The Spectacle 1974
- Title
- The Spectacle 1974
- Description
- 8 scanned pages of the October, 1974 issue of The Spectacle
- Creator
-
Terry Hawkins
Stormin Kilrad
STEVE STEIN
Tom Price - Date
- 10-01-1974
- Format
- Scanned newspaper
- Source
- https://lib.msu.edu/MurrayHongSPC/collections/#faq-Radicalism
- Publisher
- The Spectacle
- Rights
-
Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial
This item is openly available as part of an Open JSTOR Collection. - Bibliographic Citation
- Terry Hawkins, Stormin Kilrad, STEVE STEIN, & Tom Price. (1974). The Spectacle. Spectacle, The, 2(2). Michigan State University. Independent Voices. Reveal Digital. https://jstor.org/stable/community.28045079
- extracted text
-
The Spectacle
Source: Reveal Digital , 10-01-1974
Contributed by: Terry Hawkins; Stormin Kilrad; STEVE STEIN; Tom Price
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28045079
Licenses: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
This item is openly available as part of an Open JSTOR Collection.
For terms of use, please refer to our Terms & Conditions at https://about.jstor.org/terms/#whats-in-jstor
Reveal Digital is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Reveal Digital
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
the
speccaele
Zoron Fenske Dan Crafts
Jeffrey Sommers Miss Amanda Jones
Terry Hawkins Tom Price
lhe,
Box 433 < ©AEs\Ss
rr TT
Ned Hanley, Artist
om A | a
E. Lansing, Mich. 48823 届 EU
VL >
:, }
© Copyright 1974. The Spectacle*
Fellini’s | 人
Nights of Cabiria
7 and 10:30
Peter Lorre in
Friday & Saturday Oct. 18-19
108 Wells 75¢ SE
Nights of Cabiria Nights of Cabiria
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Listening
to music
passionately
p
E
by Terry Hawkins
It would seem a bit preposterous to write an article
on the common day novelty of listening to music, when
little is being written which rejuires listening as such,
Nusic in the social sense in the twentieth century is not
music at all, but merely spectacle in its purest form:
the commodity and its promotion all in one y»yackage, Beyond that, the promotion becomes an inherent part of the
production itself----a mystification of a mystification.
The commodity is not David Bowie, but the spectacle of
David Bowie,
The present strain of rock music ias come to a point
of no empass,., The music had become so frankly boring
that the addition of an accompanying cabaret act was almost a forezone conclusion, Yet the problem of boredom
in popular music still remains. For all their glitter
and pomp and supposed "weirdness", these rock "personalities" `1lack even the very consciousness of subjectivity
from which surrealism is engendered, "What do you do
when there's nothing to turn inward to?" Its rather dif-
ficult to sound "bizarre" when you've only got three
chords to play.
Music was to detach itself from (its social-collec-
tive existence in the form of Schoenberg, There have
been exceptions of course: Prokofiev, who is extremely
out of critical fashion these days, was probably the last
spark of wit for some time; Benjamin Britten I have a
great respect for, yet I pity him his place in time, But
these are not in any sense the mainstreams of 'progressive" composition, which has by and large followed the
Schoenbergian tendencies of art in isolation. `e see the
result in the sterile, antiseptic music of the computer
programmers, the twelve-tone mathematicians, #0 much for
"serious" music, say the great unwashed, Ånd rightly so}
The fragmentation of capitalist technology renders even
the Arts as specialty fields, Composers write for each
other and the gap is ever increasing. There can be no
passion where there is no understanding. And where there
is no understanding there is no art.
If we are to love music it must be sensuous; it must
erotically stimulate our subjectivity. It must make us
want to listen to it passionately. Passion, lest one
"make no mistake, is not the spectacle of passion (as purportrated by a loutish iiollywood capable only of reflec' ting human relationships in the image of itself), but
rather the uncompromising expression of the essence of
sensuality. Romanticism is the crystalization in art of
should be sacrificed to these peaks
of metaphysical ecstacy--the fallacy of the iomantics, (á fate of fantasy
assigned them by the vulgar "realization" of the bourgeois revolution,) Sut at least they had moments, Üurs
is the age of music with all tìe profundity of expression
of intrigue of the Ohio Turnpike, "Its
Sunday tomorrow--all day." Yet this music lacks even the
self-awareness to recognize its own nihilism!
