Stuff You Should Know: An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things by Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

Author:Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant [Clark, Josh & Bryant, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409199410
Google: U4PRDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MANIFESTOS?

Have you ever noticed how anytime you see something in the news or in a history book about someone having written a manifesto, violence and death always seem close behind? There’s the Unabomber Manifesto (three dead, twenty-three injured). There’s the October Manifesto that allowed Tsar Nicholas II to crush the 1905 Revolution in Russia. There’s Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto that arguably inspired a body count of around 100 million. There’s the manifesto of Christopher Dorner, who declared war on the LAPD and then killed three people in Los Angeles in 2013. The Virginia Tech killer in 2007 and the guy in Norway who killed almost eighty people in 2011 both had manifestos as well.

At its core, the SCUM Manifesto is not much different than any of these others. It’s long, it uses violent language, it identifies a common enemy and advocates for the overthrow of the current world order, and when it really gets going you can’t escape the feeling that maybe its writer has some mental health problems. Many have argued that the SCUM Manifesto is different, that it’s a satire and not meant to be taken literally, but judging by what Valerie Solanas did less than eighteen months after its initial publication, you’d be hard pressed to find a meaningful enough distinction from the others.

On the morning of June 3rd, 1968, a young woman named Margo Feiden was returning to her apartment when she saw Valerie Solanas sitting on the steps in front of her building. Feiden was twenty-three years old at the time, married, and a rising star in the New York art scene. As Feiden approached, Solanas introduced herself and said she had an important idea she wanted to discuss with her. Feiden, being a curious and friendly person, invited Solanas up to her apartment to hear her out. What followed was a rambling four-hour pitch for her play, which she insisted that Feiden produce, combined with a recitation of her SCUM-infused theories about the extermination of men. When Feiden asked her how women could reproduce in this fantasy world, Solanas insisted that men could be kept as cattle, bearing numbers on their backs so that women could “request” them.

Ok, now if you think that’s bananas, here comes the Chiquita factory. Quite abruptly during the final minutes of her pitch, Solanas reached into her purse and pulled out a gun.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked Feiden.

“Yeah, that’s a gun,” Feiden responded.

“If you don’t agree that you will produce my play, I am going to shoot Andy Warhol,” Solanas said. “Then I will become famous, my play will become famous, and you will produce it.”9

The appearance of the gun adjourned the meeting. Feiden managed to coerce Solanas out of her apartment and immediately called in the threat to police, who ignored her. “How would you know what a real gun looks like?” the desk officer reportedly said to Feiden, in another shining moment for men in this story.

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