Elvis: The Low Point?

After unsuccessfully resisting the urge to begin this post with a really bad Elvis Presley joke ( "What was Elvis' last hit?" - "The floor" (I don't have to explain that, do I?) ) I decided I should be charitable and try to address Elvis' impact on culture. Ironically, the textbook I use for my mass media classes identifies Elvis' appearence on Ed Sullivan as the high point of "low" culture. You've probably heard the "high" and "low" labels before but the labels are pretty transparent - "high" means museums, dance recitals, symphonies , Shakespearean plays - culture with a capital "C" - while "low" means professional wrestling, pop music, reality TV - culture for the so-called masses. This model held up pretty well when there was a vast socio-economic gap between the "high" and "low" classes, but it doesn't carry as much weight with the advent of the dominant middle class. Most of us are trapped in the morass of "middle" America, the suburban stew of credit cards, college loans and adjustable rate mortgages.

I certainly would never label Elvis Presley as "low" culture, mainly because I've always felt that any successful artist needs recognition in the marketplace to be respected; from my point of view, that makes Elvis' transition from a Mississippi shack to a Memphis mansion more significant than Michelangelo fawning for the Pope so he could finish the Sistine Chapel. Presley's stage persona appealed to wholesome white kids in the 50s because he was the personification of "race" music - a white man with a black voice.

The mushrooming middle class ( its growth fueled by the plethora of consumer products and the American postwar economy) adapted Elvis. They watched him grow from the skinny kid who just happened to cut "That's Alright" on the flip side of a record he was making for his Mama at Sun Records to a relentless performer enthroned in that mecca of middle class dreams - Las Vegas. Presley's life mirrored their experiences - he got drafted, he got married, he settled down with children, he got divorced, he dabbled with alcohol and drugs - reinforcing their shared identity.

When the crowd gathered at Graceland earlier this month to celebrate Elvis Presley's 75th birthday, they weren't concerned with "high" or "low" culture. Instead, they were mourning the death of a true middle class icon, the first man to bring the sound of the ghetto to Levittown.