Does Elvis Presley still matter?

[koganbot]

My editor, noting we were overtaking the 30th anniversary of Elvis's death, innocently asked, "Does Elvis still matter?" He got this gibberish in response from me.

A way that Elvis still matters. Hmmm. In the '60s, in my childhood and adolescence, he didn't matter to me at all, was passé--he suddenly reappeared as a recognized icon in the '70s--but then he had an impact on the '60s at one remove that I wouldn't have recognized, and it wasn't just that he'd been a key figure in rock 'n' roll, which of course led to rock, but that he had been a new category of rebel--modeled on Brando in the Wild One, for sure, but Brando was still playing something of The Lumpen Prole, With Inarticulate Poetry Inside. Wheras Elvis was *modern* flash. So not like one of the old wiseass Dead End Kids or like a young Jimmy Cagney on the make. He *was* on the make, but in a different way, one that I don't have words for really except to say what he was not: he was not a salt-of-the-earth type to be admired by the sort of people who admire folk music. He was not a black hipster or a white bohemian, even if he drew on some aspects of hipness. He definitely *was* a hood or a rock or a greaser (whatever the terminology of the day was, I'm not sure), but ultimately hoods and rocks and greasers (and burnouts and dirtbags and sk8ers and whatever the name is nowadays) are going to stay on their level, socioculturally, but Elvis was in motion. Flash and speed. And maybe he was just the new teenager--though he was a little older than his teens when he hit--but my feeling is that there was nowhere really to take his motion, though he seemed to be carrying a whole bunch of people with him. I'm feeling inarticulate, everything riding on the words "modern" and "motion" and "flash." Anyway, he was superseded by the Beatles, bright witty urban-class blokes, maybe from greaserdom like Elvis but eventually they ended up as bohemians and even, in a way, in the intelligentsia. And then there was rock and counterimpulses and whatever. (Continuing on with my great articulateness, aren't I?) Elvis was a lost soul, and there was no place for him. Which is why, oddly enough, I think he is of enduring relevance. Which is that I don't think he--his impulse, the Elvis impulse, whatever it is--has been absorbed into the culture. Which means that he never became anyone's model for the "future," never became part of "progress" or "the next stage" or anything. And so for me, he represents the idea of a cultural change that isn't part of the current cultural map, that doesn't come from bohemia or the intelligentsia but isn't beholden to any place on the social hierarchy, isn't working-class but isn't anything else either. I wrote in a Dylan piece I did for Paste last year: "Like Elvis before him, like Ashlee Simpson now, Dylan simply did not know his place--meaning both that he was uppity ('How much do I know / To talk out of turn / You might say that I'm young / You might say I'm unlearned') and that he was lost, that he *had* no place." Of course, I cribbed the phrase "He didn't know his place" from Greil Marcus, who'd used it about Elvis. (Btw, I think that Ashlee either ends up bewildered or content but with negligible cultural impact, a former minor celeb who's remembered by a few of us as having lyrically recounted her dilemmas with an unexpected poetic richness. Or maybe she keeps going, as a performing artist, and maybe the poetry even gets deeper and richer, though I'm not placing bets, but I think her strange role--mischievous but nice young girl with an unexpected moral undertow but who idolizes screwed-up angry Courtney Love, which sort of leaves Ashlee in a cultural no-man's-land--doesn't last.) So, anyway, Elvis matters to me as someone who never quite made it onto the map, therefore representing the possibility of new spaces on my cultural map. (Um, why? What? What am I saying with all these abstractions? I don't know.) In my book I wrote: "The drive towards academic diversity tends to run aground not on the question whether intellectuals can appreciate an Elvis, but on whether an Elvis can make it into the social group 'Intellectual'--while still remaining Elvis." Why did I pick Elvis? Well, obviously he was never part of the intelligentsia, and to me Elvis represents a cultural turnaround and topsy-turvyness that goes much deeper than "postmodernism" and "the collapse of the division between high and popular culture," but what is it that I value, why do I think he needs representation in 21st century life?

