Valeria Solanas Wrote the SCUM Manifesto Then Shot Andy Warhol

All she wanted was to have her play, Up Your Ass, produced by Andy Warhol. Instead, she was offered $25 to play a role in one of his own films, I, a Man. It could have been one of his most boundary pushing projects, had he been bold enough to consider it. Overtly lewd, the play stars Bongi Perez, a wiseass hooker, lesbian, and panhandler who describes herself as “so female, I’m subervise.” Bongi hustles tricks for meals, while putting out as little as possible, hobnobbing with the local drag queens, and cruising any “lowdown, funky broads” that come her way.

Auditions were already underway at the Chelsea Hotel in New York where Solanas was living at the time between evictions, when she finally got Warhol a copy of the manuscript. He loathed the script, finding it objectionable and obscene. Who would’ve thought such a response would come from THE Andy Warhol. The manuscript was ‘misplaced’, sending Solanas into a frenzy as this was the only copy, she had. She never got it back. And so, she shot him.

Valeria Solanas was a head of her time in many ways. Her ideas of patriarchal culture that ring through her most notable work The SCUM Manifesto, by laying out the mission of her Society of Cutting Up Men, calling for the elimination of the male sex and the establishment of a utopian society of women. It was a radical feminist call to arms to many. A call for the wholesome extermination of men. Having come from an abusive home, Solanas recognized early on in her life the kind of power that men held over her.

In college, as a recently out lesbian, she rallied against the idea that educated women should be defined as wives and mothers, even as she acknowledged that, in a society ruled by men, such fates were probably inevitable. Her ideas about gender and power calcified in the early 1960s, when she hitchhiked across the country and back again. In the 2014 biography “Valeria Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)”, the author, Breanne Fahs, writes about an exchange between Solanas and her friend Jeremiah Newton. Newton asked Solanas if her manifesto was to be taken literally. “I don’t want to kill all men,” she replied. But, using an expletive, she added: “I think males should be neutered or castrated so they can’t mess up any more women’s lives.”

She arrived in New York City in 1962 with the beginning of a play she was writing, and several versions of “SCUM Manifesto.” She was often seen selling copies of SCUM on the streets of New York, where she would charge women one dollar, and men two. She supported herself doing this and turning to sex work.

It is unfortunate that Solanas’ name is often paired with the shooting of Andy Warhol. Even as I skewered through articles to dig up her history, articles that had her name in large bold print headlines, were then only showing photographs of Andy Warhol. A demonstration of patriarchal power that she would surely snuff at today. To be clear, I am not thrilled about a shooting taking place, ever. However, I feel a sense of comradery with Solanas, sadness and understanding as well. It is not easy to be an artist, and the idea of a single copy of something so special being negligently tossed aside would drive any starving artist mad. All he had to do was give it back and perhaps the outcome would have been different. I wonder if she was feeling trapped by him. Controlled by yet another man in a powerful position, who sees her as nothing more than a peon in the wind. Are we all not just a tick away from being the next Valeria Solanas of our time?

I wonder too, if after her release from prison and her releases from the various psychiatric facilities that claimed insanity, then stability numerous times, this incident haunted her. Did it ruin her chances of being published in the mainstream, or taken seriously as an artist? It certainly did not stop others from benefiting from her story years later. Movies, tv shows, and biographies – was Solanas consulted for any of these? No, because she was already dead for much of it. Just 14 months after the death of Warhol, Solanas was found in her shabby room at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. She was kneeling on the side of her bed, covered in maggots for at least five days. Her typewriter on a desk, with a neatly stacked pile of papers. Death by pneumonia.

Today, Solanas is more well-known and beloved than ever. I consider her one of the greatest queer theorists to have ever lived. Beyond her overheated rhetoric, she had a truly revolutionary vision of a better world run by and for the benefit of women. Her play, Up Your Ass, saw its stage debut in 2000 at the George Coates Theater in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle refused to run an ad for the show unless the double s in Ass was changed to something else. Typical Chronical move! The theater went to Up Your A$$. The play was turned into a musical which delighted Solanas’ sister Judith, when she informed the assistant director that Solanas used to make up funny lyrics about her family to pop songs when she was eight. The play introduced Solanas to a new, younger audience, as much more than just the person who shot Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol’s Trunk at The Warhol Museum.

Postscript: The original manuscript for Up Your Ass was eventually found, some 30+ years later. It had been living buried under lighting equipment in a silver trunk owned by photographer Billy Name, famous for covering the original Factory with aluminum foil. The trunk is now on view at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

References
Coburn, J., Atkinson, M., Baker, R., Conkling, A., Rosen, R., & Darabi, R. (2000, January 11). Solanas Lost and Found. The Village Voice. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.villagevoice.com/2000/01/11/solanas-lost-and-found/

Ott, T. (2020, June 4). Valerie Solanas: Learn About the Woman Who Shot Andy Warhol. bio. Biography.com. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.biography.com/artists/andy-warhol-valerie-solanas-shot

Wertheim, B. (2020, June 26). Overlooked No More: Valerie Solanas, Radical Feminist Who Shot Andy Warhol (Published 2020). The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/obituaries/valerie-solanas-overlooked.html