There is a place for pie

pie vintage.jpg

Throwing a pie at a public figure nudges up against the outer edges of what we consider non-violent action (we believe in non-violence both for tactical and moral reasons) but we're fans of working on the edges, so when someone throws a pie, we generally give them the benefit of the doubt. Pieing was originally a staple of slapstick comedy, popularized by the Keystone Cops and Laurel & Hardy almost a century ago. Political pieing started in the early 1970's, when the Yippies pied such luminaries as Otto N. Larsen (Chairman of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography) and Anita Bryant (world-class homophobe). These pieings were simple affairs: a public figure who takes themselves too seriously is splattered with a sticky dessert. No interpretation necessary – the action is the message. 

Pieing is the act of pulling the king down to the jester's level, but like many tactics, as it aged, it went stale. A pie is a symbol, and symbols lose their power the further they get from what they symbolize. A pie can be used to ridicule and poke fun, but when we try to attach a more defined political message, it becomes a scream in pastry form. 

To make matters worse, some pie-throwers have attempted to put their message train back on its tracks by making serious statements explaining why this particular pie is really a stand-in for their specific issue. We activists, it seems, just want to be understood, and in order to make sure our message is clear, we're willing to use a press release to explain exactly why we tossed a dessert at a public figure.

A press release. About an act of absurdist mayhem. It's bad enough that this violates one of the basic rules of humor, that you can't explain a joke without destroying it, but it also undermines the meaning of the action by asking the audience to earnestly consider the puncturing your target's seriousness.

And beyond the internal paradox, there's the problem that the media is more interested in the pie than the reason the pie was thrown. Take, for example, the Biotic Baking Brigade's well-aimed cherry pie that hit San Francisco mayor Willie Brown in 1998.  Speaking to Mother Jones, the BBB's minister of communications touted the international coverage gained by his group's action by pointing to a short piece in the Turkish Daily News:

San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was nailed in the face with an assortment of desserts by pie-throwing demonstrators. It was the fifth attack in four weeks by the Biotic Baking Brigade, whose members pitch baked goods to draw attention to a series of environmental and social causes. (italics mine.)

This is media coverage for media coverage's sake, with no meaning or message anywhere to be seen. The BBB is not devoid of silliness (they pun their way through their "communiqués") but in the end, this is a pale copy of a vaudevillian stunt and not the farcical re-imagining it deserves.

The most recent incident in the vein of airborne dessert actions was actually a 'custarding':

A protester threw green slimy liquid in the face of British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson on Friday as he was heading to a conference in London.

Leila Dean, 29, of Brighton approached Mandelson seconds after he got out of his car and tossed a substance which she later identified as custard.

Later identified? Can you imagine the Keystone Cops pausing to explain that the thing they're about to fling is a "pie," and that the throwing of said "pie" is a form of "humor"? And, really — green custard? When Apple and Ford can tout themselves as 'green' without being laughed out of business, there is no meaning left to squeeze from the color. 

This is also part of a larger trend – the decline of joy as an essential ingredient in activism. But there is hope, and it sounds like this: "Gloup! Gloup!"

Noel Godin, acting under the pseudonym "Georges Le Gloupier," is most famous for pieing Bill Gates. And such flair! Godin's gang for the Gates operation numbered no less than thirty, and only the finest pies (bought from local bakeries) were used. This was well-organized anarchy with a carefully chosen target. And while it is true that Godin and friends have been known to issue press releases, they are superfluous – we all know why someone threw a pie at Bill Gates; it's because we would have thrown one if we'd had the chance.  

Godin (and others like him who are true to the essential nature of pieing) is making a statement about the absurdity of authority in an age when our nightly news anchors report on the First Lady's exposed arms with a straight face. As Godin told The Observer Magazine, describing an operation targeting frequent pie-recipient Bernard-Henri Levy:

"They pick up their boarding cards, as you can see," said Godin, who has clearly watched this shaky footage hundreds of times but, like a footballer reviewing the goal of his career, seems unlikely to tire of it - "then three entarteurs fall on them, with me leading the charge. They shout: "Oh no. Oh not again." I deliver my cake, and he responds with punches. One of my young female comrades flans him again, point blank, while a second woman crushes alayered chocolate gateau topped with creme chantilly over the head of Arielle Dombasle. It was at that point", he added, "that things got out of hand."

Three desserts crushed into the faces of the pompous elite, and then things get out of hand. Because a pie is not a tool that creates absurdity, it is a tool that exposes it.