Elvis and the Non-Existent Cultural Appropriation Debate

 

There is no way that Baz Luhrmann could make Elvis and not get criticism for issues relating to race. If he includes B.B. King and Little Richard in his film, he will get accused of only paying lip-service to them. He’ll be accused of making a white savior film (a poorly employed catch-all for films that critics don’t like). If Luhrmann makes a film that shows Elvis grovelling to his Black friends for being famous while they’re not, well that wouldn’t be historically accurate, but who cares about that? Certainly not Paul Thompson of The Ringer who felt the King’s mourning of MLK Jr was “clumsy” despite it being taken from a verbatim quote. In other words, a movie about Elvis Presley somehow does a service to its figure by not having him be anti-racist enough.

Bill Maher, a talk show host who is always bold in calling out the absurdity of wokeness, recently had a popular clip clip:
New Rule: The What Were You Thinking Generation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugLbotr1RuQ

In it, he says, “You can’t blame people for being woke 30 years before being woke was a thing”

We are living in unprecedented times of idiocy (make no mistake: the right is destroying the country politically) where a certain idiotic class of mostly white activists are not doing the left any favors by attempting to declare a new cultural purity war against anyone who stands against homophobia, racism, or sexism.

The dogmatic “you’re either a knight in shining armor fighting against racism or you’re part of the problem” philosophy ignores the fact that for many people, racism is not the number one problem in America and they couldn’t
care less whether some out-of-touch activists think that they are not helping racism enough (at least, I don’t to the degree my career won’t get in the way).

Today, the Audubon Society of Seattle sought to remove the name of its founder because, god forbid, he held slaves. If the Audubon Society suddenly decides after several decades otherwise that it no longer wants to profit off the preservation efforts of James Audubon, they should dissolve the foundation at once rather than use the infrastructure created under his name.*

Elvis was born into poverty. The basest of woke activists who see people only through color and ignore the class of white people born into poverty (another reason why so many voters are turning to Republicans despite how godawful they are). Like everyone else born into the poverty, he was simply trying to get out of his miserable conditions and uplift his family and was inspired by the Black music that he heard that he bought to the masses.

The idea that this was some sort of crime of “cultural appropriation” only matters if you think that cultural appropriation is a bad thing. Before identity politics came to be such a prominent school of thought, the idea of cultural appropriation in and of itself as causing harm to the Black community would have you laughed out of the room with most academics and justifiably so.

“The accusation of “cultural appropriation” is overwhelmingly being used as an objection to syncretism — the mixing of different thoughts, religions, cultures and ethnicities that often ends up creating entirely new ones. In other words: the most natural process in a melting-pot country like ours,” writes Bari Weiss

This is what happened to Elvis who grew up in a Black community and was inspired by a Black preacher and his congregants when he was drawing his musical style. This shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve known Caucasian people who grew up in ghetto areas or went to school with lots of Black people and were acculturated from an early age to use African-American vernacular in the exact same manner that Black people use it.

If Elvis was guilty of cultural appropriation, it’s an irrelevant hypothetical. As far as I know, no one was going around during this era accusing Elvis of cultural appropriating because the concept didn’t exist. Therefore, if Elvis would have responded with some PR-drafted apology for not being woke enough is something we can’t know.

Most of the anger at Elvis was about him profiting from his music while others didn’t. When Public Enemy called him a racist in Fight the Power, it’s not like they’re acting off any evidence.

In fact, Elvis gave many interviews crediting his inspirations:
“A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like coloured people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.”

Musicians like Little Richard and James Brown credited him with opening doors for them and that much appears true. According to Newsweek, by November 1963, Billboard could no longer differentiate between white and black consumption and suspended its separate black singles chart.

There’s also the simple fact that he stuck to his Black-influenced style even when there was pressure to do so otherwise.

That’s the sensible view.

The non-sensible view is the “you’re either anti-racist or you’re racist with a capital R” philosophy. This is the view that suggests that Elvis was supposed to go beyond the standards of his own era to live his life in service of African-American liberation.

This is where we get the kind of posturizing reviews that RogerEbert.com is often guilty of.

Robert Daniels writes:
“But all too often the film slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land. While these Black artists are championed — an awareness by Luhrmann of their importance and the long and winding history of Black art moving through white spaces — they barely speak or retain any depth, even while a paternalistic Presley advances their cause.”

Mr. Daniels, do you understand the concept of screentime and narrative? That it’s a film about Elvis and in service of his story. That’s how secondary and tertiary characters work.

“The approach neither illuminates nor dignifies these figures. Instead, Luhrmann tries to smooth over the complicated feelings many Black folks of varied generations have toward the purported King. In that smoothing, Presley loses enough danger, enough fascinating complications to render the whole enterprise predictable. Because it’s not enough to merely have awareness, a filmmaker also has a responsibility to question whether they’re the right person to tell a story. Luhrmann isn’t. And that’s a failing that will be difficult for many viewers to ignore.”

You mean the song by Public Enemy that has no basis in fact?

And what’s this part about how Luhrmann should be taking himself out of the running because it’s a story about race (it really isn’t)? Elvis is not the exclusive domain of anti-racism tutorials.

