1974: Seabee Leon L. Louie explained that the reason he hit his commanding officer in the face with a chocolate cream pie was to boost the morale of his battalion. However, the Navy failed to see the humor in what he had done and court-martialed him.
Comedian Soupy Sales testified in Louie's defense, arguing that hitting someone in the face with a cream pie is comedy, not assault. Nevertheless, a jury of five officers found Louie guilty, though they gave him the lighter sentence of demotion, restriction to base, and a fine — rather than a dishonorable discharge.
Randy Newman's strange hit song from 1977 consisted, at least in part, of "a prejudiced attack on short people" (as Wikipedia puts it).
Two stations in Boston refused to play the song because of a flood of calls and letters from listeners who thought it was insensitive. The 5-foot-7 station manager of both stations explained that children might begin to see themselves as "creepy little folks." . . .
Then there are those fans who, understanding their favorite artist's genius, have interpreted the song as being a satire on short-sighted people — spiritual midgets, you might say.
In the early 1970s, artist Philip (now Pippa) Garner converted a '59 Chevy into a "backward car." This involved flipping the body of the car around so that the back became the front. It was fully drivable.
Esquire magazine ran an article about it in their Nov 1974 issue. They noted, "Even though the Chevy conformed to highway codes, it was stopped by police on numerous occasions. The car was legal, yes, but hard to handle. After these pictures were taken, Garner buried the car in a secret place, forever."
For Carl Andre is a 1970 artwork by Lynda Benglis. It consists of a heap of polyurethane foam sitting in the corner of a room. It's owned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
The title refers to the sculptor Carl Andre, known for his ultra-minimalist works. For instance, one of Andre's more famous works, Equivalent VIII, consisted of a rectangular stack of bricks. The Fort Worth Art Museum catalog notes:
Benglis uses Andre's name in her piece, but the point she makes is not strictly pejorative. The work is an ironic and humorous homage to Andre's art, which is characteristically made of ordered, flat, modular shapes combined with simple slabs of metal or stone that sit directly on the floor or, like Benglis's piece, are installed in the corner.
So it's not "strictly pejorative," but maybe it's slightly so? Or satirical?
Explanatory text from Are Computers Alive? Evolution and New Life Forms, by Geoff Simons (1983).
A cybernetic sculpture, 'The Senster', was constructed by Edward Ihnatowicz in 1970 for the Philips Evoluon in Eindhoven. The device is a large electrohydraulic structure in the form of a lobster's claw: six hinged joints allow great freedom of movement. It is interesting that the device's unpredictable behaviour makes the observer feel that the sculpture is alive. Reichardt (1978) commented: 'It is as if behaviour were more important than appearance in making us feel that something is alive.' 'The Senster' has senses—sound channels (effective ears) and radar—to allow it to monitor its environment: it will, for example, react to the movement of people in the immediate vicinity. Electrical signals are fed from a control unit to activate mechanisms which cause movement in the device. The brain (a computer) has learning abilities and can modify the machine's behaviour in the light of past experience. Confronted by this artificial device, it is clear that people have no difficulty in organizing their psychological responses as if 'The Senster' were alive—an animal or another human being.
Watch it in action below. The people desperately trying to get its attention clearly hadn't watched enough horror movies to know what usually happens next in situations with sentient machines.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.