Thread by @HeerJeet

1. This reminds me I have some thoughts on the pre-history of the mullet, the Beastie Boys, Dan Clowes, the way naming something makes it visible and changes our sense of the past, Jack Kirby, etc.

https://twitter.com/AryehCW/status/1421983919600279552

2. Back in 1989, Daniel Clowes in Eightball #2 had a strip called "I Hate You Deeply" about various peeves, including "guys with short hair on top and long hair in back." There was no name for what Clowes was describing although it was becoming more pervasive: the mullet.

3. History records that the mullet as a term was first popularized, and perhaps even coined, by the Beastie Boys in 1994. But as the Clowes strip shows, mullets had pre-dated that -- and many readers testified that when they saw Clowes drawing it resonated with what they saw.

4. In popularizing the term "the mullet" the Beastie Boys made it visible, made it discussable, and altered not just the present but the past since we can now see the mullet in earlier eras, whereas before it was just a inchoate odd thing on corner of consciousness.

5. Now that "the mullet" is named we can find all sorts of precursors in history. In 1621 a Plymouth colonist encountered native named Samoset of the Abenaki: "He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all"

6. Various photos of Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, David Bowie from 1960s and 1970s now look like mullets avant la lettre. The thing existed before the name but the name helps us see the thing.

7. Some notes that might be useful for future mullet scholars. Basil Wolverton's drawings from 1930s and 1940s often feature what seem like proto-mullets.

8. And Jack Kirby's Angel (from Boys' Ranch, early 1950s) is edging towards a mullet.

9. I think is is key about how successful the term mullet has been, enough to overshadow original mocking use and also eclipse earlier stabs at taxonomy like "hockey hair"

https://twitter.com/ericbrownzzz/status/1421991889620946948