From Stokes Croft to Springfield, Banksy's come a long way!

From Stokes Croft in Bristol to Los Angeles, Banksy has carved out an international reputation as the controversial as a graffiti and street artist who simultaneously commands huge sums for his work while critiquing capitalism. His true identity is a better kept secret than The Stig's was (even before he revealed himself as fellow Bristolian Ben Collins) and this only adds to the interest in his work. For last year's show at Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery, people queued for up to six hours to see the specially commissioned exhibition.

Now he's created a controversial version of The Simpsons opening credits.  As well as Banksy graffiti adorning the walls of Springfield and his trademark rats, he inserts comment on the use of Far Eastern labour to create the animation cells and the extensive merchandising that accompanies the show. It is this latter section which will cause a fuss - depicting poor working conditions for the Korean animators and kittens being shredded to provide stuffing for Bart Simpson dolls.

It's certainly not to everyone's tastes - including, one suspects, some of the Fox executives! 


As the You Tube clip I linked to got removed for copyright reasons, here's the BBC story complete with video (which may be UK only).