extremely mild spoiler for the backrooms, but at the start there’s a furniture store with “RIP OFF” spraypainted on the front, and it tickled me so much. because first off, that’s very mild graffiti. and secondly, who sprayed that??? is this like local teens who know of the store’s reputation and felt impassioned? or did some random adult buy a bedframe that was a little bit too expensive and then feel sour enough to return in the dead of night? it’s just so weird. and no swearing? no dicks or hate symbols? it reads more like a Google review than a piece of graffiti. no offence to the director or puppet director or whatever. the movie just lost me there
i would sincerely hope a storyteller would be able to approach a story with enough understanding to know when a given element is being use primarily as visual shorthand. especially in a story that works so much with ideas of unreality and strange, unconcrete worlds. like yes, its unlikely that a piece of graffiti would just say "rip off," but it exists within the realm of possibility. it serves as a sort of pan-graffiti, representing the broad strokes of the community's feelings about captain clark's.
its also worth noting that "rip off" doesn't just refer to something costing too much money - it can also refer to a copy, especially a particuarly shitty one. this is The Thing in this film, what it means for something to be a copy and, by extension, what it means to be really You.
overall yes, "rip off" as graffiti is a bit on the nose, but it does multiple things within the film, more than enough to justify itself.
