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

society” by changing, not ignoring, dominant culture. The Yippies’ fourth objectiveaddressed the specific tactic they wanted their networked participatory movement to use:theatricality. In addition to everything they adapted from the hippies and the New Left,they added something that marked the Yippie movement as distinct: revolutionary actiontheater.Theater has no rules, forms, structures, standards, traditions—it is pure, natural energy, impulse, anarchy.—Jerry Rubin (Do It! 132)The Pentagon exorcism demonstrates exactly the kind of revolutionary actiontheaterthat the Yippies later advocated. By setting up the David and Goliath scenario of asmall group of hippies against the vast building, the performance commented on theincredible firepower of the American military and its campaign of bombing anddefoliation against Vietnamese villages. As expressive public behavior intended for anaudience, the exorcism performance contained a clear anti-war message. The actors atthis performance included Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Sanders, Kupferberg, The Fugs,and other volunteer exorcists. Their audience was not only the media, but also onlookerslike novelist Mailer and poet Robert Lowell, other demonstrators, and the Pentagonsecurity forces. Abbie Hoffman and his fellow performers hoped that their exorcismperformance would be so compelling that the media would report on it, and thereforespread word of the anti-war movement to the American public. Indeed, the exorcism was85