Valerie Jean Solanas , born the April 9th 1936 with Ventnor City (New Jersey, the United States), deceased the April 26th 1988 with San Francisco (California), was intellectual a feminist American, known for its lampoon SCUM Manifesto . She also illustrated herself while trying to kill the American artist Andy Warhol.
Beginning of life
Born in 1936 in the New Jersey, Valerie Solanas was violated by her father. His/her parents divorced in the the Forties, so that at 15 years it was abandoned. Without residence, it prostitua to finance its studies and succeeds in obtaining a diploma of psychology to the Université of Maryland. It had a son, David, in 1953. The other details of its life until 1966 are more or less well-known, but it would seem that she travelled through the the United States while surviving thanks to the begging and the prostitution.
New York and " the Factory"
Solanas arrived at Greenwich Village in 1966. It is there that she wrote a part Up Your Ass literally (, " raise your cul"), putting in scene a prostitute beggar hating the men. In 1967, it met Andy Warhol at the exit of its famous studio, The Factory , with Manhattan and it asked him to produce its part. Intrigued by the title, Warhol agreed to throw a glance on the manuscript. It seems that he was hardly impressed by the contents and he did not take action pursuant.
Warhol left for the Europe little time after this episode, and during this time, written Solanas and published in its account the text which was to return it celebrates, a call with violent fight against the men and the Women's Liberation entitled the SCUM Manifesto . SCUM being generally interpreted like the acronym of " Society for Cutting Up Men " (association to put the men in parts), although the significance of the acronym did not even appear in the text. Some even claim that Solanas never wanted to give to different SCUM thing that the word scum (filth, rabble). The significance of cut up itself is discussed, some taking it in the literal sense to put of pieces , and others by extrapolating the direction with émasculer . A certain number of militant feminists adopted proclamation of Solanas in which she saw, in spite of its excesses, a source of reflection and a call to the revolt.
A little later, always in 1967, Solanas started to telephone Warhol while requiring of him to return to him the manuscript of Up Your Ass . When Warhol admitted having lost it, she asked him a compensation. Warhol was unaware of these complaints, but it gave him minor roles in two of its films.
The June 3rd 1968, Solanas drew three blows from gun on Warhol at the entry of the Factory . The first two blows missed the target, but the third ball transpierced the Poumon, the Rate, the Estomac, the Foie and the esophagus. Solanas drew then on the art critic and also tried to descend the business manager from Warhol Fred Hughes, but its weapon was stopped. It was told that Solanas had deposited with a spray a layer of money on the balls, because she regarded Warhol as a vampire. She would have initially tried to wrap them in aluminum foils, but the sheets would have stopped the gun.
Just after Solanas had discharged its weapon, the elevator arrived, and Hughes suggested to him taking it to leave the Factory . Warhol drew some from accuracy, but it never recovered really and had to carry a corset the remainder of its life.
Solanas even went to justice the evening and was continued for attempted murder with premeditation. It was defended by proposing that Warhol had too much to be able on it and that it had stolen its work to him. She pled guilty and bailed out three years of prison. Warhol refused to testify against it.
Coming out of prison
The feminist journalist Robin Morgan gave his support for Solanas so that it left prison. Ti-Grace Atkinson, the president of the New Yorkean section of the National Organization for Women (NOW), will describe Solanas the “champion most remarkable of the women's rights”. Another member of NOW spoke about it, at the time of his lawsuit, like “spokesperson most eminent of the feminist movement”.Some regarded it as a martyrdom after its coming out of prison, in 1971. It continued to badger Warhol and other people on the telephone, which was worth a new arrest to him. The Village Voice published in 1977 an interview where she refuted that the SCUM Manifesto had to be taken literally. Solanas sank then in anonymity, made several stays in psychiatric hospitals. It is said that she lived in California during the Années 1980, providing by the prostitution for the needs generated by drug-addiction. It was 52 years old when it died of a Pneumonie in 1988 with the public hospital of San Francisco.
It seems that a copy of its manuscript Up Your Ass was saved, because the part was still played in the first years of XXIe century.
Solanas in the popular culture
- 1996 saw the exit of the film I Shot Andy Warhol (I drew on Andy Warhol ), based on its life, with Lili Taylor in the role of Solanas and Jared Harris in that of Warhol.
- the friend of Warhol, the singer Lou Reed never forgave in Solanas and recorded a disc I Believe with John Cale singing “ I believe/I would' ve pulled the switch one her myself. ” (“I believe well that I would have liked to press on the switch the electric chair myself”)
- In 2005, in a postface in a republication of the SCUM Manifesto , Michel Houellebecq written: “One cannot miss being struck by the depth of the biological intuitions which cross it. ”
Selected works
- Up Your Ass
- SCUM Manifesto Olympia Near, London, foreword of Vivian Gornick, 1971. ISBN 0700410309
- ibid, Phoenix Near, the U.K., March 1991. ISBN 0948984031
- ibid, Back; London, New York; preface Avital Ronell, 2004.
- '' SCUM Manifesto '', translation in French of Emmanuelle de Lesseps, Zanzara atheistic, 2005.
- SCUM Manifesto , translation in French of Emmanuèle de Lesseps, Thousand and One Nights/Fayard, 1998, republication in 2005 with a postface of Michel Houellebecq.
See too
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