In 1982’s Wild Style, real-life New York graffiti artist Lee Quiñones plays a fictional New York graffiti artist named Raymond. Real-life New York promoter Fab 5 Freddy plays fictional New York promoter Phade. Real-life New York underground documenter Patti Astor plays fictional New York underground documenter Virginia.
You get the idea. Wild Style is a feature film that feels more like a documentary. Set and filmed in the Bronx, it’s a portrait of New York at its most gritty and also a look at how those living outside of Manhattan made their voices heard. Raymond may be a financially struggling teenager living in a neighborhood that looks like someone recently set off a bomb, but he’s also Zoro, a New York legend whose tag is regularly carried through the city on the subway trains that he paints at night. Throughout the film, rap is portrayed as a language of their own, a way for the residents of New York’s neglected neighborhoods to communicate with each other in their unique way and with their own rhythm. Wild Style is a film that celebrates both graffiti and rap as a form of liberation as opposed to just another commercial enterprise. Considering just how mainstream and commercial both rap and graffiti have become, it’s interesting to be reminded that both of them once meant something.
Wild Style is a hang-out film. The members of New York’s underground art scene sit around and talk, and the film is less about what they say and more about the fact that they just exist and they’re willing to risk getting arrested to make their voices and their names known. In Vincent J. Cannato’s The Ungovernable City, there’s a section devoted to both Mayor John V. Lindsay’s hatred of graffiti and to those who argued that graffiti was a legitimate art form. At a press conference to show off the city’s newest subway cars, Lindsay was shocked to discover that they had already been tagged before they had even made their first run. While Norman Mailer is quoted as approving of graffiti, other critics claim that the only reason the rich celebrated the “authenticity” of graffiti was because it was largely appearing on buildings and in neighborhoods that they didn’t spend any time in. That tension shows up in Wild Style when Raymond complains about a group of graffiti artists who have sold out and are now accepting commissions and painting murals. It’s also present in the character of Virginia, who often seems to be simply slumming with the artists. It’s easy to imagine her returning to Manhattan and bragging to all of her friends about how beloved she is in the Bronx.
For a history nerd like me, Wild Style is an essential film. It’s a time capsule of life in the Bronx in the early ’80s. For all the time that is devoted to Raymond painting and various early hip-hop artists performing, the most haunting images are the empty lots and abandoned buildings that make up the film’s scenery. Looking at the Bronx, one can understand why the residents had to find their own unique way to make themselves heard. Abandoned by a city that only cared about Manhattan, the characters in Wild Style have created a world of their own, with its own rules and customs.
Wild Style is a time capsule. I mean, we have to face the truth. No one is going to build a working time machine in our lifetime. Films like Wild Style are about as close as we’re going to get.
