Style Wars Response Essay

Ryu Tomita

Professor Sacha Frey

HMS-101B-01

Oct. 9^th, 2012

Anthropological Space Created within New York by the Early Hip-hop Movement

            Technically space is an open area that can be observed as unlimited; however when enclosed by solid objects or walls, it can be limited, but creatively used. Typically, architects design and construct based on the understanding of spatial qualities and the reading of space. But de Certeau provides an alternative interpretation of space: space is determined by “stories” that the space holds in relative to its interaction with humans. In Style Wars, the spring of the underground movement in the late 70s, early 80s, correlated with hip-hop: graffiti. Those who were associated with the early hip-hop movement (graffiti writers, rappers, and break-dancers) redefined the spatial relationship with the architecture of New York by exposing stories, through the arts, without occupying or manipulating physical space.

            Writers first redefined the spatial relationship with the layout of the city through graffiti art. Initially, graffiti began through writing one’s “tag” on buildings with spray cans, but later developed into a more intricate form of art. It morphed into “throw-ups,” which are bubbled letters and later “pieces,” time-consuming, but more complex form of graffiti, stylizing the artist’s name with customization. Pieces were thrown onto subways and traveled across the five boroughs to boost the writer’s ego and to feed the creativity of other graffiti writers. Each “piece” revealed the individual artist’s story through their style and design of the artwork. Unfortunately, graffiti was not accepted by everyone, especially by the Mayor of New York, Ed Koch. He began anti-graffiti campaigns and periodically washed the subways to clean the exterior. As de Certeau explains, the “transgression of the limit (space), a disobedience of the law of the place” is a “attack on a state” or “‘betrayal’ of an order” (128). In other words, some people will always neither understand the ambiguousness of space nor the “stories.” This is due to the fact that the boundaries of the object that defines space, which in the case of the film, graffiti) or “frontier and bridges” as de Certeau would insert, are not clearly visible (126).

Rappers and break-dancers also helped redefined the architecture of the city through language and stories. Rapper Nas rapped about the environment of New York during the early hip-hop era. He raps in his song “N.Y. State of Mind:”

“Be havin' dreams that I'm a gangster / drinkin Moets, holdin' Tecs / Makin' sure the cash came correct then I stepped /  Investments in stocks / sewein' up the blocks / To sell rocks / winnin' gunfights with mega cops / But just a nigga, walkin' with his finger on the trigger / Make enough figures until my pockets get bigger / I ain't the type of brother made for you to start testing”

Although these rhymes were written in a later zeitgeist than Style Wars in 1992, Nas’s verses already reveal the imagery and scenes from everyday New York. He exposes the youth’s ambition to deal drugs to compile enough money to “[invest] in stocks” in order to “sew up the blocks;” however in reality, the youth is simply “walkin’ with his finger on the trigger,” not accomplishing anything, but labeled as another brick in the wall. Rappers changed the landscape of New York by revealing the environment in which they lived in. More specifically, since the lyrics can be read anywhere in the world, they add to the space of New York in the anthropological mapping system. As de Certeau explicates, these stories or raps are “fragments” that “have the function of founding and articulating spaces” that can be recorded (122-3). These stories have say in defining the city’s social and cultural landscape and space. This is related to break-dancing as well. Each b-boy, or a break-dancer, must express him or herself individually in a sporadic matter. The fact that breakdance battles are geometrically in a circle means that people are watching the dancer’s creativity from every angle. This mostly relates to the early hip-hop movement, but when a dancer created a new move, it was similar to the creation of a new style in graffiti, where other dancers were able to either copy or develop another idea off the new move.

            In conclusion, as demonstrated in Style Wars, writers, rappers, and breakdancers of the early hip-hop movement redefined the spatial relationship through creating stories through their individual stories whether through spray cans, rhymes and poetry, or body movement. Although their movement didn’t occupy any physical volume or the traditional idea of space of geometrical tangible structures, they contributed to the anthropological volume of the city.

           

Works Cited

de Certeau, Michel. “Spatial Stories.” The Practice of Everyday Life. Rendall, Steven. University of California Press: Berkeley, Year. Print.

Jones, Nasir. "N.Y. State of Mind." Illmatic. By DJ Premier. New York, 1992.

 Silver, Tony, dir. Style Wars. Public Art Films and Plexifilm, 1984. Film.