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This is a newspaper article from U.S. News and World Report from February 24, 1964. It is an interview with a leading educator and sociologist, David Riesman.
Q: Professor Riesman, is the furor over the singers who call themselves the Beatles a sign that American youngsters are going crazy?
A: No crazier than hitherto. In the first place, any large city will turn out a minority capable of nearly anything. One mustn't exaggerate and attribute to the vast majority the reactions of the minority.
Q: Would you say that the fad for the Beatles is a mania, then?
A: It's a form of protest against the adult world. Those youngesters are hoping ot believe in something or respond to something new that they have found for themselves.
Q: Will it last very long?
A: No. No craze does. The way to describe a craze or fad is to point out that it starts out as a minority movement. It is self fulfilling, self nourishing for the minority that suports it, and every members of the minority is supposed to respond in the same way. As soon as the majority takes it up, it can no longer be a fad. Some new fad has to come along for a new minority.
Q: Does the fact that the Beatles are British have anything to do with the craze over them?
A: The relevance, I guess, of these young men being British is that it is perhaps more difficult to cultivate fads within America because they're so quickly promoted by TV, records, and other mass media. So, we have to use other English-speaking lands in order to have a place for the fads to grow.
Q: How would you compare the current Beatle craze with the Elvis Presley craze of a few years back?
A: Compared to the Elvis Presley craze, it is a very minor one. Presley created a definitely "antiparent" outlook. His music-and he, himself appeared somewhat insolent, slightly hoodlum.
Presley was a much more gifted musician than adults gave him credit for, but he antagonized the older generation. And that gave the younger generation something to hang on to, which the usually permissive parents openly disliked.
In this respect, my impression is that the Beatles have none of this somewhat sinister quality that Presley represented for adults. They don't have the quasi-sexual, quasi-aggressive note that was present in Presey.
Q: What about the shaggy-dog hairstyle of the Beatles?
A: Well, they are British, and the British are accepted as being eccentric, anyway.
So the hair styles don't have the same meaning as they would have if the Beatles were unkempt in the American "beat" style. Actually, these young men, although unkempt in one way, are very "kempt" in another.
Q: Does that account for their popularity with teen-age girls?
A: I don't know. Presley also had this tremendous impact on girls. But he had a male audience, too, with his swagger his aggressiveness and his defiance. But it's very safe for a young girl to admire these Englishmen. Then, too, there are four of them, and there's safety in numbers.
Q: So you would just let the craze run its course--
A: What else? I don't see it as at all dangerous. I think, actually that adult concer, worry monitoring, and so on, is probably the best fuel to add to the fire.
If I were the Beatles press agent,I'd work to have ministers and professor and press all saying "Oh dear! Oh dear!"
It just shows how the knowledge of teenage girls by middle-aged, middle-class male educators was virtually nil. I'd love to have known what he thought of the Beatles in 1970 after finding out these non quasi-sexual boys shagged themselves senseless across America, lol.
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ReplyDelete"Any large city will turn out a minority capable of nearly anything. One mustn't exaggerate and attribute to the vast majority the reactions of the minority." Really now? I didnt know that. 45% of U.S. homes were tuned in to Sullivan that night. 73 million people. And that constitutes as a "reaction of the minority" ?! I swear, one of life's simple pleasures is watching pseudo-intellectuals like this guy dribble on and on about a topic they know nothing of.
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