The Art And Crimes Of Ron English

In this endless stream of images, that we exist in, in a world where kids are growing up where their entire visual landscape is bought and sold and entirely co-opted, you can either have an acquiescent, passive approach to it and sort of enjoy the spectacle or you can try to confront it in some way.
-Carlo McCormick, editor Paper Magazine

In American society where art isn't a part of people's lives, I feel like I'm almost on a mission to bring art back to people. Everywhere I looked, I saw billboards so I started co-opting billboards to put my art on.
-Ron English

Corporations don't deserve free speech, people deserve free speech.
-Ron English

These are some of the quotes that open the film Popaganda: The Crimes and Art of Ron English, along with quotes of passers-by who say things like, "This is truth, ads are lies.", and the kid who observed that the billboard satirizing Joe Camel will make kids laugh the next time they see a real Joe Camel billboard. And there were lots of them in the poor neighborhood that black kid lived in. Camel faced the pesky problem of its customers dying off and it became increasingly desperate to capture the youth market. The made their models younger but it still didn't appeal to kids so they began a campaign using a cartoon character, Joe Camel, which was hugely "successful", for them anyway.

Ron English didn't like this, none of us do, but Ron actually did something. He went after their billboards (and all cigarette boards) using their look, logo, taglines, like "Smooth Character", or “Salem Spirit” but incorporating his own ghostly, garish images that show the death and lies these images really represent. He also twisted their tags into things like "Cancer Kid". He would change the warning label to stuff like, "Courting kids leads to early retirement", or ask “Hook any new kids today?”. Camel did indeed discontinue the billboards, and Joe Camel, after a while.

He also went after Apple which, at the time, was appropriating the images of great, but conveniently dead, artists and thinkers like Einstein, who may or may not have wanted to endorse their products. They were using the motto "Think Different". So did Ron English, who put up similar billboards, only with faces of Charles Manson and Bill Gates.

One of his favorite targets is McDonalds because, like the cigarette companies, target children. He has attacked them many times with numerous images such as the one pictured on this blog below. He paints each public ad individually on canvas to hang in front of a billboard, almost all of which are dead ads, meaning the advertiser on there has received the time on the board he has paid for. Once the time is up, billboard owners typically just leave it up there for free because blank boards indicate to potential advertisers that it's not a location that sells well.

One of his McDonald's billboards was the inspiration for Morgan Spurlock's excellent film, which I reviewed on this blog, Super-Size Me. Morgan noticed the billboards in his neighborhood. Ron has inspired other artists who are featured in the DVD such as the Billboard Liberation Front, who wear bandanas and disguises and paste up messages on public spaces, including billboards, where they worked with English to put up the mileage statistics on SUV ads along with comments on how pleased Saddam would be, such as, “Saddam’s SUV Oil Dependence Day Sale.”.

Speaking of Saddam, Ron learned that he is the living person with the most songs about him, many probably written at gunpoint. Ron, while not at all competitive with his fellow renegade artists, did apparently want to best Saddam here and implored similarly minded musicians to write songs about him and his art. These little ditties run all through the film, and are pretty funny, as are the sayings on Ron’s billboards, in a sad sort of way. Mostly, they just make you think about the corporate messages that are usually up there in a different way. Here are a few:

The media is the massage.

You are what you own.

America: Home of the homeless

Your apathy is our strength. (image of the Capital)

Shop while they drop. (image of bombs)

Ron tackles all the sacred cows and powers that be, including the church and Bush administration. His goal is to take back the media and the message from those who seem to have the only real access to most mediums of communication in our society. People have asked why Ron risks the arrests and doesn't just rent the billboards. The boards, owned by huge conglomerates like Viacom, Clear Channel and Ted Turner, who made his fortune off billboards, won’t sell the ad space to Ron.

Sure, you can paint your little painting and hang it in the gallery, or your studio, for a few eggheads, but people like Michael Moore and Ron English have no real access to media that has any sizable audience. Those entities take too much money from McDonalds and gas guzzling car companies.

There’s a commentary track with Ron English and the film’s editor talking about they had no idea that the director, Pedro Carajal, would ever really make a film out of all this. Apparently, he just followed them around with a camera a lot,. There’s no shortage of footage of these illegal capers, or anything else. Being an indie filmmaker myself, I’m pretty sure why Ron and the editor, not the director, did the commentary track. It’s all in the editing people! It’s the most under-appreciated endeavor there is, and the most necessary.

I’m sure it was a huge job on this project because you could make a four-hour film just showing Ron’s art at a pic a second. Talk about prolific, he works twelve hours a day and is a very popular and strong selling fine artist, hanging in galleries all over the world,. Originally, he just wanted to bring his art to the people and put his incredibly detailed pop art up for free. After a while he realized he could raise awareness of social and political issues and do what any good artist is supposed to do, encourage free and original thought.

The beauty of this art form is that you get something immediate and real. The artist just goes up there and plasters their message, like graffiti art. No editors, no censors, just the comment of someone willing to stand up and be counted. Ron puts his website address on all his boards, he doesn’t live in hiding and in fact refers to himself as a soccer dad.

