Remarkably, despite the legal proceedings and media frenzy that followed the bombings, only three of the members of the New Situationists were ever publically identified: Kraus, Berliner, and a man named David Wilson. None of them could be persuaded, legally or otherwise, to divulge the names of the other members. Berliner, Wilson, and Kraus were all arrested; the Chicago DA’s office handled the criminal prosecution, while the FBI came in to look for the other members of the New Situationists.
Wilson served eighteen months in jail for refusing to answer questions at a Grand Jury trial at which he had been subpoenaed to testify. Because he was still seventeen years old at the time of sentencing, Berliner served five months in a juvenile detention facility for the same reason. Kraus was charged with manslaughter and the destruction of public property. Charges of conspiracy to commit a terrorist activity originally brought against Kraus were dropped due to the court’s inability to produce any conspirators. Berliner and Wilson both had alibis proving they weren’t involved in the bombings, which held up in court.
The media story on the New Situationists focused on the group’s “cult of silence”l; many people were upset that the FBI found no way to force Kraus and her two fellow terrorists to name their co-conspirators. Berliner, Kraus, and Wilson pled ignorance; they insisted that the New Situationists always maintained absolutely secrecy, hiding their real names and identities even from each other, except David Wilson, who, as the New Situationist “Public Relations Liaison,” made his name known, but was kept out of any “real” New Situationist business, whatever that was. He also claimed not to know the names of any other New Situationists, though they all knew his.
During Kraus’s trial, the District Attorney of Chicago asked her questions about the identity of the other New Situationists. In response, Kraus paraphrased Debord: “New Situationism cannot exist because there is no dogmatic doctrine that is called ‘Situationism.’ There is only the possibility of the creation of Situationists that follow a certain pattern.” When she said the word “Situationism,” Kraus used air quotes.
Following a well-argued motion from the highly regarded attorney hired by Kraus’s father, Kraus’s trial remained closed to the public. The judge on the case gave Wilson, Berliner, and Kraus’s family permission to attend. Wilson showed up about half the time, whenever something interesting was bound to happen. Berliner came every day and watched every second of the proceedings.
The trial didn’t go well for the prosecution. The defense proved that the bombs had been built by an amateur, not a professional, which helped refute the conspiracy charges. They showed that New Situationists had never threatened or carried out any acts of violence or terrorism before, and didn’t seem to be planning any others. Only one subway station suffered serious damage; the staircase was completely destroyed, the ceiling caved in, and the tracks ripped out of their hinges in a few places. The defense also presented ample evidence that neither Kraus nor her nebulous New Situationist colleagues intended to kill anyone.
Kraus was found guilty on one count of murder in the second degree and one count of criminally malicious property damage. She was found not guilty on six other property damage counts, for the subway stations the other New Situationists had bombed, for which she wasn’t present. The presiding judge sentenced her to life in prison, with the first possibility of parole after twenty-five years.
After the trial and sentencing were complete and the media firestorm died down, the FBI decided the New Situationists no longer constituted a real threat against America and left Chicago. The government had more important terrorists to chase, ones that weren’t white, blond, suburban girls. While most of the general public moved on, a few people remained obsessed with discovering the identities of the other New Situationists: some true crime nerds, people interested in the minutiae of Chicago politics, and a teenager from New York named Miranda Young.m
The fourteen-year-old proto — Molly Metropolis lived in the North Loop and matriculated at the Chicago Lab Schools, one of the best high schools in the state. According to Molly Metropolis lore, at this time in her life Molly was working as a waitress at a now-closed Italian restaurant in Lincoln Park, using a fake I.D. to get into dance clubs North of the Loop, singing Fiona Apple — esque pop songs while accompanying herself on a small keyboard, starring in a school production of Bye Bye Birdie (which her theater teacher agreed to gender-swap just so Molly could play “Connie” Birdie), and consuming intoxicating quantities of Sex and the City. Molly never told people like James Laksy, author of her first major profile in The New York Times Magazine, that along with all the musical theater and underage tattoos, Molly fantasized about becoming a member of the New Situationists.
Molly didn’t condone the June subway bombings. In surviving AIM chats with her best friend Audrey Benton, Molly disavowed the New Situationists’ violent tactics; her lofty goal was to take over the New Situationists and steer them toward more productive ends. However, Molly’s fascination with the Weather Underground of her time was nothing compared to the full-on obsession she developed when she started reading about the original Situationists and Debord.
According to Berliner, détournement is the first Situationist idea that Molly Metropolis latched onto, like a gateway drug into a deeper, darker world. Détournement is “both the appropriation and the correction of culture as common property” [italics mine]. Détournement isn’t unlike today’s remix and meme cultures, which take pieces of culture, like pop songs or photos of famous actors and actresses, and shove them next to or on top of other pieces of culture or cultural references, to create something new. Sometimes these newly created objects fall into the comedic realm, like the popular Tumblr blog Feminist Ryan Gosling, which took an already existing Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme (photoshopping various Ryan Gosling — esque sentiments onto pictures of Gosling, preceded by “Hey girl,” as if Gosling was speaking these things directly to his legions of female fans) and added academic feminist rhetoric. Other times, these new cultural items are created with a political purpose. Elisa Kreisinger, a self-described “pop-culture pirate,” creates remix videos of popular TV shows, re-cutting scenes from Mad Men and Sex and the City to reform the narratives, creating new feminist and queer stories out of the source materials.
Musicians like Greg Gillis, who creates remix music under the name Girl Talk, and writers like David Shields in his book Reality Hunger, are modern détourneurs. Molly practiced détournement every time she drew a gold circle on her forehead, explicitly referencing David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust phase, or stole vocal tricks from Britney Spears, copying the iconic “oh baby, baby” that opened Britney’s first very single “… Baby One More Time” for the bridge of her Cause Célèbrety album cut “Rewind, Repeat.”