Scum

Scum (pronounced skuhm)

(1) A film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as a result of natural processes such as the greenish film of algae and similar vegetation on the surface of a stagnant pond

(2) A layer of impure matter that forms on the surface of a liquid as the result of boiling or fermentation

(3) A low, worthless, or evil person.

(4) Such persons collectively.

(5) An alternative name for scoria, the slag or dross that remains after the smelting of metal from an ore.

1200–1250: From the Middle English scume, derived from the Middle Dutch schūme (foam, froth) cognate with German schaum, ultimately of Germanic origin, drawn from the Old High German scūm and Old French escume.  In Old Norse word was skum, thought derived from the primitive root (s)keu (to cover, conceal).  By the early fourteen century, the word scummer (shallow ladle for removing scum) had emerged in Middle Dutch, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic skuma, the sense deteriorated from "thin layer atop liquid" to "film of dirt," then just "dirt" and from this use is derived the modern skim.  The meaning "lowest class of humanity" is from the 1580s; the familiar phrase “scum of the earth” from 1712.  In modern use, the English is scum, French écume, Spanish escuma, Italian schiuma and Dutch schuim.  Scum is a noun & verb and scumlike & scummy are adjectives; the noun plural is scums.

Rendezvous: New Zealand-born cartoonist David Low's (1891-1963) famous take on the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov (Nazi-Soviet) Pact.  Although Low at the time couldn't have known it, comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) was sensitive to public opinion and when presented with the draft text of the pact, decided the rather flowery preamble extoling German-Soviet friendship was just too absurd, telling the visiting delegation that "...after years of pouring buckets of shit over each-other...", it'd be more convincing were the document to be as formal as possible.

 

The Society for Cutting Up Men: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

S.C.U.M.  Manifesto (post shooting, 1968 Edition).

Although celebrated in popular culture as the summer of love, not everyone shared the hippie vibe in 1967.  The S.C.U.M. Manifesto was a radical feminist position paper by Valerie Solanas (1936-1988), self-published in 1967 with a commercial print-run a year later.  Although lacking robust theoretical underpinnings and criticized widely within the movement, it remains feminism’s purest and most uncompromising work, an enduring landmark in the history of anarchist publishing.  In the abstract, S.C.U.M. suggested little more than the parlous state of the word being the fault of men, it was the task of women to repair the damage and this could be undertaken only if men were exterminated from the planet.  The internal logic was perfect. 

The use of S.C.U.M. as an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men existed in printed form from 1967 (though not in the manifesto’s text) although Solanas later denied the connection, adding that S.C.U.M. never existed as an organization and was just “…a literary device”.  The latter does appear true, S.C.U.M. never having a structure or membership, operating more as Solanas’ catchy marketing label for her views.  Calling it a literary device might seem pretentious but, given her world-view, descending to the mercantile would have felt grubby.  That said, when selling the original manifesto, women were charged US$1, men US$2.  While perhaps not as elegant an opening passage as a Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) might have penned, Solanas’ words were certainly succinct.  "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 eliminate the male sex.”  Ominously, “If S.C.U.M. ever strikes” she added, “it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”  No ambiguity there, men would know what to expect.

On set, 1967, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) & Nico (1938-1988).

Author and work were still little-known outside anarchist circles when, on 3 June 1968, Solanas attempted to murder pop-artist Andy Warhol, firing three shots, one finding the target.  The year 1968 was in the US a time of violence and tumult but among it all the celebrity connection and the bizarre circumstances ensured this one crime would attract widespread coverage.  Valerie Solanas with her two guns had entered Andy Warhol’s sixth-floor office at 33 Union Square West convinced he was intent on stealing the manuscript of the play Up Your Ass she’d repeatedly tried to persuade him to produce.  Warhol and his staff had reviewed the work and decided it simply wasn’t very good (Warhol giving the the back-handed compliment of being "well-typed") but because he’d “misplaced” the typed manuscript (it was later discovered in a trunk) Solanas concluded that was just a trick and he was going to take what she thought of as her brilliant play, claiming it as her own.  Although she’d for some time hovered around the fringes of the Warhol “Factory”, she seems not to have had much success as an advocate.  Her S.C.U.M. Manifesto envisioned a world without men, calling on “civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females” to “overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex” which was heady stuff with a certain mid-1960s appeal but Warhol also declined her offer to become a member of the Scum’s “Men’s Auxiliary” (a group for men sufficiently sympathetic to Scum’s aim to begin “working diligently to eliminate themselves.”

