Died Young, Stayed Pretty

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a can­did look at the under­ground poster cul­ture in North Amer­ica. This unique doc­u­men­tary exam­ines the cre­ative spirit that dri­ves these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schiz­o­phrenic cul­ture and piece them back together. What you end up with is a car­i­ca­ture of the black and bloated heart that pulses greed through the US econ­omy. The artists push fur­ther into the pulp to grab the atten­tion of passersby, plas­ter­ing art that’s both vul­gar and intensely vis­ceral onto the gnarled sur­faces of the urban land­scape. The film gives us inti­mate look at some of the giants of this mod­ern sub­cul­ture. Out­side of their own cir­cle, they’re vir­tu­ally unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bareknuckle brawlers, pub­licly argu­ing the aes­thetic mer­its of octo­pus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve cre­ated their own visual lan­guage for describ­ing the spotty under­belly of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion and they’re not shy about throw­ing it in the face of polite soci­ety. Along the way, they man­age to cre­ate posters that are strik­ingly obscene, unflinch­ingly blas­phe­mous and often quite beau­ti­ful. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivi­sec­tion­ists of America’s mor­bidly obese con­sumer culture.

See the trail­ers for some awe­some poster art: