In Style Wars, one sees how social pressures shaped graffiti writers' identities in 1970s and 1980s New York. Firstly, Style Wars chronicles how the city government employed racist policing and propaganda to criminalize writers of color. Secondly, the documentary shows that newspaper and television networks unequally privileged writers of higher socioeconomic status through front-page and prime-time coverage. Thirdly, the film depicts graffiti writers who conformed to masculine norms as disproportionately visible throughout the city. Although many writers featured in Style Wars claimed to create individually inspired work, the structural forces of legal racism, classist media coverage, and interpersonal masculinity actually shaped artistic
