Bill Kirkpatrick: It Beats Rocks and Tear Gas (p. 5)
Notes
1. The author wishes to express his appreciation for their insights and suggestions to: the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Popular Culture, Prof. Bernard Yack, Prof. Elana Levine, colleagues at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and especially Anna Nekola.
2. The widespread emergence of streaking in 1974 exhibits the characteristics of a "fad" as generally defined by sociologists, e.g. "a nontraditional preoccupation by diffuse collectivities on a circumscribed object or process." Aguirre et. al 569. However, I mostly avoid using the word in my own voice in this paper. In popular usage, "fad" is often synonymous with terms like "craze" and "fashion," and has acquired trivializing or even pathologizing connotations, making it a pivotal term within the discursive struggles analyzed here. Therefore, in order to avoid reproducing the very discourses which are my object, I have favored terms that I hope are more neutral—terms that in any event were not in play in the discursive struggles over streaking—such as "wave" and "phenomenon."
3. Carroll insightfully analyzes the interplay of pop culture and politics in the 1970s, from Nixon meeting Elvis to All in the Family. My point is not to criticize Carroll for omitting my particular pet project from his study, but to suggest that even professional historians are not immune to trivializing discourses.
4. In the case of streaking, there is a small but excellent body of sociological work that seeks to explain how streaking arose, how it spread across the country, and what contributed to its quick decline. In particular, I point readers to the articles by Anderson and Aguirre et al. in the bibliography. In this context, I should point out that there is much that we will probably never know about streaking, such as why the first streaker in 1974 made his seminal naked dash. Was he just drunk? Playing a game of Truth-Or-Dare? Inspired by something he read? Who knows? In general, I am happy to leave it to psychologists and sociologists to grapple with the "whys" of individual and collective behavior. But even if he really did streak for "no reason," we can't let that be the last word on the subject, since we're still faced with the questions of why streaking captured the public's imagination and what political purposes it was made to serve.
5. E.g. Alison Bernstein and Arthur Levine, "The Unfinished Academic Revolution," Change 22.3 (Mar./Apr. 1990).
6. See also Beverly Solochek, "The Calm After the Storm," Parade (10 Feb. 1974); "What's Become of Yesterday's Student Rebels," U.S. News & World Report (13 Jan. 1973): 34-37; "Switch for Student Activists—Working Inside 'The System,'" U.S. News & World Report (4 Feb. 1974): 68; Alan Wolfe, "What Future for Campus Radicalism?" Chronicle of Higher Education (13 Nov. 1972).
7. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), "Figure 13. Enrollment, degrees conferred, and expenditures in degree-granting institutions: 1960–61 to 2000-01," www.ed.gov (accessed 14 Jan. 2005); HEGIS, " Table 175. Total first-time freshmen fall enrollment in institutions of higher education: Fall 1955 to fall 1993," Available online at www.ed.gov (accessed 14 Jan. 2005). HEGIS, "Table 188. Total undergraduate fall enrollment in degree-granting institutions: 1970 to 1998," www.ed.gov (accessed 14 Jan. 2005).
8. Except where noted, all incidents in this paragraph are from "Streaking: One Way to Get a B.A.," 41-42.
9. "Mooning" had been a recognized term since at least the early 1950s. Although some observers compared mooning to streaking, few attributed to streaking the same vulgar disrespect and anti-authoritarian politics that mooning had connoted for decades.
10. I say ostensibly because this mythical, innocent student past never really existed, of course. One need only read F. Scott Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical account of his student days in This Side of Paradise to recall that the American university and its denizens have long been a source of social anxiety.
In the specific case of student fads and pranks, the 1950s were also no "innocent" era. Consider the case of those "lovable campus crazies" who carried out panty raids during that decade: several raids resulted in serious property damage and even riots, and in one instance Missouri called out the National Guard. At a time of war in Korea, such social disruption was seen by some as tantamount to treason: "[O]thers contrasted the college pranks with news from Korea. There, last week, 'raiders' also were active—82 Communists were killed in a typical three-day period; 43 U.S. casualties were announced" ("Campus 'Panty Raiders' 26). Panty raiders were threatened with revocation of their student deferments, which would have made them eligible for the draft.
