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

widely reported on, and Mailer even included a lengthy description of it in his novel TheArmies of the Night. The exorcism successfully reached its target audience.In addition to the scenario of the exorcism, the performance also relied on thetraditional theatrical elements of scenery and costume to capture the audience’s attention.The stage was the Pentagon north parking lot, conveniently emptied of vehicles for themarchers, and thus providing a wide open space for performance. For scenery, theexorcists had the truck on which The Fugs played. But their backdrop was the mightywall of the Pentagon, an overwhelming visual metaphor of the government’sdetermination to stand its ground and keep fighting in Vietnam. The exorcists worecostumes: Uncle Sam hats signaling their patriotism, and the hippie costume of NativeAmerican beads, headbands, and long unkempt hair. Their sartorial choices demonstratedtheir difference from their audience of neatly-dressed writers and reporters, SDS workersand Mobe organizers, and the lines of police and military personnel. Their costumesmarked the performers as somehow different, more expressive, than otherdemonstrators—conscious performers for a specific audience. With the costumes andmusic, the scenario and the chanting, the exorcism was a theatrical demonstration againstthe Pentagon that was distinct from the sober speeches and orderly march earlier that day.Why did the Yippies choose theatricality as the device to which they turned againand again when demonstrating against the Johnson administration and the Vietnam War?Theatricality was a way to oppose the system without relying on the system’s own tools.Whereas Mobe and SDS used carefully choreographed events, speeches, and hierarchicalorganization as tools to help them express dissent, the Yippies rejected those tools as too86