Dismaland
A masterclass in questioning the status quo
An amazing 3-paragraph essay that I saw recently about a mum taking her son to see Shakespeare inspired me to try my own 3-paragraph essay about the time I took my mum to see a Banksy show. So here it is!
Banksy’s Dismaland—a crumbling former theme park critiquing consumerism through darkly humorous art installations—was the biggest and most notorious show the artist ever staged, located in the equally worn down town of Weston-super-Mare. My art school corridors were ablaze with stories about it. But the ticket website was either permanently crashed or they’d completely sold out. For three weeks I tried and almost gave up on the idea, but something told me Banksy wouldn’t have made a ticket system in the first place. It was too formulaic for him. Too profit-driven. I was so sure of this that I insisted me and my mum go there and call its bluff, walk straight up to the gates and enter without a ticket. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” my mum said and the next day we boarded a train in Sheffield for the 600 km round-trip.
As we hurried from Weston-super-Mare Station towards the show, we were shunted along by torrents of frenzied pilgrims, roads pulsed with static rage, the atmosphere crackled like a massive festival at dusk. I was right! There were no tickets. Several people in the queue confirmed it. But oh…my…god…the queue! “How long have you been queueing for?” I asked. “We got here yesterday. Camped over there.” Me and mum followed the man’s finger to the patch of tents on the verge and then looked at each other, crestfallen. Obviously we’d been expecting to wait, two-to-three hours or something. But not like this. A woman in the queue gave me a pitiful smile as we slumped away to search for fish and chips and a consoling cup of tea. The only saving grace was that my hunch had been right all along and, I’ll be honest, I was quite emboldened and excited to highlight that to my friends.
A few weeks later I was back at art school, waiting in line with my friends to get a mozzarella panini. “I went to that Banksy theme park by the way! You know how the tickets were always sold out? The website was fucking fake! Classic Banksy! I only found out ‘cus me and my mum went there!” My friends demanded to know what the show was like but I explained about the massive queue. At this, one of them laughed out loud. He opened his phone, scrolled frantically till he’d found what he was looking for and then shoved it in my face. It was a news story all about the “stunt” that Banksy had pulled. How everything—EVERYTHING!—about access to the show had been faked to wrong-foot the idiots and the unquestioning conformists. Everything. Even the tents. Even the queue. So, I’d succeeded in thinking like Banksy for three weeks and 300 kms, but at the last few yards, I’d been swayed by the crowd.
Thank you to Lavinia at Lavinia’s Substack and Briana for reading drafts of this.
Love this, the experience and the way you rendered it. As a reading writer, I'd love to know even more about how your mother processed this as well.
Love this, the experience and the way you rendered it. As a reading writer, I'd love to know even more about how your mother processed this as well.