I have nothing but respect and awe for Ron and all artists willing to be that .01% of the population willing to say that the Emperor has no clothes, that consumption is costing us our planet, and we need to think about how much we really need, what we’re eating, what we’re doing to our bodies and minds and spirits and souls. They are competing with corporations that have the only meaningful “free” speech in this world and whose existence depends on our continued consumption.

We’ve come a long way since Andy Warhol replicated soup cans to show how mundane our lives had become. Ron has replicated Andy and his muse, Marilyn, over and over and over. They are some of his most requested pieces. Even art dealers want what is familiar. Of course, Ron’s Marilyns have Mickey Mouse boobs… but doesn’t everybody? We all live in the house of mouse, for now, but with a little more satirical, low-brow art, we at least have hope.

Get Rich Or Die Trying

He's smart and absolutely driven. If he was born to Fred Trump, he'd be The Donald. Instead he was born to an alluring and adept NY drug dealer who was murdered when 50 was 10, and an unknown father. Instead of living in a penthouse on Central Park South, he lives on an immense estate with the proceeds of his first album, which sold a mind-boggling twelve million copies, and a dozen other lucrative business deals. He's 50 Cent, born Curtis Jackson, he's an artist, a multimillionaire, a drug dealer and an ex-con. He's been shot nine times and lived to tell about it.... in this movie named after his album and his philosophy.

It's the American dream; no matter where you start, with enough hard work and dedication, you can make money, lots and lots of money. If the American Dream was to find happiness and peace of mind maybe we wouldn't be facing the inconvenient truth that we squandered our planet in a few generations. But that's not the American dream. The American dream is wealth and now it's not just the American dream, it's the dream of everyone, all over the world.

It's all about making smart deals and giving your customers what they want. Trump's customers want the best quality New York housing available, 50's wanted crack. Like any other successful entrepreneur, 50 worked long hours and managed his crew well. Dr. Phil says the difference between winners and loser is that winners do things that losers don't want to do. Other dealers didn't want to take coins, or go to the trouble of ironing bills in order to give crisp change, but 50 did.

Now, I would argue that people who spend a lifetime doing things other people don't want to do isn't necessarily a winner, no matter how rich and powerful their sacrifice makes them. But, again, in this country, in this world, with the values we've developed, wealth is considered success and the lack thereof is considered failure... and this is the subject of this post.

Looking at 50 Cent begs the question, what is success? Anyone trying to argue that 50 Cent is not successful would have a hard time of it, yet, the guy is an unapologetic criminal... a Gangsta. Not only is he unapologetic about it, it's vaunted. Unlike Usher, who went with a traditional vanity project, In The Mix, to capitalize on his fan base, 50 went the route of his mentor, Eminem, and did a story loosely based on his life. He made this choice because he knows what sells, it's not just the melodic, hypnotic raps, it's his story, and his reality, his cred.

He's the real deal, a true artist. A true artist, in my book, is one who can expose. Exposing one's pain, particularly in an aesthetic way, is one of the hardest things in the world to do. Very few do it. John Lennon was brilliant at it, how can you listen to his music and not realize the deep pain he felt all his life over the lack of his mother? People have pain, all of us do, but we often don't know how to understand it, process it, heal it. Artists help us do that, or are supposed to. When an artist really exposes their pain, it helps us relate to our own pain and heals us, makes us feel that we are not alone in our human situation.

Who buys 50's albums? Twelve million black kids? Hardly. He sells big all over the world. It's your own suburban white kids, folks. Why do they buy it, relate to stories from the inner city? Because it's real... like their pain. The pain they feel from parents who see them as little success machines, who must rep them well to the neighbors with stellar grades and lots of extracurricular activities. Unlike adults, who get used to the idea of living in an unreal world of getting paid to be a cog in the wheel, kids want a life that feels immediate and meaningful.

They want to live for today, be in the present, feel their emotion and struggle and humanity. 50, with his close relationship to his maker, the one he encountered after being shot, and his unwillingness to alter his image or himself inspires kids to be real, to be genuine. Kids are battened with morality and rules every moment, some of which don't even make sense to them, there is no room for them to go outside the lines. But, 50 gives them permission and safety to do that, or at least experiment with boundaries.

What's interesting to me is how modest 50 is as an artist. Lennon knew his ability to expose and write music was genius. Though lacking parental love, John had full confidence in his identity as the tortured artist. 50 sees himself as a businessman first, something almost unique to hip hop and rap artists. He credits his ability to sell to white America to his scary image, not his art. So does Disney, that's why there's always a scary scene in their movies. In his own words, he thinks kids go into the store looking to pay $17.99 for a fear thrill. They want a dangerous thug image to pretend to, in order to make themselves feel tough and cool.

I think kids know what's real. You just can't fake it to the kids cause they're at school all day talking to each other. Now, with the internet, the buzz goes faster, stronger, and wider than ever. Kids don't just follow trends, they make them, and they are the only ones to make them, that's why advertisers seek them out. They loved Lennon, they loved Cobain, and they love 50 because those guys put their pain and weaknesses and mistakes out there for all to see.

So, is 50 successful? Hell yeah, but not because of the money, or even the drive, but because, like Lennon and Cobain, he was transformed by the love of his child to be a caring human being and expresses himself as a true artist.