when John Denver writes songs using the same three
chords repeatedly, it is not because he vishes to express
something 'common to the human experience", it is because
he lacks the passion with which to create music reaching
for the depths of the human geist, ile creates merely the
"common", He uses (unknowingly of course) cheap musical
tricks which prey on past associations connected with the
chord changes of a Top 40 childhood, a "Trivia Night" of
the most inhuman spectacularization, that of human emotion., To claim a passion for the music of Cat Stevens is
to claim an emmense limitation onthe range of one's own
sensitivities, “Simplicity is only artful when it is profound (and it is never profound merely because it is sim-
stupid. . :
ple!) When simplicity lacks profundity, it is simply
There is little passion (in a musical corpse, dead
nearly a century and a half, Yet its carcass continues
to be pumped ful] of sacrificial vanity by dancing abori-
ginies, fruitless transfusions leaving only the sucked
white shéll of flesh calling itself Paul McCartney, Bette
Midler, Elton John, etc.--the vampire in reverse, There
is no passion where there is no blood}
Passionate listening comes only as a result of critical listening, There is no more passion to be had from
hearing muzak (and not only the nameless variety) than
there is in the eating of a McDonald's hamburger. One
must learn to enjoy hating impassionate art. Those who
would permit the festering of this cultural pestilence
are merely resigning themselves to the utter boredom and
stupidity of the common existence, In these days of "li-
ture. :
beral" enthusiasm, to tòlerate is to accept with open
arms, Decadent art does not thrive on a flourishing cul-
The restoration of passion to music is only one
phase of the general restoration of passion to everyday
life. As a wise old philosopher once said: Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human
relationships to man himself,
extreme moments of passion., The underlying (implication
being that the interim moments of not so great passion
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
at Spartan
Stadium
by Stormin Kilrad
.
Arriving late for tomorrow's zame, the Spectacle
sports writing staff had to push our way into the pressbox, moving past cretins foaming at the mout, ripping
their clipboards in half, into the crowded, smoke-filled
sportsroom of Spartan Stadium on the campus of NMichigan
STATE University. Our fellow members of the working press
were sweating profusely in the cold chill of tomorrow's
afternoon, One irate meèember was grinding hħis pencil
point deeply into his palm as he strained for his lead to
yesterday's unwritten story.
Ourselves, we were just coming onto a heavy acid
rush, hoping for some good knee-slapping, bone-snapping
ultra-violence to come out of the Michigan STATE anthropology department displayed before us on the field of
honour between the perennial rivals Michigan and Michigan
STATE.
The air was fecund with the odor of decaying leaves
the wind rushes blowing the flag gently as they always do
and a faint tinge of sulfur-dioxide was to be smelled in
air. A huge pile of shapeless creatures lay mangled and
bloody in the centre of the field., Our first impression
was that of a Roman orgy. Then with horror we imagined
that it might be some heinous activity directed against
Christians. Freparing to be embarassed, we were interrupted by a fat sportswriter in what
long flowing black raincoat.
The acid was getting intense, As we strained with
our own cameras trying to find which lense was which,
putting away our Kodak Carousel slide projector lense and
searching for the 400 mm telephoto, we found that the
game had concluded in the meanwhile without the assistance of any photo journalism on our part. ie threw the
camera into our picnic basket and began taking mental
notes furiously. Bodies were crawling off the field,
cheerleaders were running about, the marching band was
goose-stepping merrily through the muck and mire, playing
most appropriately a glorious anthem, once again demon-
strating the versatility of the physical education pro-
gramme. The Tartan turf was soaked red in blood matching
the falli colours of the assembled audience.
Friedrich was furiously scribbling in his notebook
line after line on top of one another, . in no apparent order. Luckily I switched on my tape recorder ẹin time to
catch the blow by blow recapitulation from the large porcine gentleman in the raincoat standing next to me, yelling and screaming and beating his fists in rage on his
breasts.
Of what happened next we're not quite sure, and as
objective reporters we don't want to convey the impression we know something we shouldn't, `e now describe the
events which take place tomorrow, :
With the score M-14 MSU-13 and Michigan STATE going
for the extra point, State's last chance to tie the score
we weren't really sure which end of the field the teams
were lined up on. The grid iron stood out in white relief against a surreal background of green and oozing,
puss-like Chinese red. The MSU team was lined up obliquely at an angle to the goal line in some kind of broken
wing formation. But with only seconds left on the clock
“there transpired one of those tragic events history is
famous for. The Spartan quarterback Gung 'Boo" Louie who
was yelling out the signals shouted "Fo!" to which the
center who was expecting the number. "four" failed to respond, In the meantime, time ran out. However, neither
side noting that the game had ended, there ensued a massive rush of team upon team,
The flags were up and down, and from mid-field came
the charge of the opposing team. Motly, deformed degenerates, their putrescent bodies bathing in reeking discoloured pers>łiration ch°rging furiously with mindless determination, The heroic Spartans, clearly the genetically
superior of the two teams (or what was patronizingly
called a team on the other side), promptly smasheđ
through this temporary barrier of semi-human disgust,
But the first line ħad only been the most worthy of
these
hideous untermensch} Now followed group after
of unforgivably mutant creatures of the most horgroup
rible
description---some merely giant globes of crawling
flesh their entrails dragging behind them in translucent
sacks, It was the most disgusting spectacle iriedrich
and 1 had ever the misadventure to witness.
