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"And I'm one of the few people I ever met who saw Elvis's first television appearance. No, I don't mean The Ed Sullivan Show. Everyone knows about that and Sullivan's insistence that Elvis not wiggle his hips when he sang, that the camera focus on Elvis only from the waist up. The incident is a perfect example of the cultural and sexual repression that Elvis overcame. What I'm talking about is an earlier television show. When Jackie Gleason went on summer hiatus, the Dorsey brothers filled in for him, and it was the Dorsey brothers who introduced Elvis, gyrating hips and all, to viewers, most of them unfamiliar with rock and roll and most of them burdened by conventions."
"Wigglin' his ass. Why, I never saw any thin' like. "Ought to be a law. The man's no better than a pervert." "And look at that long hair. What is he? A man or a woman? Every time he jerks his head back and forth, his hair falls into his eyes. Them sideburns is butt ugly."
" Now he's wigglin' his…"
"Pa, you know what they call him, don't you? Elvis, the Pelvis."
"Shut your pie hole, Fred. Go to your room and study. I don't want you watchin' this junk."
"It's difficult to overstate the importance of Elvis's appearance with the Dorsey brothers. Those who hadn't seen his performance were told about it and enhanced it with their own imagination. A phenomenon was about to – "
"Professor?"
"Please wait until the end of my lecture."
"But I just want to say, don't you think it's ironic that Elvis was introduced on television by musicians who seemed as outdated to Elvis's generation as Elvis seems to the Metallica generation?"
"Is that a question or a statement?"
"I was just thinking, maybe some day somebody'll offer a course on Metallica. (Har, har.)"
"Fred, enough is enough! It's three in the morning! I can't sleep with that noise you're making! How many times do I have to hear 'All Shook Up?' The neighbors will start complaining! There! I told you! That's probably one of them phoning right now!"
"Look at the sideburns Fred's trying to grow. They remind me of caterpillars."
"As bald as he is, that's the only place he can grow hair."
"Those blue suede shoes don't do anything for him, either. The next thing you know, he'll be taking guitar lessons."
"And boring us with concerts instead of lectures."
"Or making us read that book he's writing."
THE CORRUPTION OF A LEGEND Chapter Six The crucial demarcation in Elvis's career occurred in 1958 when he was drafted by the United States military and sent to Germany. To paraphrase a lyric from one of his best-known songs, that's when the downfall begins. The episode is rife with implications. Politically, the government has proven itself stronger than the rebel. Sexually, the sheering of Presley's magnificent ducktail-style hair symbolizes society's disapproval and conquest of his virility: a metaphorical emasculation. Two years of military indoctrination have their effect. Elvis's long-awaited return to society is shocking. The constant sneer with which he signaled to his young audience his disdain for authority has been replaced by an eager-to-please grin. His "Yes, sir, no, sir" ma
"He did it his way, all right. He became a tool of the Establishment." "Fred."
"The Jordinaires were shunted aside. Instead of a small, rhythm-and-blues section, he now had the equivalent of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."
"Fred."
"The songs lost all pretense of substance. That wretched remake of 'O, Solo Mio,' for example, which was called 'It's Now Or Never,' sounded so Muzak-sweet it's a wonder his audience didn't die from sugar shock."
"Fred, you haven't shut up since we started di
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I must have gotten carried away. Good gracious. What was I thinking? By the way, Mrs. Robinson, did you know that your husband Peter here is fucking my wife?"
"Thirty-three wretched movies."
("Word is our prof is getting a divorce.")
"Each more insipid than the previous ones. Increasingly, their only theme seems to be that its audience should take a vacation at Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Acapulco, Hawaii, or wherever the film is set, as if Elvis has become a travel agent or a chamber of commerce booster."
("Maybe his wife isn't an Elvis fan.")
"Las Vegas. That symbol of excess becomes synonymous with the decay within Elvis. His anti-Establishment zoot-suit appearance in the mid-fifties changes to a parody of bikers' leather after his return from the military and finally to sequined suits with capes that rival Liberace for ostentation. When Elvis reappears on television in 1968, he looks like the Vegas act that he'll soon become."
("I hear the Today show is coming to do a story about him.")
"Nine years later, he'll die on the toilet."
"Professor Hopkins, what made you think that Elvis would be a proper subject for a university course?"
"If you look closely at him, he represents America."
"What, professor? I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Bryant, I…Can you hear me?"
"Yes, the remote transmission is coming through clearly."
" Bryant, you take a boy who was raised to sing Gospel music at his Pentecostal church, a boy who worshiped his mother, a boy who from all accounts ought to have blended with the Establishment but who instead chose to fight the Establishment. He was only nineteen when he made his first recording for Sam Phillips in Memphis, and it's hard to imagine that someone so young could have been such a significant force in cultural change. By making black music popular, he promoted racial understanding and was easily as important in the Civil Rights movement as Martin Luther King, Jr."
"Professor Hopkins."
"In terms of the sexual revolution, he – "
"Professor Hopkins, your remark about Elvis, the Civil Rights movement, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Don't you think that's somewhat overstated?"
"Nothing about Elvis can be overstated. For a brief moment in the middle of this century, he changed this century."
"Professor Hopkins."
"But the messenger became the victim. Society fought back. Society defeated him. Just as Elvis symbolized the rebel, so he eventually symbolized the vindictiveness and viciousness of American society. When he died on the toilet, a drug addict, a glutton, bloated, wearing diapers, he delivered his final message by showing how destructive capitalism is."
"Professor Hopkins."
"In effect, he'd already been dead a long while, and Graceland, that garish monument to decadence, was the mausoleum for his walking corpse."
"Professor Hopkins, I'm afraid we're almost out of time."
"I wore this sequined suit and cape today because in Elvis's perverted image there must be retribution. You see this revolver."