At the same time, many 1950s accounts of panty raids are similar to the discourses seen during the streaking wave: "Most people tended to dismiss the incidents as just a species of spring madness. They recalled the goldfish-swallowing craze of the 1930s" ("Campus 'Panty Raiders' 26). The fact that panty raids, like streaking, were a form of sexual assertion (one might say "antagonism") suggests a certain cyclicality in these white male "hijinks." In that light, the 1970s' invocation of the 1950s as the "golden age" appears an even more conservative rhetorical move than it already did.
11. One could productively invoke Marcuse's "repressive tolerance" thesis here. My larger point, however, is that while campus administrators were interested in maintaining behavioral control by tolerating streaking, the wider societal embrace of streaking cannot be fully explained by Marcuse's ideas.
12. See, for example, Marcus and Miller.
13. I have cited this article as an example of the ways in which streakers were "normalized," i.e. constructed as "normal" rather than as deviant, perverted, or threatening to the social order. I did not introduce it as an empirical description of actual streakers, and I have not evaluated the methodology by which Heckel arrived at his assessment of the "typical" streaker profile. But the quotation does raise the question of the streaker's Protestantism, and whether religion is a relevant category of analysis for this study. I have found it not to be so: religion simply was not an important part of the discourse nor of the politics at play. It is, of course, fair to say that the streaker's Protestantism was "assumed" in the construction of streakers as "normal," but I found almost no sources—including religious publications such as Christian Century and Christianity Today—that referenced religion, even to marginalize or silence it. While religion has always played a role in American politics, especially in the resurgence of conservatism in the late 20th century, the categories that I do primarily discuss here—race, gender, and (to a slightly lesser but still significant degree) class—played an overwhelmingly greater role in the construction of streaking.
Works Cited
Aguirre, B. E., E. L. Quarantelli, and Jorge L. Mendoza. "The Collective Behavior of Fads: the Characteristics, Effects, and Career of Streaking." American Sociological Review 53 (1988): 569-584.
"American Notes: Happy New Year," Time 14 Jan. 1974: 8.
Anderson, William A. "The Social Organization and Social Control of a Fad: Streaking on a College Campus." Urban Life 6.2 (1977): 221-240.
"Baa, Baa, Baa." Time 11 Mar. 1974: 10.
Baker, Russell. "Search-and-Cherish Mission." New York Times 25 Apr. 1972: 43.
"Blue Streaks." Newsweek 4 Feb. 1974: 63.
Brown, Les. "TV Networks Seek to Avoid Streaking Incidents." New York Times 29 Mar. 1974: 71.
"Campus 'Panty Raiders' – How Many Await Draft?" U.S. News & World Report 30 May 1952: 26.
Carey, James W. "Political Ritual on Television." Media, Ritual & Identity. Eds. T. Liebes & J. Curran.
London & New York: Routledge, 1998. 71–86.
Carroll, Peter N. It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990.
Cloud, Al. "Streaking." Daily Iowan 26 Mar. 1974: 4.
"College Enrollment of Blacks Doubles." Washington Post 15 Dec. 1977: A8.
"Columbia Campus Gets its First Gawk at 'Streaking' Fad." New York Times 7 Mar. 1974: 41.
Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge and London: Harvard UP, 1992.
"Denial of Tenure to Feminist Prompts Protest at Wisconsin." Chronicle of Higher Education 8 Mar. 1974: 2.
Elkins, Murray. "The Significance of Streaking." Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality (July 1974): 157.
Evans, Byron F. "Is Student Protest Over?" Current May 1973: 46-49.
Evans, Robert R., and Jerry L. L. Miller. "Barely an End in Sight." Readings in Collective Behavior. Ed. Robert R. Evans. Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing, 1975.
Fiske, John. Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996.
"The Founding Streakers." Newsweek 20 May 1974: 120.
Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. "Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction." Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 149-71.
Grimes, Michael D., Thomas K. Pinhey, and Louis A. Zurcher. "Note on Students' Reactions to 'Streakers' and 'Streaking.'" Perceptual and Motor Skills 45 (1977): 122.
Hines, Laurie Moses. "When Parallel Paths Cross: Competition and the Elimination of Sex Segregation in the Education Fraternities, 1969–1974." History of Education Quarterly 43.2 (2003). The History Cooperative. 14 Jan. 2005 <http://www.historycooperative.org>
Heckel, Robert V. "Grin and Bare It." Journal of Community Psychology 4 (1976): 145-148.
"In Praise of Altogetherness." Time 18 Mar. 1974: 8.
