Crying, Waiting, Hoping: The Beatles, Girl Culture, and the Melodramatic Mode

Abstract

In the 1960s, those famous throngs of Beatlemaniacs screamed in their seats and chased after the Fab Four in the streets. But the Beatles continue to appeal to many contemporary girls, whose fandom is still expressed in public via the Web. To theorize the Beatles’ lasting popularity among female youth, this chapter first considers the Beatles’ relationship to girl culture, especially in the context of the Ed Sullivan Show. The Beatles invoked girl-group discourse in their songs, speaking directly to girls; at the same time the band presented a comforting vision of brotherly intimacy, and they were also rebellious in this androgyny. The chapter next turns to a consideration of modern-day girl fans, exploring a couple of their YouTube channels. Consistently, these girls (one from America, one from Germany) call upon the Beatles as a vehicle for addressing intimacy in relationships, mashing up songs and images as they “play” with the members of the band. In fact, re-envisioning John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s friendship outside its historical moment offers possibilities for queer re-workings of Beatle biographies. Such innovative play reveals how the Beatles’ appeals to girls in the 1960s inform the band’s relevance to this twenty-first-century moment.