Hey babe, your hair's all right
Sep. 16th, 2009 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotSomething I wrote several days ago that I don't want to get lost:
The moptop haircuts were a Brian Epstein balancing act that the Beatles pulled off brilliantly, making themselves simultaneously dangerous and not dangerous at once, hence a huge audience. But the danger is something that's hard to retrieve historically, especially if you're telling the narrative through pictures, and the meaning of the hairstyle belonged to a moment, and hair now doesn't mean what hair meant then.
Actually, haven't read the histories and don't really know the story of the haircuts that well, don't know if Epstein had a role or not, though I'd be surprised if he didn't. What I'd want to bring back about the haircuts was that they were like Britney's headshave in that they didn't compute. They weren't girls cuts exactly but they threatened or promised to go in that direction. They weren't delinquents and criminals cuts exactly, but they threatened or promised to go in that direction. Etc. What they helped to do in 1964 was to rip up and fuck up my understanding of the world. "Fun band" might have been someone's experience of the Beatles, but it wasn't mine.
The moptop haircuts were a Brian Epstein balancing act that the Beatles pulled off brilliantly, making themselves simultaneously dangerous and not dangerous at once, hence a huge audience. But the danger is something that's hard to retrieve historically, especially if you're telling the narrative through pictures, and the meaning of the hairstyle belonged to a moment, and hair now doesn't mean what hair meant then.
Actually, haven't read the histories and don't really know the story of the haircuts that well, don't know if Epstein had a role or not, though I'd be surprised if he didn't. What I'd want to bring back about the haircuts was that they were like Britney's headshave in that they didn't compute. They weren't girls cuts exactly but they threatened or promised to go in that direction. They weren't delinquents and criminals cuts exactly, but they threatened or promised to go in that direction. Etc. What they helped to do in 1964 was to rip up and fuck up my understanding of the world. "Fun band" might have been someone's experience of the Beatles, but it wasn't mine.
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Date: 2009-09-16 04:03 pm (UTC)haircut in question reaches mia farrow in 67, just in time for rosemary's baby, a pathological -- and very belated -- allegory of the thing you are outlining...