ABSTRACT
Fill in the gap: “I read the news today …”; “When you’re with me…”; “… Only if I had you”; “… this must be love.” “Oh boy!”—the exclamation that completes each lyric line—sparks off a series of cultural associations, many of which can be productively connected with the project of this collection. On an immediate level, it points to a sense that something is awry, out of place, not where it should be. It also, more specifically, belongs to that stereotyping of (U.S.) popular culture, perhaps slightly outmoded, seen in nostalgic representations such as American Graffiti (dir. George Lucas, 1973) and Grease (dir. Randall Kleiser, 1978). Although its usage can be traced back at least as far as 1917 (with the premiere of Jerome Kern’s successful musical Oh Boy! 1 ), it has become cemented to the 1950s in the popular imagination. Indeed, it denotes a use of language connected more resolutely today with the conservatism of the 1950s than to the transgressive potential of that historical moment when youth culture first erupted into the mainstream. And yet, despite its resolutely outmoded tone, the expression’s history points as much to a transgression—as expletive, exclamation, a kind of verbal spasm—as it does to clean-cut white America. Probably the most famous musical example was the song “Oh Boy!,” released by Buddy Holly and the Crickets in 1957. It was also famously used as a refrain throughout the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” ten years later. In these and other examples, “Oh boy!” points to a taxonomy of bodily states (surprise, titillation, enervation, anxiety, disgust) which not only outstrip the expressive potential of language but also exceed the subject’s capacity for self-articulation. In relation to the present volume, the effect of this expletive—“Oh boy!”—is to hint not only at an ironic commentary on the gendered ideologies grounded in that historical moment, but also its continued implications within contemporary popular culture.