But fortunately for us the Spartan jugger-nought
soon cleared the standing field of this unconnromising
rubble from out of the depths of the genetic cesspool.
Cheering madly with the zreat thumps of smashing jelly
like protoplasm these creatures dared to call flesh, and
the sharp shrill sounds of mishapen bones cracking--crack
--crack--crack--still ringing in our cars, Friedrich and
1 ran out onto the field to share in the triunph of the
pure buman genotype, (The game had been lost but the battle had been won in the eyes of all true hunans present
that afternoon,
#xhausted, the press reporters filed out of the
pressroom, stories in hand
some looking for telephones,
some looking for bathrooms,
Friedrich and I bumped into
that porcine gentleman once
again in the hall, He pushed
his many-buttoned coat at us screaming and yelling incoherently, flailing his arms about like a smashed weasle,
shouting, "Arrest, arrest....bust, bust....'" e realized
it was Howard Cosell,
"fiow long have you been covering
sports cvents,
hoping to zet at least
Howard Cosell?" asked Friedrich,
some sort of interview out of this.
"Force? I been on the force
for fifteen years.
Had a lot of busts, Tairty-four busts,....no convictions
as of yet,'
e then realized that this man was wearing some
sort of uniform, "Is that the new ABC uniform that you
wear to cover all the really big ganes, lioward?" said
Friedrich who was peaking lìlike a son-of-a-bitch. This
porcine gentleman was very quickly turning into a huge
cat with Japanese eyes,
"Why this...this here is our new uniform, e don't
said this huge cat
have the blue blazer patrol as yet,"
gentleman as he secured the handcuffs around Friedrich's
wrists pulling the tape recorder from his grasp, "No
more of this here recordin' thing except for your Niranda rights!"
The 3 pudgy fellow oinked, farted and proceeded to
mumble something about: ''What are you hippies doin' out
here in the middle of the night?..." s
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
EE
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
- z =. 3 ” U8.
They make you work
by Tom Price
With a gesture of furious
relevance, AÅSMSU tabled a res-
olution of unconditional sup-
port for the Student Yorkers'
Union. The only condition, it
would seem, is the conditioning
of time. It might take a good
three weeks before the conditions of unconditional support
are revealed, :
Meanwhile, back at the
point of production, the SWU
appears to be growing as many
students find it the answer to
what Walter Cronkite and ilerbert Hoover call the 'Depression", that mystical psychological thing many MSU economists
have said would be "never
more,.''
šith the end of the vwar
the troops have come home---and
they have brought the Third
World with them, Poverty, some
thing our government has been
so adept at giving away to
other countries (e.g. Chile, S.
Vietnam, Taiwan, colonies which
receive governments as part of
the aid package), is becoming a
Contained within the organization of producers {is the
faint glow of, dare we say it,
democracy. Those who are joining the union see it as a measure by which they may have a
voice in their production and
in the decisions which effect
our daily lives. The voice is
weak and any method of direct
control, either over production
or the SWU itself, is vague.
Uf course, in most other unions
rank and file democracy is a
very clear issue, since it does
not exist. The move toward a
union democracy expresses a desire for self-control which the
current mode of social. relations denies.
Democracy is a term we
have been taught to associate
with parliaments, To apply such
a term to a union or, say, to a
political party is to ask for a
structure, such as Robert's
Rules of Order, iverywhere
At work we have little or
no control over our production,
hat control is given us is selected for us by the functionaries above, those we label the
anonymous '"system', The job is
the activity that tells us when
to sleep, when to find entertainment, and what standard of
living we are to have, Along
with being a massive bore, it
is the activity that dominates
all other activities. It is
also, if we can see the totalthat creates the world we inhabit. This world we do not
control, :
The student worker is in a
most unique position, As students we are the raw materials,
as labourers, we are produ-
cers, and as graduates we are
products, we become a commodity
as we sell ourselves on the
labour market, ìre exercise so`
little control over the whole
process that we feel a certain
American workers,
there are structures purporting
to be democratic yet the character of our daily existence is
authoritarian. The number of
democratic structures, it would
Though unionized workers
in general have not kept up
with inflation, they bave faired somewhat better than those
of us with no union at all.
