Mathias Haeussler's Inventing Elvis. An American Icon in a Cold War World adds to the voluminous Presley literature a fresh, concise account of Presley's career as a shapeshifting icon of postwar American pop modernity. Viewing Presley's public persona as both a reflection of and challenge to ‘some of the most central myths at the heart of American identity construction after 1945’ (p. 7), Haeussler examines the star's symbolic role in the contemporary cultural landscape both within the US and across the globe. From an impressive body of research, he deftly weaves together a wealth of primary (published and unpublished) sources with relevant secondary literature to present a portrait of Presley's unfolding ‘invention’ that illustrates the reciprocal influence between the star himself and the social, economic, and political forces of his era.
The book's five chapters proceed chronologically, examining Presley's rise to fame in the US, his nearly simultaneous arrival on the world stage, his stint in the US Army, his recasting from rebellious, innovative musical entertainer to mainstream movie star, and his musical comeback in the late 1960s and 1970s, leading finally to his death and ‘transfiguration’. Haeussler illuminates an evolving matrix of cultural, social and political trends and values evinced both in Presley's projected image and in media representations and fan perceptions.
Initially tagged as a figure of youthful rebellion, opposed by the adult establishment yet lionised by a teenage public with newfound economic clout, Presley demonstrated early on a more complex, contradictory identity. His deferential manner, for example, was but one sign of the fundamental conservatism consistent with his background. The seeds of a career evolution driven by ‘management, producers, journalists, entrepreneurs, fans, and the wider public’ (p. 179) contained conflicting DNA. Haeussler shows how Presley's market success eventually subsumed his challenge to prevailing social delineations with regard to racial segregation, sexuality and class, moving the star from dangerous outsider to lauded exemplar of the American Dream – a rags-to-riches story embodying age-old American values and illustrated with the consumerist trappings of success.
This success was driven to global proportions by an international tide of young people. Examining Presley's reception around the world, Haeussler documents a remarkable similarity to the situation in the US, with establishment condemnation – positing Presley as a symbol of America's ‘alleged cultural imperialism and primitivism of its mass culture’ (p. 8) – countered by young people's enthusiasm, even behind the Iron Curtain, particularly among young people in the GDR. Decrying rock ’n’ roll as a reflection of ‘the anarchical conditions of capitalist society’, GDR leader Walter Ulbricht declared the imperative ‘to defend German culture against this “American way of life”’ (p. 79). In response, many young East Germans took to the streets demanding access to Presley's records and chanting ‘Long live Elvis Presley’, only to be met by the government's blunt suppression.
Presley's stint in the US Army, 17 months of which were spent in West Germany, helped to spotlight such overseas dissension for the American public. In an ironic twist, the New York Times, a staunch Presley critic, deplored the treatment of Elvis fans in the GDR. On the home front, Army service began Presley's ‘transformation from youthful rebel into a decent and patriotic all-American boy’ (p. 107). The fact that he sought no preferential treatment to avoid conscription was widely cited as a sign of his patriotism and egalitarianism. ‘I'll do what they ask me to do’ (p. 90), he told an interviewer for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. New York Herald Tribune columnist Hy Gardner wrote, ‘in what other nation in the world would such a rich and famous man serve … without trying to use influence to buy his way out? In my book this is American democracy at its best’ (p. 95).
If his Army service gained Presley mainstream social respectability, his 1960s career as a Hollywood movie star cemented his place as a mainstream entertainer and a symbol of lavish celebrity lifestyle. His own well-publicised appetites reflected the films’ images of ‘US-style affluence [and] consumerism’ (p. 123). Yet by the later 1960s, with a string of lucrative yet tepid movies to his credit, Presley had lost relevance in the pop music marketplace. Having for years largely refrained from live performing or recording any non-soundtrack songs, he had been a bystander to the rock revolution. Deciding to abandon movies and return to recording and performing ‘at a time of economic uncertainty and political upheaval’ in the US, Presley came to represent ‘the very incarnation of an idealized, bygone era of alleged prosperity and innocence that many Americans were desperate to recapture’ (p. 142).
Yet far from relying only on his 1950s catalogue, he expanded his musical output with such hits as ‘In the Ghetto’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’. And just as his repertory blended musical memories of the 1950s with contemporary fare, his public persona combined nostalgia with a ‘general trend toward the megalomaniac in the early 1970s entertainment industry’ (p. 154), his Las Vegas shows complemented by concerts in sports arenas and stadiums. The grandiosity was seized on by European and UK publications as evidence that Presley had become a ‘mere commodity’ (p. 170) as Der Spiegel put it. He was ‘a strange archaic figure … the last surviving dinosaur’, reported the UK's New Musical Express, ‘whose rampages through Las Vegas hotel lounges were entertaining spectacles, social curiosities, but hardly works of art’ (pp. 170–171).
And yet he remained a charismatic, larger-than-life showman idolised by younger glam rock stars such as David Bowie, a contradictory figure reflecting ‘the confused public and cultural mood of the mid-1970s United States’ (p. 157). In what Tom Wolfe dubbed ‘the “Me” Decade’, Presley gradually lost his way against what Haeussler calls a ‘wider cultural background of solipsism and dislocation’ (p. 158). In his sad decline and early death Presley inhabited a final public allegory: the dark side of the American Dream. In his insightful survey of Presley's career in a Cold War world, Haeussler has given us a valuable compact history of two tumultuous decades seen through the lens of a pop star who, as Greil Marcus (Reference Marcus2008, p. 120) put it in Mystery Train, ‘brooks no real comparisons’. Highly recommended reading.