New York Daily News, 4 June 1968.

Not best pleased by the headline, “Actress Shoots Andy Warhol”, Solanas demanded a retraction claiming that she was "a writer, not an actress."  The paper had based the headline on her appearance in Warhol's films I, a Man (1967) and Bike Boy (1967).  Warhol later admitted he'd cast her in I, a Man (for which she received a US$25 fee) in the hope she'd stop nagging him about the play she'd written.  She never complained about anything else the press wrote about her but apparently to be called an "actress" was beyond the pale.

Solanas’ state of mind about the fate of her intellectual property can be explained by it being no secret Warhol was inclined to use (the words “borrow”, “appropriate” “steal” also often used) and regards it all as “his art”.  For weeks leading up to the attempt on his life, repeatedly she’d called his office with first requests and then demands about her manuscript, culminating with threats at which point Warhol stopped taking her calls; the next call she made was in person and she shot him and an art gallery owner with who he was discussing an exhibition (he received minor injuries as (as collateral damage).  Warhol was declared dead although ambulance staff stabilized him.  Calmly, Solanas left the building and several hours later, approached a policeman in Times Square, handed over her two guns and told him: “He had too much control over my life.”  Unsurprisingly, a judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation and she received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but despite this, she was found competent to stand trial and pleaded guilty to “reckless assault with intent to harm”; sentenced to three years incarceration (including time served) in the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane (1892-1977). She was released late in 1971.  Solanas never renounced the S.C.U.M. manifesto nor lost faith in its capacity to change the world but her her mental health continued to decline and reports indicate she became increasingly paranoid and unstable. She spent her last years in a single-occupancy welfare hotel in San Francisco, where, alone, she died in 1988, the official cause of death listed as "pneumonia".  

  

Her fame lasted beyond fifteen minutes and one unintended consequence of her act was the S.C.U.M. Manifesto finally found a commercial publisher.  In certain feminist and anarchist circles she remains a cult figure although, it takes some intellectual gymnastics to trace a lineal path from her manifesto to the work of even the more radical of the later-wave feminists such as Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Susan Brownmiller (b 1935) and Catharine MacKinnon (b 1946).  Solanas to this day still is usually described as a “feminist” or “radical feminist” but, given the implication of the manifesto, it would seem more accurate to label her a misandrist (one who exhibits a hatred of or a prejudice against men), a world view which attracts many because, to be fair, there are any number of reasons to hate men.  Misandry was a late nineteenth century formation, the construct being mis- (in the sense of “hatred”) +‎ -andry (men), by analogy with the more commonly used misogyny (hatred of or a prejudice against women); the inspiration was the Ancient Greek μισανδρία (misandría), the construct being μισέω (miséō) (hate) + ἀνήρ (anḗr) (man).

Post operative image of Andy Warhol’s torso.

Warhol required surgery to his spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus and lungs; the damage he suffered to a range of internal organs not uncommon among those shot at close range; the bullet ricocheted off a rib, accounting for the lateral trajectory.  Although the Beretta M1935 automatic (in .32ACP) she used is not regarded as a “big calibre” (the .32 listed by most as a “small bore”), a single shot from one, especially at close-range, can be lethal and an wound from even a smaller load (like the .22 she was also carrying) can be fatal.  In the context of handguns, a “big calibre” load usually is defined as one with a diameter of .40 inches (10mm) or larger and of those there are many including .44, .45 & .50 although “magnum” versions of smaller bore ammunition (.22, .357 et al) can match many larger loads in “stopping power”.

Attempted murder weapon: Beretta M1935 automatic in .32ACP.

Interviewed later, Warhol reflected: “Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television - you don’t feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”

Gun (1982), synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas by Andy Warhol.

Artistically, the shooting had consequences.  Warhol became more guarded, abandoning projects like filmmaking which required so much contact with people and stopping the production of controversial art which might attract more murderers and focusing on business, in 1969 founding what became Interview magazine in 1969.  Although there had in his previous output been evidence of an interest in death and violence, after the shooting, often he would visited the theme of death, painting a series of skulls and one of guns, a weapon with which he now had an intensely personal connection.  He was certainly not unaware what happened that day in June 1968 was a turning point in his life, some twenty years later noting in his diary: “I said that I wasn’t creative since I was shot, because after that I stopped seeing creepy people.”