never are allowed to decide or in the AS MS U business
just what they will vote on. office
way of life for millions of
alienation, a separation from
that which we produce, and we
are producing our own minds.
seem, is directly proportional The Student Workers Union
to the lack of democracy. One is distributing sign up cards
gets to elect leaders, yet we at Brother Gambits', 205 MAC,
We’ll take your money
SPECTACLE Back Issues (Volume One)
El Renacimiento
No. l--In this issue we insult Gooey Bunghole (Maharaj Ji),
the State News, the MSU museum and Christians.
No. 2--In this issue we insult Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the
Es “la voz de la Raza” y “el periódico
más grande de Michigan” s
Necesitamos implantar nuestra cultura, música,
nuestro idioma, defender y denunciar las injusticias
sociales, atacar los prejuicios raciales y este es el
medio. .
SUSCRIBASE A SU
PERIODICO, AHORA
"community' and Christians. :
No. 3--In this issue we insult streaking, the State News,
garbage music and Christians. :
No. 4--In this issue we insult the Bowery, the Youth Culture,
the 50's, work in general and Christians.
No. 5--In this issue we insult Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyists, peasants and Christians. (No more ads for the SPECTACLE!)
No. 6--In this issue we insult nearly everything left over,
and in COLOUR!
Mande $3.00 para recibirlo por
correo, a:
El Renacimiento
915 N. Washington Ave.
Lansing, MI 48906
Beginners $ 1.50 (per term)
Send your money to:
Sustainers 2.50
Church groups 5.00 The SPECTACLE
Military 10.00 Box 433
Police agents 50.00 E. Lansing, M 48823
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
7O
nd
MULTI)—r r, _
ILOUR Chs: ck WALLS
DESIGNY US OUERCLOTH
STOCKED PERSONALI
IN ALL AE n BANNERS
w1? TWS E
SOITED "TO REG VARI
oKERS £ MmooDT
Sy 2), SERQ
Á
SIZES \ 117
Harr Nort
i sonk (4
M SA s
$3” East
SHIRTS Lan
Hovs aA
Steck U; NE
0
ON2^PURCHASES.
SU01TARLEOVER
FOR= 2
CHAIN SMOKERS =-
3 FAMILIES =
30%
OFF:=
R PURCHASES
TERMS e
Fagered
A ~SNe
SUITABLE
FER =
BUYS, JELL
=
Yer ry SP sP ecial
s on fU boser of
tine
Check ost
the rolling
Toads papers!
e
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
James Joyce's
ULYSSES
37 and 9 pm
100 Engineering Friday
Ulysses is the story of a day (in the life of Leopold
Bloom, Not only is it a portrayal of his actions and words,
it is a look into the innermost workings of Bloom's mind--his
most intimate thoughts both conscious and unconscious, iie
witness both the fragmentation of modern capitalist society
and the unending attempt of the individual tó reassemble his
splintered world, This Joyce achieves through ñnis stream-ofconsciousness technique, perhaps even more aptly suited to
the medium of film,
The film is of course a condensation of the book--a full
version, if one were made, would probably run a good sixteen
hours--highlighting the wittiest aâand most hilarious (not to
mention the raciest) scenes, Much of it is devoted to the
"Bloom in the whorehouse'" episode, the film creating an even
more surrealist escapade than the original,
A scene typical of the type of decisions and priorities
which cross Bloom's mind in the course of the day is our Ùintroduction to this seemingly drab character deciding on his
breakfast meal. Bloom, after contemplating the relative me-
rits of the kidneys of varied beasts, finally decides on a
pork kidney for he prefers "a fine tang of faintly scented
urine,"
The Joyce novel was for many years banned from the U, S.
due to its graphic descriptions and use of "obscene! words,
The court case became a landmark regarding the obscenity laws.
The film followed suit; parts of it were edited in its initial!
U. S. showings. Molly's nightgown soliloquy was considered a
bit too wuch for prurient interests. The version shown this
week will of course be the unexpurgated version.
The film was directed by Joseph Strick and was released
in 1967 a.
This content downloaded from
141.211.4.224 on Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:16:11 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
- Item sets
- “Radical” Zines
- Site pages
- Periodicals
- Media
-
The Spectacle 1974
Part of The Spectacle 1974