Graffiti on the ‘John Lennon Wall’ in Prague, Czech Republic. — Pretentious subcultural backbeat … graffiti sprayed on the ‘John Lennon Wall’ in Prague, Czech Republic. Photograph: Alamy

Graffiti is ugly, stupid and threatening – there's more creativity in crochet

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David Lynch, that champion of the arts, says graffiti is ruining the world. And he’s right – this hypermasculine display is destroying our environment

It’s a familiar scenario. Older person gets angry with modern world and rages against the visual white noise of graffiti that is, well, everywhere these days.

Only this time the angry old man is film director David Lynch, whose surrealist pedigree and bizarre sense of style make his condemnation of graffiti difficult to dismiss as mere grey-haired grumpiness. Lynch says graffiti is ruining the world and making our planet ugly. He’s right, of course. The fame of street artists like Banksy and a general sense that graffiti is the natural art expression of the kids crushes dissent about this guttural art form. We are all subdued by it. We go along with it, so as not to seem uncool, daddyo.

But how much graffiti actually adds anything to the world? It takes someone as unshakably avant garde in his credentials as Lynch to state the obvious, that scrawled and spray-painted inchoate messages on every corner of every city do not actually enrich our world.

A new stencil and spray paint artwork, attributed to Banksy, in London, 2011. — A stencil and spray paint work, attributed to Banksy, in London, 2011. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

The vast majority of graffiti is ugly, stupid and vaguely threatening. A tiny portion of it is witty or creative. It is the dreck, not the rough diamond art, that most of us encounter most of the time. And we have learned to put on a forced grin and tell ourselves it is the look of our time.

Graffiti is a pretentious subcultural backbeat that is replicated everywhere in much the same style, the same chunky lettering and coded messages. It is boring and expresses a generalised contempt for community, kindness, and the weak. How can leftists like this stuff? After all it is so blatantly hypermasculine, aggressive and destructive of people’s desire for a decent environment. It is in fact proof that men are still in charge of the world. There is far more creativity and craft in, say, crochet but because that is traditionally seen as a “feminine” activity no one bends over backwards to praise it as art. But graffiti, associated as it is with alienated young men, is treated with absurd reverence by people who should know better.

So congratulations to Mr Lynch. He knows how to aim a grouch. It was high time someone stood up to the vile oppression that is graffiti.