| put on your red shoos and dance a way |
[Sep. 8th, 2015|07:42 pm] |
To Pierre Elliott Trudeau
April 3, 1974
Dear Pierre:
I see by the papers that there is, and will continue to be, a great deal of confusion about streaking. It is just possible that I can be of some help here. The streaker is a “put on” in the same way that the stripper is. She takes off her clothes in order to “put on” her audience. Though nude, she is completely clad in her audience, as much as a model in a life class. It is when she steps backstage that she is naked, or minus her audience.
The streaker [nude runner] is putting on his audience because he wishes to be seen. He is a role-player and not a private person, therefore he hides his face and his name. His “put on" has to do with a grievance against what he feels to be a hypocritical society. The streaker and the striker are near kin, only the striker strips off the services which are the social clothing in order to “put on" his audience. It would be easy to enlarge this theme, but probably not necessary. The moral issue of decency or indecency is really irrelevant in view of streaking as essentially a political act of defiance and rebellion.
[In his reply the Prime Minister questioned why McLuhan thought streaking was essentially a political act of defiance; to him it had even greater significance as a rebellion against social values.]
{Letters of Marshall McLuhan. Oxford University Press, 1987} |
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