A few weeks ago, I had a chance to watch the Elvis movie which came out earlier this year. It was definitely worthwhile and very well done, and brought a fresh perspective and new light to the Elvis story.
I can still remember grown-ups talking about “Elvis the Pelvis” in scandalized voices when I was a child in the late 1950s, but my excitement about rock music and its stars didn’t really get going until the Beatles arrived in early 1964. Even though I remember listening to the pop hits of the late 1950s and early 1960s as a boy, on my first transistor radio in bed late at night, Elvis and his origins story were a few years before my time.
By the time of his Vegas residency years in the 1970s, Elvis had also become somewhat passe’ compared to all the newer music and musicians of the 1960s – most of the young people I knew weren’t paying much attention to him anymore. Yet everyone knows that Elvis was the King of rock and roll, and a singing movie star too (I do remember watching his movies). So what did those of us who were too young to be his fans miss?
This very good biopic does a nice job filling in the historical gaps, and providing a convincing depiction of the power of Presley and his music, his grip on his audience and especially his magnetic effect on the adoring girls and young women of the 1950s. In a world where Elvis impersonators are a joke, or a hackneyed Vegas lounge act, and a dime a dozen as party entertainers, I’m sure many people feared that Austin Butler, who portrays Presley both on and off stage, and actually performs some of his songs, would just be the latest in a long series of forgettable copies of the master.
But I don’t think he is at all. Butler is a very good character actor, who looks the part, and who is as convincing as Elvis the poor young boy, just looking for recognition and a lucky break as a country singer, as Elvis the electrifying singer and on-stage performer, driving the girls mad with the suggestion of those forbidden desires that so offended the repressed and uptight sexual norms of the 1950s.
In an early scene of the unknown Presley first breaking through a sleepy Country and Western audience’s torpor, and nearly starting a riot among the young girls who were present, Butler (as Presley) looks as surprised and delighted as anyone by the effect his performance is having on the audience. It’s an exciting and very illuminating scene, beautifully acted, that sets the table for what is about to happen to Presley's career and his life.
There are also a number of interesting social and political aspects of the Presley phenomenon, and its ultimate effect on the growth of rock and roll as well as American culture, that I didn’t really know, and was very interested to learn more about. It’s well known, for example, that rock and roll, as a form of music primarily rooted in black music and performers, didn’t break out to wider acceptance until white artists and audiences began taking to it.
This was definitely true, for Presley as well as other early rock artists. As the movie shows, Presley personally knew, liked and played with black musicians, and was heavily influenced by their songs and style, but ultimately became vastly more successful than most of the black players ever did because he was white. So was this just cultural expropriation?
Perhaps it was, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the conservative resistance to Presley, his musical style and his sexually suggestive performance moves was rooted in racism, at the time that the civil rights movement was just getting started in the South. The movie highlights the extent to which the authorities controlling venues and the success of Presley’s career were afraid of and despised the growing popularity of black music, and its increasing traction with white kids. And they made Presley pay for it, by reviling him in the press and closing off venues to his shows.
The most shocking result of this racist backlash was Presley’s forced enlistment and two year stint in the U.S. Army just as his career was taking off, which his manager and promoter Colonel Parker (portrayed convincingly by Tom Hanks, very much against type) devised as a way to “cleanse” Presley of his reputation as an “un-American” friend of blacks (and thereby probably also a Communist, according to the twisted political logic of the early Cold War era).
The movie as a whole, in fact, focuses heavily on the cynical role Colonel Parker played in creating the Presley phenomenon and hysteria, while also corruptly benefiting from it, and manipulating and deceiving Presley throughout most of his career. It’s a sad tale, but one which is inseparable from the larger story of Presley’s own successes, artistic genius and setbacks.
As far as I know, there’s never been another cinematic treatment of the story of the King’s rise and fall, and his indispensable role at the dawn of the rock and roll era. This is a very entertaining and informative attempt, well-acted and nicely presented. There are too many years to cover, and too many events, to fully explore every detail of Presley’s decades-long life and career, but this film does a more than credible job of depicting and interpreting the man and the legend. Highly recommended.
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