Scream

Abstract: Commenting on Beatlemania, Barbara Ehrenreich observed that it may have been the first musical act to have been driven from the performance stage by its fans. She is thinking here of the deafening screaming that greeted the live performances of the Beatles, but also many musical acts of the era. What are we to make of this scream, and more specifically, what does it have to do with the figure of the girl, according to many participants the essential agent of the scream? To approach such a question, the article embarks on a traversal of a heterogenous and intertextual field including film, painting, literature, theory in an effort to weave the sense of sound at play in the scream. This traversal culminates in a consideration of the “scream queen,” and “final girl.” where a parallel is suggested between music drowned out, and a psychopath vanquished that broaches the eschatological question increasingly pertinent as we pandemical survivors begin to entertain what world is possible in the new abnormal. If not the scream/girl what sonic events herald it?