alexxkay: (Bar Harbor)
Alexx Kay ([personal profile] alexxkay) wrote2015-08-08 08:42 pm
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Cultural history question: screaming fangirls?

So, I was watching a cartoon from 1944, Swooner Crooner (link is a brief excerpt), and it featured a trope I didn't think went back that far: that of fangirls screaming and fainting at the presence of famous musicians. I was familiar with it from The Beatles and Elvis, but had no idea it went back to "Frankie" Sinatra and his generation. So how far back *does* it go?

(One could argue for the Bacchantes being the prototype, but I'm looking for more early 20th / late 19th century examples.)

[identity profile] negothick.livejournal.com 2015-08-09 04:30 pm (UTC)(link)
The fainting trope appears in this, from a biography of Lord Byron: "At a ball in London . . . a woman fainted at the sight of him; another warned her daughter, ''Don't look at him, he is dangerous to look at.'' One-time lovers, like the louche Mrs. Wherry, cherished fetishistic mementos of his person -- including black curling locks of his pubic hair -- like magic talismans."
https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/reviews/970413.13castlet.html