DON'T CALL ME TOMORROW, MY NAME IS TODAY. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE LOSIN'? TRY TO DRIVE ME AWAY.
culture
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contents I can't remember whether I had heard (or heard of) EP before that moment, but it was the first time I had seen him. I was jolted from head to toe. I had a "thrill feeling" in my chest. Tears came to my eyes. I was mesmerized, flabbergasted, and astounded. This was something else! Something entirely new. EP seemed both innocent and dangerous at the same time. I don't fully understand what he represented to me. His persona in 1956 was, in my mind, somehow linked with that of James Dean (who had died in a car crash just before EP hit big) and with the Marlon Brando portrayal of "Stanley Kowalski" in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1952?). EP himself stressed the James Dean connection. Those were sweet days for me, the mid-'50s. (Also bitter from time to time.) Well, anyway, life went on. EP eventually faded into the movies, although he continued to record good R 'n' R songs. Some of his movies were not bad, but most of them were really bad (in the bad sense). Then he made his "big show" singing-performing come-back beginning in 1968. I was still interested – but not very interested – in him during the period from 1968 to 1977. I had gone in my own direction (various directions). When he died in 1977, I was sorry to hear it, but I was not devastated. I continued to feel that EP – the young and dangerous EP – had touched my life in some significant way, had somehow encouraged me to move in a "radical," anti-establishment direction, but his death did not stop me in my tracks or anything like that. In the late '80s and early '90s, when I began my own musical "come-back," I regained a deep and mysterious feeling and appreciation for EP, his music, and his persona. So it goes. EP was 42 when
he died. His mother, Gladys, who he loved in the way that a "momma's
boy" loves his momma (which, also, I sadly understand),
was also 42 when she died (in 1957 or 1958). Strange fact.
New York Times: Posted March 30, 2003 An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset By SUSAN FALUDI On the eve of the Iraqi invasion, the president's advisers were working hard to embed George W. Bush inside the script of the American Western. Rejecting the widespread European frustration with Mr. Bush's Lone Ranger act, Vice President Dick Cheney used his "Meet the Press" appearance to make clear that the president is "a cowboy" who "cuts to the chase." Mr. Bush's blunt talk, the vice president told Tim Russert, is "exactly what the circumstances require." The president has done his part. For some time now, Mr. Bush has been obliging, dutifully working his way through the Western cliché checklist: "smoke 'em out of their holes"; "hunt 'em down"; "go it alone"; "wanted: dead or alive." The image being invoked by the president and his posse has deep roots in the American soil. But if Mr. Bush's cowpoke credentials seem to be all simple syntax and bodacious belt buckle, his policies actually flout the cowboy charter. Teddy Roosevelt, in "The Cattle Country of the Far West," called cowboys "quiet, rather self-contained men." The president's actions have violated the basic terms of the American Western romance and, thereby, the terms by which we call ourselves Americans. He's declared war on a foundational national myth. It's worth recalling that the cowboy of the myth wasn't trigger happy and he wasn't a dominator. He carried a gun to protect himself and his cattle — cattle that didn't even belong to him. His mission was their safe passage, and by extension, the safe passage of the civilizing society to follow. And his honor was grounded on his civilized refusal to fire first. "Didn't I tell you he'd not shoot?" says a spectator to a gun fight that didn't happen in "The Virginian," Owen Wister's 1902 novel. "He's a brave man," he adds. "It's not a brave man that's dangerous. It's the cowards that scare me." "The Virginian" is the urtext of the cowboy myth. Its protagonist, like Wister and Wister's old Harvard classmate Teddy Roosevelt, was a transplanted Easterner whose manhood was fashioned in the West. "No man traveling through or living in the country need fear molestation from the cowboys," wrote Roosevelt. They "treat a stranger with the most whole-souled hospitality" and "what can almost be called a grave courtesy." Wister dedicated "The Virginian" to Teddy Roosevelt. Our 20th-century presidents have lived under the sway of its central ethic, and never more so than in the grave buildup to conflict. Understanding the necessity to at least appear to uphold the credo, no matter what the reality, William McKinley took advantage of the sinking of the Maine in Havana harbor, Franklin Roosevelt waited (some say intentionally) until our fleet was destroyed at Pearl Harbor, and Lyndon Johnson contrived the Tonkin Gulf "incident" before entering their respective wars. One cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan, or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and saying of himself, "Feel good" — as President Bush did before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed, the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear. Of course, American
identity has always contained competing models; even the original
frontiersman, the cowboy's immediate ancestor, had two faces.
