Banksy's valentine message.

[placemats]

I'm unsure about the message it sends. Women do not need to lose teeth or get a black eye to experience domestic violence. Nor should the answer to violent and coercive men be to throw them in the freezer. Will men who are violent get this message? www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-64635362

On a more positive note, it's obviously the quickest way to get the council to deal with flytipping. If there hadn't been a small herd of photographers and art fans gathered around, that freezer would still have been there at Easter.

Honestly OP it isn't clear what you're complaining about.

Dude does an art piece saying DV is bad. You're complaining is it's detailed enough and should cover all the forms of DV. and appropriate legal consequences for the abuser. But it's a piece of Banksy, not a Government infomercial. You say you agree with the message and like Banksy yet you're still moaning that he hasn't cured DV.

He's one of the most famous living artists in the world.

Thanks Banksy, every little bit of support is welcome !

Art is supposed to have an emotional impact on the viewer, it’s supposed to make you think and question things/try to interpret what you are looking at.
If people are talking about DV then I think Banksy has done what he intended.

Why on earth would you think that the depiction of a woman whose experience of dv involved a black eye and a broken tooth implies that you haven't experienced dv unless you've got a black eye or a broken tooth? That's just silly

Honestly OP it isn't clear what you're complaining about.

^This. It's perfectly clear it's a piece of art against dv. Of course men will get that. And no, of course the fact that men get it will not magically stop abusive men from being abusive.

It is perfect. The irony is simply lost on you.

And yet you abuse me by saying that my intellect is such that I cannot comprehend the irony. I think maybe you are the one who has lost the irony.

"abuse you"?

😁Are you ok?

To me it sums up a woman who’s had enough of her DV relationship and got her own back by murdering her h/p on Valentine’s Day and chucking him into a chest freezer and cleaning out the rubbish (hence the washing up gloves) because apparently ‘it wasn’t going to happen again’. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you’.

Perhaps Banksy should start putting disclaimers next to his artwork for the benefit of the over thinkers. “This artwork is intended to convey the artist’s view on domestic violence and is not designed to represent the full spectrum of abuse. While all reasonable care has been taken in producing this artwork, the artist shall not be held responsible for any misinterpretation of the message or for a lack of impact on abuse cases.

How do we know she didn’t bludgeon him with a frozen leg of lamb and then stick him in the freezer? He doesn’t need to have fallen in.

Art is designed to evoke a response and interpretation that is personal and unique to each one of us. I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong take on how it makes us feel or what we think the artist is saying. I actually love reading different views.

Obviously people who are abusers aren't going to change because of an artistic depiction. That's not the purpose.

Her response to being abused is to presumably kill him and pop him in the freezer.
I’m not sure it helps men or women.
easily could be her battered, him napping while she holds a cast iron frying pan.

gives men the idea, hurt her enough she can’t hurt me back.

I like it. It's got a delightfully macabre Bad Sisters vibe.

Oh OP, I know you didn't like the art but did you really have to take the freezer away?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-64635362.amp

I'd sort of get your complaint if it was "violence is not the answer to DV" (she's clearly murdered her husband and stashed him in the freezer) but you're missing the nuance and Banksys whole MO with his art.

I interpret this as "women have have enough of toxic men, and I stand with them".

I interpret the council removing the freezer as "shit, Banksys shown Margate up as the shithole it is, despite us trying our best to regenerate it"

I like it. And I appreciate that he has chosen a subject that needs more sunlight shone on it. I thinks it's a powerful image that centres the woman.

This!

Good for him.

Thanks Banksy (bet he's a MNer).

I find this interesting for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it feels to me a bit like an oblique reference to, and inversion of, the "women in refrigerators" trope (the website where, as far as I know, this was most notably documented is here: lby3.com/wir/ — with a Wikipedia article here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators — basically, that female characters seemed to get killed and shoved in the fridge to provide plot developments and motivation for male characters quite frequently).

Secondly, the victim of abuse gets to be a person with a facial expression and an inferred story, while the abuser is an anonymous pair of shoes, which again feels like an inversion of all those news stories where a man gets his face and name published, stories of his life and what all his neighbors and colleagues and golf club buddies thought of him, speculation on his motivation or whether he was unwell or just snapped, while the woman he killed gets to be "wife" or at most a first name plus his surname.

@JarByTheDoor I really like the way you see it.
For myself, I had a very negative reaction. I would love this image if there was a group of housewives there, but seeing this I can't help thinking something like, "Us sassy, cute girls know how to deal with abusive men on our own." Which is not what DV is like, and not how anyone can break free from abusive relationships.
I get that's my stuff I'm bringing to the artwork, but I can fully relate to OP feeling ambivalent about this.

That's how I took it.

I share that feeling too DontGetEven, as well as a few of the reservations others on this thread have mentioned. I suppose maybe it says something about the work that it's evoked a complex and contradictory set of reactions and responses in me, at least.

I also think it's obviously drawing on a particular type of "haha, weren't the fifties old-fashioned and sexist but in a way we can lightheartedly make fun of, by putting modern captions with modern attitudes and jokes on top of old photos, because we're so much more enlightened now!" humour that's been very popular in things like birthday cards over the last decade or two, where you can imagine the snarky caption on the birthday card joking about shoving the annoying sexist man in the freezer (or under the patio) — but then there's the jarring facial injuries on the woman, undercutting the whole 50s-aesthetic let's-laugh-at-sexism thing and showing in a more visceral way how ugly sexism and misogyny really are.