The Shoeshine Boy in the Bronx

On day sixteen of his Better Out Than In residency across New York, Banksy installed a fiberglass Ronald McDonald in the South Bronx—the real corporate clown in full regalia, one red shoe extended—with a real boy crouched at his feet, smeared in dirt and dressed in rags, shining it. The boy was an actor. The point was not.

You can read the piece a dozen different ways and they all lead back to the same place: a global brand that built its empire on children’s loyalty, being serviced by a child. The golden arches as feudal crest. Banksy’s genius, when it’s working, is that the image finishes its argument before your brain has time to catch up with what it’s seeing. This one worked.