This archive report was first published on 13 August 2019.
‘Yellow Submarine’ & Me ¶
As a parent to a 4-year-old, I've learned to surrender to the routines and rituals that govern my child's day. For my son, Max, that means always letting him be the one who gets to push the elevator button in the morning, and keeping the chicken nuggets from ever making contact with the mac and cheese on his dinner plate. And when he wants some recreational screen time, it means allowing him to see the only thing he's wanted to watch for the past several months: ‘Yellow Submarine’.
Published in 1968, this animated musical movie inspired by the Beatles has become Max's go-to viewing material. I'm not sure how it overtook TV offerings like ‘PAW Patrol’ or ‘Thomas & Friends’ in his imagination, but now, twice a day, he and I sit on our couch and watch hand-drawn versions of the Fab Four set off in their comically elaborate watercraft, sing their beloved songs and rescue Pepperland from the music-hating Blue Meanies.
As I watch ‘Yellow Submarine’ with Max, I'm struck by how the film's intricate details and clever lines continue to delight me in new ways. With every viewing, I seem to find a new sight gag, a pun or a clever line reading that I hadn't picked up on before. The film is endlessly intricate, like an illuminated manuscript or a really good ‘Simpsons’ episode.
For Max, ‘Yellow Submarine’ is a malleable collection of smaller narratives: In one 10-minute span, it's a madcap romp through a boardinghouse of undefined dimensions, populated by wild creatures; in another, it's an action movie where the Beatles recover stolen musical instruments from a bandstand surrounded by sleeping Blue Meanies. Every genre and type of story that my son can imagine seems to be contained within its generous boundaries.
As we watch together, the movie becomes a lightning-round test of whether I can explain to Max all the sights and sounds that he doesn't quite understand. By their very nature, the Beatles already appeal to a child's affinity for groups and teams with distinctly defined members, and ‘Yellow Submarine’ amplifies this effect by flattening out the foursome and reducing them to just a couple of key personality traits: Ringo is forlorn and goofy; John is intellectual and wry; Paul is vainglorious and charming; George is mystical and arcane.
