Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas dreamt of a world with no men. Her legacy and life, however, were marred by a constant portrayal of her as an ancillary act in the grand play of other men.

It’s important, I think, to distinguish the art from the artist in this particular case. Valerie was a precocious yet troubled child. We know her father sexually abused her when she was a child. By the time she turned 15, in 1951, she had a girl whom her parents raised as her sister, and a boy whom she placed for adoption. Three years later, she enrolled in a psychology program at The University of Maryland; she then pursued a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota and dropped out, fearing that her work wouldn’t receive the funding men received.

Since then, she then roamed from couch to couch in NYC, getting evicted from every place she inhabited, carrying her typewriter with her wherever she went. She used this typewriter to write her play “Up Your Ass” and her book “SCUM Manifesto, Society for Cutting Up Men.”

She sold the SCUM copies she typed on the streets of Greenwich Village to women for $1 and to men for $2. The book, even then, was a little controversial; it started with:

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 destroy the male sex.

In “Up Your Ass,” one of the peripheral characters in the play is a woman who is out looking for her turd that she left on the sidewalk; she asked passer-bys if they’ve seen it, and they asked if that turd held a sentimental value. The charachter screamed “Don’t be absured, it’s for dinner;” she also describe how she’s serving a really fancy dinner for important men and she wanted to make the best impression.

GIRL: I’m having company tonight. I’m having two really dynamic, fascinating men over for dinner, and I want to make the best possible impression.

BONGI: So you’re serving them a turd.

GIRL: You’re impossible. I assure you I have no intention, whatever, of serving my guests a turd. The turd’s for me. Everybody knows that men have much more respect for women who’re good at lapping up shit. Say, would you like to join us for dinner?

Just to participate in this patriarchal system, women, who play the game, are forced––or choosing–– to eat so much shit on a daily basis.

Valerie would send this play to Andy Warhol without solicitation and later, once she lost faith in his commitment to bringing it to life, requested its return, only to be told by Warhol that it was lost. As compensation, he offered her a role in one of his films. Warhol’s interactions with collaborators at The Factory were often exploitative; he frequently demanded free labor, reneged on financial promises, and leveraged the prevalent drug culture for his personal advantage. This behavior led to the deaths of several collaborators, deaths Warhol seemingly remained indifferent to, even when they were preventable. Such exploitative practices eventually alienated key figures, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, who severed ties with Warhol following criticism of their collaborative exhibition. Critics accused Warhol of using Basquiat as a “mascot” and manipulating their joint works, contributing to Basquiat’s decision to part ways.

On the summer day of August 29, 1967, Valerie inked a deal with Maurice Girodias, committing to pen a novel for him. This handshake came with a modest enticement: a $500 advance against her future royalties. Girodias, much like Warhol, tended not to pay his writers and not to live up to the promises and contracts he made. We don’t really know if Solanas knew that at the time of the deal.

Valerie would then learn of Girodias’s friendship with Warhol; Valerie, a paranoid schizophrenic, would then come to believe that Warhol was conspiring with Girodias to steal her work. Knowing Solanas’s oeuvre, it’s clear she wasn’t one to let men shape her trajectory, so what happens next is in line with her previous work.

June 3rd, 1968: Valerie walks into The Factory, shoots Andy Warhol, and turns herself into the police citing that Warhol “had too much control in my life.” Girodias was lucky; he was out of the country at the time. The News Daily ran the front-page headline: “Actress Shoots Andy Warhol.”, which was then altered and a quote by Solanas was added stating “I’m a writer, not an actress.” Andy Warhol would later produce a play called “Women in Revolution”, which was heavily inspired by Solanas’s work, and even used similar lines. Whether Valerie was right in her suspicion of her work being stolen is up in the air.

Valerie Solanas now exists in the shadow of a singular act: the shooting of Andy Warhol. This moment has eclipsed her entire life and work, relegating every other facet to mere footnotes. Solanas, who envisioned a utopia devoid of men, finds herself ironically tethered to Warhol.

I wrote this because in every article I read on Valerie Solanas, even her obituaries, she was always introduced as the woman who shot Andy Warhol; while that’s unfortunate, that distract the public from engaging with her work, positively or negatively. I hope the reader is now introduced to her complex character through her work and her final act, rather than through the lens of a single moment in time.