Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, & ImageIt doesn't matter how you remember him—rockabilly rebel, all-American boy, B-movie idol, patriotic G.I., or Las Vegas superstar. Elvis Presley is the most enduring image in American popular culture. This book explains why. Other authors have explored Elvis's life and music, but Erika Doss now examines his multifaceted image as the key to understanding the adulation that has survived his death. She has talked with fans and joined their clubs, studied their creations and made pilgrimages to Graceland, all to explore what these images mean to those who gaze upon them, make them, and collect them. In researching Elvis Culture, Doss discovered that the visual image of Elvis endures because it was so carefully constructed from the start. Sifting through the visual glut of Elvisiana, she looks at how fans collect, arrange, and display Elvis paraphernalia, make Elvis artwork, and participate in the annual August rituals of Elvis Week. By engaging in these acts, she explains, they continually reinvent Elvis to mesh with their own personal and social preferences and to keep his memory alive. Doss examines Elvis in specific contexts: as a religious icon honored in household shrines, as a focus of sexual fantasy for women and men (both straight and gay), as an inspiration for countless impersonators, and as an emblem of whiteness held in disdain by many blacks—despite his having crossed racial lines with his music. She also looks at how Elvis has become a sanitized, legally protected image controlled by Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., which bans the sale of black velvet paintings and licenses his likeness around the world. As engrossing as it is informative, Elvis Culture strikingly demonstrates the power of pictures in our visual culture and reveals much about American attitudes toward religion, sex, race, and celebrity—as well as about the construction of American identity in the late twentieth century. |
Contents
ILLUSTRATIONS | 2 |
ElvisA Different Kind of Idol Life magazine | 8 |
Stairway to Elvis interior GracelandToo | 34 |
Among the Believers New York Times Magazine | 75 |
Floral decoration Elvis Week 1996 | 100 |
Joni Mabe Traveling Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything | 115 |
Elvis performing during 1968 comeback special | 122 |
Alfred Wertheimer The Kiss | 128 |
Michael Elvis Daughter National Enquirer | 165 |
Motel window decoration Elvis Week 1995 | 187 |
Elvis poll postcard United States Postal Service | 197 |
Oprahs Amazing Link to Elvis Globe | 204 |
Elvis stuff for sale | 226 |
Joni Mabe Elvis Hair button | 232 |
Elvis statue and fans | 239 |
Velvet Elvis in Elvis shrine | 245 |
Aint Nothin But A Hairdo Life magazine | 134 |
Kata Billups Elvis Was a Real Man | 147 |
Patty Carroll photograph of Elvis impersonator | 157 |
Elvis collection | 255 |
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Common terms and phrases
1968 comeback special American artist audiences August B. B. King blues body claims Collecting Elvis concerts contemporary critics DeNight El Vez Elvis collectibles Elvis Culture Elvis fan clubs Elvis fans Elvis images Elvis impersonators Elvis Inc Elvis Inc.'s Elvis Presley Elvis Rooms Elvis stuff Elvis Week Elvis's death Elvis's grave Elvis's image Elvis's music Elvis's name EPE's erotic especially Everything Elvis fandom fantasy feel female fans gender girls Graceland GracelandToo Greil Marcus Holly Springs icon image Elvis image of Elvis Joni Mabe jumpsuit Lisa Marie live look male material culture Meditation Gardens Memphis Michael Jackson official paintings Paul MacLeod performance photographs pilgrimage played popular culture postwar Presley's Priscilla Priscilla Presley Quoted racial record religion religious remarks rock and roll rock-and-roll rockabilly says sexual spiritual star style teen teenage tion University Press Vegas Velvet Elvis visual WDIA women York