Valerie Solanas

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Valerie Solanas
Born Valerie Jean Solanas
April 9, 1936(1936-04-09)
Ventnor City, New Jersey
Died April 25, 1988 (aged 52)
San Francisco, California
Nationality American
Literary movement Feminist movement
Notable work(s) SCUM Manifesto (1968)

Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist writer, best known for the attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, encouraging male gendercide, the creation of an all-female society, and the New World Order.

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[edit] Early life

Solanas was born in Ventnor City, New Jersey to Louis Solanas and Dorothy Biondi. She claimed that she regularly suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father. Her parents divorced when she was 11, and her mother remarried shortly after. Solanas disliked her stepfather and began rebelling against her mother and becoming a truant. Because of her rebellious behavior, her mother sent her to be raised by her grandfather in 1949. Solanas claimed that her grandfather was a violent alcoholic, and that she was often beaten by him. Eventually, her grandfather could not tolerate her rebellious behavior, and rendered her homeless by the time she was 15. In spite of this, she graduated from high school with her class and earned a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland.

She did nearly a year of graduate work in psychology at University of Minnesota. In 1953, she gave birth to a son, David. Other details of her life until 1966 are unclear, but it is believed she traveled the country as an itinerant, supporting herself by panhandling and prostitution.

[edit] New York City and The Factory

Solanas arrived in Greenwich Village in 1966, where she wrote a play titled Up Your Ass about a man-hating prostitute and a panhandler. In 1967, she encountered Andy Warhol outside his studio, The Factory, and asked him to produce her play. Intrigued by the title, he accepted the script for review. According to Factory lore, Warhol, whose films were often shut down by the police for obscenity, thought the script was so pornographic that it must be a police trap. He never returned it to Solanas. The script was then lost, not to be found until after Warhol's death, in the bottom of one of his lighting trunks.

Later that year, Solanas began to telephone Warhol, demanding he return the script of Up Your Ass. When Warhol admitted he had lost it, she began demanding money as payment. Warhol ignored these demands but offered her a role in I, A Man. In his book Popism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol would write that before she shot him, he thought Solanas was an interesting and funny person. However, her constant hassling (bordering on stalking) made her difficult to deal with and ultimately drove him away.

Warhol did give Solanas a role in a scene in his film I, A Man (1968-1969). In that film, she and the film's title character (played by Tom Baker) haggle in an apartment building hallway over whether they should go into her apartment. Solanas dominates the improvised conversation, leading Baker through a dialogue about everything from "squishy asses," "men's tits," and lesbian "instinct." Ultimately, she leaves him to fend for himself, explaining "I gotta go beat my meat" as she exits the scene.

During the late 1960s, Solanas wrote and self-published her best-known work, the SCUM Manifesto, a text which reads as a scathing, misandric attack on the male gender. SCUM is generally held to be an acronym of "Society for Cutting Up Men", although this acronym does not appear in the manifesto itself. The opening words of the Manifesto immediately refer to its directives:

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so... The male is a biological accident.

[edit] Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol

On June 3, 1968, she arrived at The Factory and waited for Warhol in the lobby area. When he arrived with a couple of friends, she fired three shots from a handgun at Warhol. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya and also tried to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, but her gun jammed as the elevator arrived. Hughes suggested she take it and she did, leaving the Factory. Warhol barely survived. He never fully recovered and for the rest of his life wore a corset to prevent his injuries from worsening. Years later, his wounds occasionally bled after overexertion.[citation needed]

That evening, Solanas turned herself in to the police and was charged with attempted murder and other offenses. Solanas made statements to the arresting officer and at the arraignment hearing that Warhol had "too much control" over her and that Warhol was planning to steal her work. Pleading guilty, she received a three-year sentence. Warhol refused to testify against her.

The attack had a profound impact on Warhol and his art, and The Factory scene became much more tightly controlled afterward. For the rest of his life, Warhol lived in fear that Solanas would attack him again. "It was the Cardboard Andy, not the Andy I could love and play with," said close friend and collaborator Billy Name. "He was so sensitized you couldn't put your hand on him without him jumping. I couldn't even love him anymore, because it hurt him to touch him."[1] While his friends were actively hostile towards Solanas, Warhol himself preferred not to discuss her.

One of the few public pronouncements in her favor was distributed by Ben Morea, of Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers/Black Mask fame. It was later re-printed as an appendix in the Olympia Press edition of her manifesto.

It is widely believed that Solanas suffered from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the shooting.[2][3] A psychiatrist who evaluated her shortly thereafter concluded that she was "a Schizophrenic Reaction, paranoid type with marked depression and potential for acting out."[4] As a result, many of her detractors derided her as a "crazed lesbian".[5]

[edit] Life after assassination attempt

Feminist Robin Morgan (later editor of Ms. magazine) demonstrated for Solanas' release from prison. Ti-Grace Atkinson, the New York chapter president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), described Solanas as "the first outstanding champion of women's rights."[6] Another member, Florynce Kennedy, represented Solanas at her trial, calling her "one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement."[6]

After her release from prison in 1971, she was regarded by some as a martyr. When she persisted in stalking Warhol and others over the telephone, however, she was arrested again. An interview with her was published in the Village Voice in 1977. She denied that the SCUM Manifesto was ever meant to be taken literally.[7] Solanas drifted into obscurity and was in and out of mental hospitals.

On April 25, 1988, at the age of 52, Solanas died of emphysema at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.[8] More than 30 years after the loss of Up Your Ass, it was re-discovered. In 2000, the play premiered in San Francisco, only blocks from the hotel where she died.[9]

[edit] Legacy

[edit] References

  1. ^ Making the Scene: Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties by Steven Watson, Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post book review, November 16, 2003.
  2. ^ Valerie Jean Solanas (1936-88) The Guardian
  3. ^ Bockris, Victor. Warhol: The Biography. Da Capo Press (2003) ISBN 030681272X
  4. ^ Harron and Minahan. I Shot Andy Warhol. Grove Press (1996) ISBN 0802134912
  5. ^ Third, Amanda (2006-10). "'Shooting from the hip': Valerie Solanas, SCUM and the apocalyptic politics of radical feminism". Hecate. 
  6. ^ a b Solanas, Valerie (August 1996). SCUM Manifesto (2nd edition). AK Press. ISBN 1-873176-44-9. [page needed]
  7. ^ Smith, Howard (1977-07-25). "Valerie Solanas Interview". Village Voice: p. 32. 
  8. ^ Watson, Steven (2003). Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. Pantheon Books. pp. 425. ISBN 0-679-42372-9. 
  9. ^ Moore, Michael Scott (January 19, 2000), "A Shot at the Stage", SF Weekly, http://search.sfweekly.com/2000-01-19/culture/a-shot-at-the-stage/, retrieved on 2008-03-10 
  10. ^ "Tract for Valerie Solanas". http://www.brainwashed.com/matmos/discog/ole677.html. Retrieved on August 5 2006. 

[edit] External links

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