Loniello, Nick. "'Revolution' to be Declared Dead." The Badger Herald 20 Aug. 1973: 4-5.
Malcolm, Andrew H. "Streakers Off and Running on Nation's Campuses." New York Times 10 Mar. 1974: 49.
Marcus, Daniel. Happy Days and Wonder Years. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004.
Marcuse, Herbert. "Repressive Tolerance." A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Eds. Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. 95-137.
Martin, David. "The Delicate Streak." The Listener 25 Apr. 1974: 26.
Martin, Judith. "Streaking: Getting Down to Basics." Washington Post 7 Mar. 1974: B1, B14.
Marum, Andrew, and Frank Parise. Follies and Foibles: A View of 20th Century Fads. New York: Facts On File Inc., 1984.
Miller, Douglas T. "Sixties Activism in the 'Me Decade.'" The Lost Decade: America in the Seventies. Ed. Elsebeth Hurup. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus UP, 1996. 133-143.
"Miscellaneous," Facts On File 27 Apr. 1974: 336.
McFadden, Robert D. "Streaking: A Mad Dash to Where?" New York Times 8 Mar. 1974: 35, 41.
Nordheimer, Jon. "Oscars for 'Sting,' Lemmon, Miss Jackson." New York Times 3 Apr. 1974: 36.
O'Connell, Mark. "Streaker: Our Cultural Exhibition." Daily Nexus 14 Mar. 1974: 1.
"Of Crisis and Confidence." Time 25 Feb. 1974: 11-12.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. New York and London: Routledge, 1994.
Peary, Gerald. "Vice Figure." Daily Cardinal 8 March 1974: 6.
-----. “Host of Hamlet’s Mother.” Daily Cardinal 8 March 1974: 6.
Pinsley, Elliot. "UW streakers." Daily Cardinal 7 March 1974: 1-2.
"Random Notes." Rolling Stone 25 April 1974: 28.
Roemerman, Bill. "Streakers Blitz UI Campus." Daily Iowan 5 March 1974: 12.
Salter, Kwame. "Streaking." Daily Cardinal 12 March 1974: 4-5.
Schnakenberg, Robert E. "Streaking." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Vol. 4. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000.
Scully, Malcolm G. "Signs of a 'Counter-Reformation Hearten Academic Conservatives," Chronicle of Higher Education 18 Mar. 1974: 6.
"A Streak of Spring Madness." People Weekly 25 Mar. 1974: 22-23.
"The Streak: More of the Same." Washington Post 8 Mar.1974: B3.
"The Streaker: Faster than the …" National Review 29 Mar.1974: 362.
"Streaking as Praxis." Christian Century 20 Mar. 1974: 310;
"Streakers Getting More Exposure." Daily Iowan 6 Mar. 1974: 7.
"Streaking Hits Pandemic Levels at UW!" Badger Herald 7 Mar. 1974: 1, 5.
"Streaking: One Way to Get a B.A." Newsweek 18 Mar. 1974: 41-2.
Sulzberger, C. L. "No Gresham's Law for Ideas." The New York Times 31 Mar. 1972: 29.
Toolan, James, M., Murray Elkins, Derek Miller, and Paul D'Encarnacao. "The Significance of Streaking." Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality (July 1984):152-165.
Vealey, Dennis M. "Why They Streak." Time 1 Apr. 1974: 5.
Wang, Leo. "Streakin' at the Streakers Ball." Daily Cardinal 8 Mar. 1974: 2.
Weissman, Stephen R. "The Less Militant Campus." The Nation 18 June 1973: 781-785.
Weston, Burns H. "Letters." Daily Iowan 21 Mar. 1974: 4.
"Where Are Top Streakers?" Chronicle of Higher Education 11 Mar. 1974: 2.
Will, George. "Streaking Under the First Amendment." Washington Post 8 Mar. 1974: A27.
Woods, Crawford. "No Peace, No Place." New York Times 13 May 1973: 356.
Note:
This paper is provided under a Creative Commons for-attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license. For all other uses, contact the author at mwkirkpa@gmail.com. The article will be appearing in the Journal of Popular Culture in 2008.
Please cite as:
Kirkpatrick, Bill. "'It Beats Rocks and Tear Gas': Streaking and Cultural Politics in the Post-Vietnam Era." Journal of Popular Culture (forthcoming, 2008).
Download a copy of the article as a Word document here.