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Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

As shown by this savage Charlie Brooker takedown: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/sep/22/arts.v...

>Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.

- Creator of Black Mirror, 5 years before series premiere

This reads more puerile and jealous than savage.

It's got just the right mix of highbrow disdain, unironic self righteousness and naughty language to titillate the average guardian reader though.

Well yes, but so does Banksy :)

(Also, if you're familiar with Charlie Brooker's output, he's not really a 'highbrow' type. He started out in games journalism.)

Im familiar with who he is. At the time his claim to fame was coming up with Nathan Barley, which is why I suspected there was more than a little jealousy there.

He got more famous and acclaimed since black mirror.

I get the jealously part, but the highbrow part seems off to me. Brooker has always shown much more interest in distinctly lowbrow art forms such as video games. I don't think he is sneering at Banksy because he thinks we should be looking at the paintings of the Old Masters instead.

Right but he knows guardian readers think that and he's pandering to their snobbery with his comments about Banksy rolling around in the pop culture mud.

At the same time it's painfully obvious it riled him up being a more obscure and less famous equivalent of banksy.

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