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

activists, and members of the Nazi party. In Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: RadicalRidicule and Social Movements (2005), L. M. Bogad describes how mock candidates useaesthetics of satire and parody to undermine the electoral process. The audience for suchpolitical demonstrations is multiple: the politicians in power, the media, the nation as awhole, and even the participants themselves. The goal of these performances was tocommunicate political philosophies, and persuade the audience to the actors’ point ofview.Like the democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square or the Nazi’sNuremberg rally, the Yippies’ public political actions can be considered performances.Thousands of Yippies and other activists participated in events like the March on thePentagon, the Grand Central Station Yip-In, and the Festival of Life in Chicago. And theaudiences for these demonstrations were as numerous as the actors. By using as theirstages public spaces like the Washington Mall, New York’s Grand Central Terminal, orChicago’s Grant Park, the Yippies accessed both local and national audiences. On thelocal level, each event was witnessed by passers-by and police. On the national level,each event was covered by both the mainstream press and the so-called undergroundmedia of small Left-wing publications. Images of these Yippie demonstrations werewired around the nation to thousands of press outlets, or broadcast on national television.Persuasion was the ultimate goal for these Yippie performances: the demonstrationsprotested Johnson’s Vietnam policy, argued for an end to the draft, and made the case fora different kind of American society, one based not on capitalism but cooperation.14