Elvis - A Lighted Candle

[Rainbow Light]

Elvis Presley phenomenon
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Elvis impersonators.Elvis Presley the singer and rock legend continues on in a lasting legacy that resulted from a widespread Elvis Phenomenon of fans, legends, and their critics.

There are over 500 Elvis fan clubs in the United States of America (US) and they exist in every state except three: North Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming. According to the American Demographics magazine, 84% of the US people say that their lives have been touched by Elvis Presley in some way, 70% have watched a movie starring Presley, 44% have danced to one of his songs, 31% have bought an Elvis record, CD or video, 10% have visited Graceland, 9% have bought Elvis memorabilia, 9% have read a book about Presley, and 5% have seen the singer in concert.[1]

The fans
Music critic and Presley biographer Dave Marsh says about the singer's fans: "There are people in places that count in the world, and people in places that don't. He is the son of the people who don't count, and their shining star. That's what makes him unique and what people still respond to."[2] A collection of essays entitled The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media critically examines what distinguishes fans from general audiences and explores the relationship between fans and their adored media products. Part of this volume is the article, "Fandom and Gender" which includes an examination of female fantasies of Presley.[3] To many of his female fans, the songs Presley sang "were secondary to his personality and the way he performed them," evoking the well-known emotional responses.[4] In her autobiographical article, "Sexing Elvis" (1984), Sue Wise even describes "how she came to terms with her lesbianism through a close identification with the feminine side of the King."[5]

"Elvis's 'effect' on young girls threatened those men who assumed that young girls needed to be protected both from sex in general and from its expression in questionable characters like Elvis in particular."[6] However, there were not only female fantasies directed at the star. According to Reina Lewis and Peter Horne, "prints of Elvis Presley appeared to speak directly to the gay community."[7]

"Perhaps it is an error of enthusiasm to freight Elvis Presley with too heavy a historical load", as, according to a public opinion poll among high school students in 1957, Pat Boone was "the nearly two-to-one favorite over Elvis Presley among boys and preferred almost three-to-one by girls"; yet, Presley "clearly outshines the other performers in Rock and Roll's first pantheon."[8] This poll should, however, be taken with a grain of salt as Presley had significantly more record sales than Pat Boone.


[edit] Commercial impact
There can be no doubt that it was primarily "the recording industry, which made Elvis Presley a mythical media demigod."[9] "An excessive enterprise, empire and entity, Elvis appears on memorabilia and merchandise, in roadside relics and Graceland's gift shops; at fast food chains, in front yard flea markets and backyard shrines; World-Wide Web sites in cyberspace and sporting events; at parties and parades or as part of promotions, protests and pranks."[10] On August 16, thousands of die-hard Elvis fans travel to Graceland every year in order to celebrate the anniversary of Presley's death.[11] The ritualization of the Elvis cult is also manifested most prominently through the many live performances by Elvis impersonators.[12] According to Marjorie Garber, "The phenomenon of 'Elvis impersonators,' which began long before the singer's death, is one of the most startling effects of the Elvis cult."[13]


Cooking with Elvis, Gaia TeatroWhat is more, David S. Wall has shown that many authors who are writing books and articles on Presley are part of a "worldwide Elvis industry" which has a tendency towards supporting primarily a favorable view of the star. The content of the majority of these publications can be characterized as based on gossip about gossip, only occasionally providing some new surprising details. There are not many critical, unfavorable publications on Elvis's life. An example is Albert Goldman's controversial biography, Elvis (1981), in which the author unfavorably discusses the star's weight problems, his performing costumes and his sex life. Such books are frequently disparaged and harshly attacked by Elvis fan groups. Professor Wall has pointed out that one of the strategies of the various fan clubs and appreciation societies to which the bulk of Elvis fans belong is " 'community policing' to achieve governance at a distance... These organisations have, through their membership magazines, activities and sales operations, created a powerful moral majority" endeavoring to suppress most critical voices. "With a combined membership of millions, the fans form a formidable constituency of consumer power."[14]

According to David Lowenthal, "Everything from Disneyland to the Holocaust Museum, ... from Elvis memorabilia to the Elgin Marbles bears the marks of the cult of heritage."[15] "When it's an exhibition of Elvis memorabilia," even Marilyn Houlberg, professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, "puts on the campy art-world hat and becomes a priestess of the Elvis cult."[16] A collector in Newark, New Jersey "paid nearly a billion dollars for a messy nap-kin said to have been used once by Elvis Presley."[17] Paul A. Cantor goes as far as to call the American Presley cult "a postmodern simulacrum of the German Hitler cult."[18] Some fan groups even refuse to accept the fact of the star's death in 1977 (see the "Elvis lives?" section of this article).

In his book Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend (1996), Gilbert Rodman traces in detail Presley's manifestations in contemporary popular and not-so-popular culture. He draws upon the many Elvis "sightings," from Elvis's appearances at the heart of the 1992 presidential campaign to the debate over his worthiness as a subject for a postage stamp, and from Elvis's central role in furious debates about racism and the appropriation of African-American music to the world of Elvis impersonators and the importance of Graceland as a place of pilgrimage for fans and followers. The author further points out that Presley has become inseparable from many of the defining myths of US culture, enmeshed with the American Dream and the very idea of the "United States," caught up in debates about race, gender, and sexuality, and in the wars over what constitutes a national culture.

[MaryInTheMorning]

Thank you so much for posting this for us dear Sue! It was very interesting to read!

[Rainbow Light]

You're welcome, dear Mari! Glad you found the article of interest too!