Q07063

Graffiti Is Vandalism

Imagine this, you are the Prime Minister of New Zealand; you have just put up a new billboard to advertise your country. The next day it is covered with a burst of coloured lines completely swamping your billboard. Graffitied by vandals destroying cities, using unnecessary canvases to paint on and forcing ordinary people to take action against it.

New Zealand is a great place to see public statues billboards and traditional schools. In some businesses they rely on these structures to gain income. But because of graffiti, cities throughout New Zealand have been forced to take down these structures and simply can not afford to put up new ones. Often times gang youth taggers write graffiti to mark territory, to let the community no that they are around, but the graffiti is completely vandalising the city at the same time. Recently in an Invercargill school there had been an act of graffiti known as ‘PSR’, this symbol was believed to be some sort of gang sign, but more importantly it was vandalising the school and disrupting the learning structure of many students. This clearly shows that graffiti is causing trouble in New Zealand and it is destroying the country. Something needs to done about it, starting with harsher consequences for vandals.

Some people argue that graffiti is art and is not vandalism. Sometimes graffiti can be art but this is when it is done legally. The majority of graffiti is tacky and is done illegally on public or private property. So the facts state that graffiti is vandalism. In today’s society we have lots of resources and canvases for people to express their art on, so why should so called ‘graffiti artists’ have to paint all over unneccary canvases. They have their own walls to paint on, get public approval to paint on abandoned buildings or even just paint on normal pieces of paper. These people could even excel in a number of New Zealand’s art opportunities, but most of these people don’t have jobs and are drop outs, which is why they resort in graffiti. People now have to accept that unless these people are painting on legal canvases, then it is an act of vandalism, not art.

What about the people who are doing something about graffiti and are trying to stop it? The city of Auckland takes an active approach towards graffiti. A full time crew has been employed to locate graffiti throughout the city and wash it off on public or private property. This shows what people are doing to help protect their city and stop graffiti. But graffiti is still occurring, and what people will do to stop it can extend to extreme measures.  7:05 am January 27^th 2008 a young boy was stabbed and killed in Auckland for vandalising private property with graffiti, even though this was a huge tragedy it showed what extremes measures graffiti could extend to. Graffiti volunteer groups go out of their way to help their city, and they should be respected.

Writing graffiti on public or private property is an act of vandalism and is against the law. Graffiti needs to be stoped, for it is destroying New Zealand, forcing groups to take action against it and it is even getting people killed. Graffiti can be art and be expressed in a beautiful way, but in the mean time all it is, is vandalism and affects people more negatively than positively.