Written, anonymous, short, and frequently traditional commentaries placed on public walls, desktops, subway cars, sidewalks, and other flat surfaces. The media of choice include spray paint, pencil, and ink, or the commentaries may be scratched or etched in the surfaces. The term graffiti has come into English from the Italian, derived from a word meaning “to scratch.” It was first used extensively by art historians to refer to the scratched or etched political slogans discovered on the walls of ancient Pompeii and to artistic designs created by scratching away the outer color layer to reveal the contrasting color beneath. A related term is latrinalia, or writings on public bathroom walls, which frequently tend to focus on more profane, sexual, and scatological topics. Graffiti ranges in form from doggerel to epigrams to slogans to single words, often personal names and place-names. Some graffiti is elaborate enough to be regarded as an art form, especially when stylized lettering and dramatic color schemes are utilized. Written form characterizes the genre, distinguishing graffiti from murals and other public artistic displays.
The content of graffiti usually is topical, responding to current events, political trends, and local issues. For example, “stop the bombing,” “get out of Cambodia,” and “make love, not war” were common graffiti during the Vietnam War. AIDS, homosexuality, and feminism became common topics during the 1990s. Whimsicality and wittiness also are distinguishing characteristics of the genre. One example is the enigmatic “Kilroy was here,” which originated in World War II. Many slogans on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs represent a popular culture exploitation of the form. Because of its topical subject matter, most graffiti is short-lived, being either deliberately erased or replaced by another writer.
The subjects addressed in graffiti, however, are as varied as the graffiti artists themselves. Much research has been conducted regarding the differences in graffiti in various college and university buildings—the chemistry building versus the fine arts building or the men’s gym versus the women’s gym. Of course, the graffiti in these specialized locales generally reflects the interests and concerns of the students (and faculty) who frequent them. Another characteristic of graffiti is its interactive quality, expressed as conversations or “runs” in which a variety of successive writers add to and comment on the original statement. For example, many sources report variations on the following run: “God is dead”—“Don’t worry, Mary is pregnant again”—“God isn’t dead. He just doesn’t want to get involved”—“Who is god anyway?” Sometimes these runs continue until the available wall space is used up.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is urban graffiti that consists of a single person’s nickname or a gang name or symbol. As a rule, the defacing of such graffiti is the catalyst for gang retaliation. A distinctive Mexican-American graffito, con safos (or its abbreviation, c/s), functions to prevent the defacement of any name graffiti that it accompanies because of the folk belief among Mexican-Americans that to deface such distinctively protected graffiti is to reflexively harm oneself. An oral folk rhyme expressing this same sentiment is “I’m rubber, you’re glue. What you throw at me, sticks to you.”
As mentioned, much urban graffiti is gang or “turf ” related, and thus it functions as a boundary marker. In hotly contested areas or intersections, practically all of the walls and sidewalks may be covered with contrasting graffiti. The subway cars of New York City have provided the most dramatic example of excessive graffiti. Such gang-related graffiti utilizes a combination of gang colors, names, and symbols. In such cases, municipal authorities usually regard creating graffiti as defacing public property or vandalism punishable by fines and imprisonment. The problem with such regulations, however, is that the writers of graffiti are inherently anonymous, which usually precludes their apprehension by the authorities. In some communities, as part of negotiations to end gang violence, the authorities will work out a truce in which the various gangs come together publicly to wash off and paint over the offending graffiti of all the involved groups.
Graffiti can be classified as folklore for many reasons. Although most researchers regard graffiti as a separate and distinct genre, others make a strong case that graffiti is a specialized kind of written folk speech because of its poetic and narrative characteristics. Regardless of genre classification, graffiti is undoubtedly traditional, with a pedigree extending back historically to the ancient Romans and possibly further. It also employs traditional, doggerel verse forms that reappear generation after generation, such as latrinalia with the common introduction “Here I sit. . . .” The anonymity of the graffiti writers is another characteristic that places graffiti squarely in the purview of folklore. Finally, graffiti is associated with distinctive folk groups, ranging from the habitués of various university buildings to socially deviant groups such as gangs to various ethnic groups.
