question.
ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IN YOUR OWN WORDS AND QUOTE FROM THE TEXTE TO JUSTIFY YOUR
ANSWER. USE LINK WORDS AND UNDERLINE THEM
1. In your opinion, why did people feel the need to ‘scratch’ messages into the walls?
2. When and where did ‘graffiti culture’ emerge?
3. What did the new graffiti artists paint on? What was their purpose?
4. What made it possible for graffiti to become more sophisticated?
5. Why has street art become ‘gentrified’?

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