ABSTRACT
Later, calling a man a queen becomes the basis of verbal wordplay in a dressing room scene. Ringo Starr sits under a hairdryer wearing a grenadier’s hat and reading the women’s magazine Queen as if this were perfecdy normal-thus creating a surreal scene in which queemess slips in. Lennon observes, “Hey, he’s reading the Queen!” Lennon makes his meaning even more clear by adding, “That’s an ‘in’ joke, you know.” In another scene, Lennon plays the royal herself. In a queenly falsetto he takes scissors to a measuring tape held by their tailor and announces, “I now declare this bridge [snip] open.” He overtly takes on the mande of the queen to play with the image, to project his role as a barrier-breaker and humorist and to rebel against his manager Norm’s straight (laced) authority.
