Heh
(I was gobsmacked when I read on the Slymepit, yesterday or the day before, about Solanas having tried to kill someone. Curiosity got the better of me, and during a break at work I consulted Wikipedia. Just about fell off my chair when that “someone†turned out to be Andy Warhol.)
One of the sources of the Wikipedia article on Solanas is
the Outlaw Bible on American Literature, which says:
After going into police custody, Solanas was brought before the Manhattan Criminal Court where she told the judge, "It's not often that I shoot someone. I didn't do it for nothing. Warhol had tied me up, lock, stock and barrel. He was going to do something to me which would have ruined me." She told the judge she would represent herself and she declared that she was "right in what I did! I have nothing to regret!" The judge would strike her comments from the record and send her to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric observation.
The shooting itself, quoting the Wikipedia version with some details I added from the Outlaw Bible:
Around noon Solanas arrived at The Factory and waited for Warhol outside...She entered the Factory with Warhol and he complimented her on her look...The phone rang and Warhol took the call as Morrissey went to the bathroom. While Warhol was on the phone, Solanas shot at him three times. The first two shots missed, and the third went through his left lung, spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus and finally his right lung. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya in the right hip, and tried to shoot Warhol's manager Fred Hughes in the head point blank, but her gun jammed. Hughes asked her to leave ("Oh, there's the elevator. Why don't you get on, Valerie?" She replied "That's a good idea" and left). Warhol was taken, clinically dead, to Columbus Hospital and operated on by five doctors for five hours, which narrowly saved his life.
1. Unless she was metaphorically talking about how she thought Warhol appropriated her work or her acting, Solanas was lying about being tied up at the time of the shooting or at any time.
2. It was a good thing that the judge did not just LISTEN TO THE WOMAN.
3. The conversation between Hughes and Solanas in the end of the shooting is pretty surreal.
4. I'm surprised Falk did not know this. Solanas is a pretty useful talking point in any anti-feminist's arsenal. Of course, it is of limited use since "feminism is not a monolith" and "we are not extreme like that" and "Solanas was just a nutter/was supposedly abused in her childhood" and so on.
5. If the "after murder attempt" section of the Wikipedia article is to be believed (no, I didn't chase down and verify all the references cited), feminists still defended Solanas after the shooting. So they didn't immediately distance themselves from her after the shooting like I said before.
Feminist Robin Morgan (later editor of Ms. magazine) demonstrated for Solanas's 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" and as "a 'heroine' of the feminist movement", and "smuggled [her manifesto] ... out of the mental hospital where Solanas was confined." Another NOW member, Florynce Kennedy, called her "one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement."