So poptimists, being my brain trust, maybe you can figure out what I'm trying to say.

Comments

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I think what you're saying about Elvis (and Ashlee) is a good description of why I like Kelly Clarkson so much. The Elvis thing has reappered on the cultural map with American Idol, I think, which can sometimes find those Lost Souls, those people who you don't begrudge their success. (This seems to me one of the big things Elvis was about; despite all his excess, he didn't not-deserve it, he just misused it.) Jack White is most certainly trying to tap into that energy too, as is, yeah, Courtney Love. The idea, to me, seems to be someone whose artistic pursuits lead not to a fuller expression of the self, but of the collective consciousness. It's the ability to follow your nose to something with mass appeal.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

(This is also interesting to me because one of the things I'm contemplating doing right now is a series of Lost Threads, bits of musical progress that were never followed up on. Elvis hits that pretty solidly.)

[koganbot]

Lost Threads is a tremendous idea!

[koganbot]

(I don't know if it's true or not to say that Ashlee idolized Courtney. Ashlee drew on Courtney's timbre in creating her own voice. And her attitude towards Courtney was obviously positive, in that - this was on her reality show on MTV - when told that Courtney had tried unsuccessfully to make out with Ryan (this is before Ashlee and Ryan were an item) Ashlee said, "I would have made out with her. I love her.")

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Significance of Courtney's role is that Ashlee has no other plausible (direct) models (that we know of), except the people whose names end up on her albums. Alanis and Beatles both seem far more indirect, if still formative for her, who knows (e.g., Dr. Demento and Calvin and Hobbes and the Simpsons probably had a bigger influence on my thinking than every teacher-that-I-called-teacher I've ever had combined), somehow.

Hm, there's probably a thin line between false/early starts with lasting but sorta oblique significance (Velvet Underground? NY Dolls? Uh...Alanis?) and people who are truly in a special sort of vaccuum. Disney's nice because they provide the vaccuum already, you just need to provide the content (which I guess is the hard part, because they have censors). American Idol is nice because their demographic is effectively "everybody." Might even put Max Martin in this category, because so few people follow him through his various sea changes -- like, lots of songs post-"Since U Been Gone" (or even post-Robyn, first Britney wave) sound like the standard, but then you look at the credits and...it's Max. Or another Cheiron guy, or some guy who worked with the Cheiron guy on his last production. (Maybe there were more copycats and they just fell through the cracks, just as I'm sure blatant Elvis copycats wouldn't have nearly the staying power of Elvis and would burn out pretty quickly.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm not allowed into the category "intellectual" because I can't spell "vacuum," which, ironically, puts me in one.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

maybe you say this in your book, but why require that elvis could still remain elvis while becoming 'an intellectual'? (you could be assuming two different things: one, that only certain people can make it into the group without - essentially? - changing, or two, that no one can.)


the other day my advisor (who is in her mid sixties) popped her head in my office and asked what record i was playing. she didn't recognize sly and the family when i handed her the box. not thinking very clearly i said that they were from her day (good reasons why not), and she said, no, ELVIS is my day.

[koganbot]

Sorry, you keep asking smart questions that I don't know how to answer quickly, and they get lost. A lot of this depends on what I'm thinking is crucial about "being Elvis" that I'd want to remain unchanged. Most certainly, once I bring him back from the dead and grant him a professorship, I would want him to take an interest in what his colleagues and students are thinking, and to be moved and affected by his surroundings. So it isn't "Oh noes, he is now reading Pynchon! How can he ever stay Elvis!" But in doing this I would want him to continue to embody gold lamé and girl ballads and sneering toughness and the urge to be a star and the urge to satirize the ridiculousness of stardom and toughness.

I realize that that's not much of an answer, my just heaving a few more symbols your way. So I'm being lame (rather than lamé).

Anyway, tomorrow's column mentions Elvis, though not in much detail.