We Are All S. C. U. M. (But You Probably a Bit More Than We)

In this fortieth anniversary of assassinations & the general whatnot that was 1968 ("The Year That Changed America," or something, & weren't the French up to something that yr. as well?) we almost missed the anniv. of Valerie Solanas plugging Andy Warhol. Hell, if the Times hadn't published this, we would have missed the whole thing. Doesn't seem as if it was that long ago, though most of the other events of forty yrs. past are locked into their correct time & place.

Any way, we always liked the play on words of "S. C. U. M.," & thanks to A. S. Hamrah, the author of the op-ed, we are treated to a bit more of Val's ideology:

It was in 1968 that Warhol first noted that in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. But in 1967, Solanas had prefigured that with a warning of her own. In the future, she wrote in her characteristic mode of threat-laced irony, "it will be electronically possible for [a man] to tune in to any specific female he wants to and follow in detail her every movement. The females will kindly, obligingly consent to this." These twin predictions sum up the world we find ourselves in now, the world of reality TV, Facebook, Twitter, the entire free-range panopticon. Solanas made her prediction in a footnote to "SCUM Manifesto," but the whole essay is like that.

For a 50-page, sexually confused diatribe against men, the manifesto is filled with an odd glee, a kind of joy in the freedom to put down words with precision and wit. "SCUM," Solanas wrote, "wants to grab some swinging living for itself." The manifesto isn't just anti-men. It's anti-everything: anti-hippie, anti-work (and pro-"unwork"), anti-art, anti-military, anti-boredom, anti-you-name-it. Its nihilism is a form of utopia for Solanas, a pre-punk aesthete who fearlessly tossed out ideas that people are just now beginning to raise. She predicted reproduction without men, the elimination of aging, the end of reproduction itself and the dawning of an age of quasi-immortals. For Solanas -- who saw the extinction of men as inevitable, an evolutionary process -- these were all signs of hope that future generations, like men and all the other things she couldn't stand ("landlords, owners of greasy spoons and restaurants that play Muzak"), would become unnecessary and disappear.

As a mixture of social philosophy and fine shtick, her work has the rare virtue of seeming at the same time totally insane and totally right. That's a virtue we used to look for in philosophers, from Diogenes and Socrates up to Nietzsche.

"Totally insane & totally right." That's just what we've been hoping for at this stop on the Internet.

More on Ms. Solanas here. Or let Google's™ fingers do the walking.