Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

delegates in the hotel itself, Conventioneers who had the power to nominate the nextPresidential Candidate, participated by yelling and booing at the police below.In addition to fluidity between actor and audience, the Battle also offered a kindof Theater of Cruelty sensual experience. Shouts from all directions, blaring bullhorns,boos from above, and screams from below bombarded the ears. There was the sound ofshattering glass as the crowd was pushed through the glass windows of the hotel, and thehiss of tear gas canisters, as well as the thumping of running feet and the dull thud ofnightsticks hitting flesh. To stimulate the eyes, lights shone from all directions: imagesfrom Time Magazine reveal the glare of television cameras, the glow of streetlights alongthe dark street, and the flash of the headlights of police vehicles. “Babbling, shouting,milling, and churning were omnipresent,” recalls one witness to the events in Chicago(Rosenberg 482). The street outside the Hilton became a dizzying spectacle of bothemotional and physical cruelty.Although Artaud clearly does not advocate physical cruelty in The Theater and itsDouble, the Yippies, just like their militant East Village allies UATW/MF, were happy toreveal to the nation the physical violence of police action against the Chicagodemonstrators. The extra layer of physical violence at the Battle of Michigan Avenuedemonstration only added power to the emotional violence done to American citizensalready watching the demonstrators’ challenge of civic order. Reporting for the journalDissent, Bernard Rosenberg confesses that he was overcome by the events in Chicago. 7272 A professor of sociology at City University of New York, Rosenberg (1923-1996) in the 1960s studiedjuvenile delinquency and mass culture, and was also a contributing editor of Dissent. Later he co-authoredwith Ernest Harburg The Broadway Musical: Collaboration in Commerce and Art (New York: New YorkUP, 1993).188