In celebrating Elvis' 75th birthday, sure we're celebrating an icon. But icons like Elvis are actually mirrors. Reflecting what each of us wants to see in them. That's why they survive as long as we survive...!
When The King exploded on the scene in the mid-50s, it was still the big band/crooner era. To the kids, he reflected their suppressed feelings for something bigger and badder than their parents' world...
When the parents encountered him (and his hips), he reflected their inherited fears that kids-aren't-like-they-used-to-be-when-I-was-their-age...
When African-Americans found him, he reflected exactly how they'd been singing and swinging for years, but without the white world paying any attention....
When I discovered him, I was too young to be a parent but too old to be a kid. So for me and millions of others, Elvis reflected a scary doorway I could cross to find for myself there really was a different way of understanding America. Different than what I had learned all these years from MGM, Bing Crosby and Doris Day...
As it turned out, Elvis was kinda good for all of us!
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Well put!
ReplyDeleteIt is funny to look back now and see what a "stir" Elvis caused....compared to what is happening in today's society, Elivs was so mild. Very strange world we are living in, to say the least.
Right...he was outrageous then but now "mild" as each new celebrity tries to outshock the last (eg. Lady GaGa). Seems as if we need to keep shocking ourselves to find something in life to keep us interested. That's the road to oblivion...
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