He was either Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett — that is, either
the man who rode into the wilderness to build and nurture a society
called Booneville, or the man who ventured out only to collect
and count the pelts. In his time, Daniel Boone was the hero at
the heart of our myth, the Indian fighter turned homesteader,
the war-hating American archetype. As Richard Slotkin observed
in "Regeneration Through Violence," his history of
the American frontier, for this kind of man "solitary hunting
trips are, not ends in themselves, but means to a social end
. . . the ultimate creation of a better society." By contrast,
Davy Crockett was, as V. L. Parrington, the literary critic,
dubbed him, "a frontier wastrel," a rapacious aggressor
and "a huge Western joke." These two contesting ethics were neatly framed at the close of World War II in the debate over our future. Were we on the threshold of "the century of the common man," a phrase coined by Henry Wallace and represented by Ernie Pyle's homely soldiers? Or were we on the cusp of "the American Century," defined by Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc., as the nation's manifest right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit"? Luce's vision won the day. In this regard, President Bush's self-presentation culminates a progression long in the works. We've been on the way to becoming a different America for a while. A little more than a year ago, the old and vanishing American mythology of common-man virtue enjoyed an unexpected comeback — in the aftermath of 9/11. That antiquated ethic returned to infuse our romance with the sacrificial firefighters and police officers, and the average citizens martyred in our national tragedy. Its presence was palpable in the self-image of an ordinary embattled people rising to the occasion in countless ways, as if we were once more "out in some strange night caring for each other," as Ernie Pyle wrote of the G.I.'s he chronicled. Perhaps that is why so many Americans now feel even more painfully the loss of a myth that, in truth, has been on its sickbed for a generation. As the invasion of Iraq began, a lament could be heard across the political spectrum. A letter in The Times seemed typical: "The president was speaking and I realized that an old and dear friend of mine was gone." What Americans grieve for is not reality. We've carried out regime change before, whether on Chief Sitting Bull or Manuel Noriega. We've also waged elective wars, whether in the Dominican Republic or the Philippines. But to call it a myth is not to diminish its importance. Mythologies are essential to defining who we are and, more importantly, who we want to be. We caught a powerful glimpse of our myth's possibilities, just before its end. Sept. 11 gave us its final spark, like the bright flash that the sun shoots up before it sets for good. Susan Faludi is author of ``Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.'' ^TOP From Colin Powell dissing the French as cowards to Donald Rumsfeld raising his fists at the podium, the Bush Administration bristles with an almost cartoonish macho. It's a little like watching pro wrestling in a global arena. Why is this smackdown style acceptable to many Americans now? Bill Clinton has an explanation. "When people feel uncertain," he said after the Democratic Party's recent electoral rout, "they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right." This truism seems to resonate with human nature, but other crises have produced a very different response. Faced with the Great Depression, not to mention Pearl Harbor, Americans chose a President who seemed strong and right. It's a measure of how the nation has changed that when we were attacked this time we closed ranks behind a leader whose program leaves many with a sinking feeling. Polls show a similar ambivalence about the war, yet it hasn't led to a revolt against the Administration. Why are people willing to suspend their disbelief in Bush? Why are we drawn to the strong man who is wrong? The answer lies not in our stars but in our superstars. To understand how America has changed since 9/11, it's necessary to examine the attitudes that dominated movies and music before 9/11. The mindset of manly belligerence was already in place when the planes struck. In the horror that followed, we struggled for a way to respond--and we found it in the icon of neo-macho man. Not so long ago, you couldn't say "macho man" without thinking of the Village People. Hypermasculinity was so thoroughly discredited that it seemed fit for camp. Now it's back, in earnest. But this revival was no bolt from the blue. The neo-macho hero has a history. He sprang from the reaction to feminism that began in the 1980s and advanced in the '90s, even as the empowerment of women became a tenet of Democratic politics. As women rose, so did male anxiety, and in this edgy climate a new archetype appeared in pop culture: the sexual avenger. His rage often focused on personal betrayal, but implicit in his tirades was a sense of the world turned upside down. By 1990 the revolt against feminism
was a hip commodity. Shock-jocks like Howard Stern and Don Imus
dominated drive-time radio, misogynistic comics like Sam Kinison
and Andrew Dice Clay were late-night TV sensations, rock marauders
spat variations on Axl Rose's final solution for bitchy women:
"Burn the witch." Meanwhile, at the multiplex the sexually
cornered male, embodied by Michael Douglas in a series of films
from Fatal Attraction (1987) to Disclosure (1994), was the new
Dirty Harry. |
The
first time I saw Elvis on TV was on the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey
Show in March 1956. I remember the moment very well. We were
living at 17 Passaic Street in Paterson, New Jersey. I was 17
years old. I was in the living room watching the Dorsey show
(big band swing and pop music, production dance numbers Broadway
style, etc.). At a certain point in the show, Tommy Dorsey announced,
"Ladies and gentlemen – Elvis Presley!" The "stage"
went dark and EP, dressed (I think) in grayish jacket, dark pants,
dark (black) shirt, and white tie, stepped into the spotlight
(where his three-piece backup combo – guitar, bass, and
drums – was already set up – there might have been
a piano player too). EP had a guitar of his own strapped on.
The camera zoomed in close up. EP had a longish, cowboy style
hairdo with prominent sideburns. His hair looked blondish and
glistened with hair oil (vaseline?). He looked directly into
the camera in a rather challenging and intimidating way, smiled,
curled his lip in a kind of combination sneer and smile, his
eyes twinkled. The guitar player (Scotty Moore) played a startup
chord, and EP began, "Well, since my baby left me (boom-boom
from the drummer), I found a new place to dwell (another boom-boom),
it's down at the eh-end of Lonely Street, it's (thtoom, thtoom,
thtoom from the bassist) Heartbreak Hotel . . . . " A mixture
of blues, country, honky-tonk . . . I didn't know what. He looked
and sounded and moved so "bad" (in the good sense)!
All materials by Jim Culleny copyright 2003 ][ contact: info@noutopia.com