The Cacophony Society
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The Cacophony Society
The Cacophony Society is a counter-culture movement based predominately in North America, with chapters in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland. They practice forms of culture-jamming and nonsensical events in a similar vein to - or as an offshoot of - the Dada movement and the Situationists. One of the Society's main concepts, inspired by the Temporary Autonomous Zone by anarchist-author Hakim Bey, is that of the Zone Trip or Trip to the Zone. This concept is explained in Bey's book as “the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control”. The Society is anarchic, which means – to use contradictory terms – that anyone can take on a “leadership role” and sponsor or host an event. There are no compulsory commitments for members and participation is a matter of individual taste. Membership is open-ended and according to the Society's website, “you may already be a member.”
The Santa Rampage
The Santa Rampage (SantaCon)
The Society is responsible for the Santa Rampage, or SantaCon, which is a mass gathering of people dressed in various incarnations of Santa Claus. Although anarchic and often cited as a Rampage, the events are not of a violent or activist nature. Commonly, the “Santa's” will give out free hugs, gifts, sing naughty Christmas Carols, dance or simply congregate in random areas. Japanese members have even previously done a litter-picking outing. Fun stuff.
The first rudimentary Santa Rampage was in San Francisco, in 1994, with activities including public intoxication, guerilla street theatre and pranks. Today, the events have grown, forked into different sects and encompass new ideas catering to many different ideals and tastes. At the heart of it however, the Santa Rampage was designed to bring people together for harmless rejection of the norm.
The Society in Popular Culture
Another early Cacophonist event, titled “A Bad Day at Black Rock”, was spread around in Cacophonist newsletters and was to involve the burning of a large effigy of a man at Baker Beach. Authorities prevented the burning of the effigy and the event was somewhat rescheduled. This next event became “The Burning Man Festival,” which became quite well-known within popular culture.
Some of the Society's activities have seeped further into popular culture, with alcoholic beverage company Bacardi basing their “Bacardi Salmon (Swimming Upstream)” ad campaign on a concept thought up by the counter-culture group and set the whole thing to an indie rock score. How hip.
Bacardi's ad campaign
Since 1994, Cacophonists have been dressing as salmon and running in the opposite direction than all other competitors in the Bay to Breakers 12 km race in San Francisco, an event that the Cacophonists call “Breakers to Bay”. The Bacardi ad contains no reference or acknowledgment to the Cacophony Society.
Scene from Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk, author of counter-culture novel Fight Club, is one of the most well known members of the Cacophony Society. The novel's terrorist group “Project Mayhem” was based upon the Society. During a reading Palahniuk was giving of Diary: A Novel, Cacophonists dressed as Santa Claus distrupted the reading and tried to spray Palahniuk with whipped cream. After the “Santa's” were caught and stripped of their whipped cream, Palahniuk gave them all money and told them to buy themselves a beer. The popularity of Fight Club has lead to some minor misunderstanding of what the Society is all about, which could explain why the term has dropped out of use.
Other events
The term 'The Cacophony Society' isn't used as much as it used to be, as Cacophonist type groups aren't commonly affiliating themselves with the term. This is due in part to the fact that some events, such as Santacon, have recently devolved into pub crawls and excuses for acting out. This makes it hard to categorise events and organisations as being created by The Cacophony Society. Zombie attacks, Peewee Herman day and anti-SantaCon (which involves dressing as anything other than Santa Claus) are all seen as either directly or indirectly involved with The Cacophony Society.
Pee-wee Herman day is an interesting day held by members as it commemorates American comedian Paul Reubens' arrest in a porno theatre, for masturbating publicly during the screening of Nurse Nancy. What a trooper.
Members Cool kids dressed as Pee-wee Herman
Commonly, the Society doesn't take credit for what they do:
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