Baz Luhrmann is allowed to make anything he wants, and if a film critic is honestly pushing for the restriction of what a film maker can or can’t do, that’s antithetical to art itself. If Robert Daniels wants to make a film about Elvis and racism, he is quite welcome to make some companion piece to 12 Years a Slave, Lovecraft Country, The Probem with Apu, Fences, Hidden Figures, The Free State of Jones, Race, Birth of a Nation, 13th, I Am Now Your Negro, Small Axe, Mudbound, Last Black Man in San Francisco, Black Klansman, If Beale Street Could Talk, Passing, Respect, or Seberg. However, he might want to realize that films which conflate entertainment with anti-racism preaching (and I will note, I like a good number of those films).

I will leave this essay with this quote:

“I would argue those who scream loudest about cultural appropriation are themselves after power. As soon as you raise issues about your own race and culture, you pretty much shut people up, because most people don’t want to be accused of being racist, elitist or not being ‘woke’, in the parlance of social justice warriors (SJWs),” writes Alex Lo.

*I’m aware that the Audubon Society has no relation to the rest of my essay. I just didn’t want to write a whole new essay about it.

Six Observations About the USA Show Monk (2002-2009)

Credit: IMDB

Running on USA Network for seven seasons, Monk was a TV show with a slight whiff of serialization about a San Francisco police detective (Tony Shalhoub) with massive OCD who had a mental breakdown upon the death of his wife, and got kicked off the force. Throughout the duration of the series, Adrian Monk is exiled from the force so he’s got that chip on his shoulder. On the other hand, he gets to solve pretty much every murder in Bay Area as a “consultant” so the show really has its cake and eats it too.

The show won eight Emmys (three for Tony Shalhoub) but was generally considered more niche viewing than prestige TV. It was the de facto flagship for the USA network which replicated the outsider savant formula with Psyche, Burn Notice and Necessary Roughness.

I watched several episodes over the past week and here are some notes:

1.. Monk’s detective abilities are similar to the way that Batman puts the Gotham police department out of business. It’s also worth pointing out that with all the murders going around town, it almost feels like San Francisco is up there as one of the murderiest cities in the US, even if it’s exponentially larger than Cabot Cove. And not only that but Monk is often personally connected to the murder like whether it’s his childhood crush’s ex-husband, his dentist, the newscaster assigned to report on his story, or his captain’s girlfriend. And that’s not counting all the murder scenes he happens to wander into. It’s like Batman’s penchant for wandering onto muggings in Gotham city.

However, instead of mindless thugs, the criminals Monk encounters are white collar dudes with highly Rube-Goldberg-like ways of killing their immediate family members or collecting insurance payouts. One episode even had an man attempt to escape alimony by robbing a house and defacing a painting so that his ex-wife would have a meet cute with her art appraiser former high school boyfriend. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just call him up and tip him off that his former girlfriend is single and ready to mingle?

2. Monk is defined by his rigidity but my pet theory is that he’s likeable because many episodes shows that he’s capable of changing his habits on a dime. Static characters are rarely protagonists because who wants to build a show around a comic character (typically defined by their deficiencies) who doesn’t change at all. Who wants to be around such a person in real life? But Monk does actually do a fill 180 on his intrinsic nature quite often. In one episode, he goes to a bachelor party in Las Vegas and you expect that we’re going to see someone who’s no fun, but he develops a brief gambling addiction. In another episode, Monk abandons his lifelong pursuit of justice to try being a full-time butler. Monk’s a loner who won’t stop brooding about his long-dead wife, but in one episode he comes close to asking out his childhood crush on a date and believes that he could find romantic happiness. In another episode, Monk agonizes about getting a best friend (Andy Richter). In the famous Sara Silverman episode, Monk not only lets down his defenses for a woman who actively stalks him, he briefly hires her as his assistant. And that’s just in the dozen or so episodes I’ve seen.

3. I hate to say this but Monk’s asexuality and his relationship to Trudy are never really well-defined. His attachment to Trudy strikes me as some crutch for his asexuality and asocial tendencies which initially made me wonder if Trudy was some sort of beard, before I watched flashback scenes that show that Trump and Trudy were really an item.  

In an episode centering around Monk’s class reunion, it’s revealed how much of a sad sack Monk is, when he converses with an old classmate (played by Family Matters’ Reginald van Johnson) about their late wives. The classmate says “well, you move on” and Monk replies “no, you don’t, you never really do” and when the classmate shows subtle expressions of “what a weirdo” we’re meant to empathize with Monk as a man who’s not understood by his peers. However, I think this came off tonally as it wasn’t intended to. I can empathize with Monk and his OCD but his clinging to an image of his dead wife is worth a proverbial weird look or, better yet, a “get it together, man.” I certainly don’t think every person on Earth needs to have a romantic life, but to hide behind your dead wife for years is not being honest with yourself about what you want.

There are also elements of Monk’s sexuality that are generally left dangling with no explanation; folded over into a mangled ambiguous neurosis. In one episode, he’s disappointed with his childhood idol (Elizabeth Berkley) for having an active sex life. He also has an aversion to naked people. Tell me this puritan streak isn’t a lot to unpack

4. My understanding is that Monk is modeled after Sherlock Holmes, but I liken him to a tortured noir detective. The way Monk follows his hunches at the exclusion of all other variables often look like vendettas similar to a character like Philip Marlowe in the Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye. Edward G. Robinson’s character in Double Indemnnity, another famous noir hero, speaks of being able to use his sense of smell to get his man every time. This is awfully similar to Monk’s physical idiosyncracies (i.e. how he uses his hands to frame the scene). Additionally, Monk’s bitterness—downplayed as much as possible so that this show can still be considered a comedy for Emmy purposes—and his close proximity to personal tragedy (not just his wife but his father, brother, and exile from the force) are all interwoven into his character.

5. I haven’t re-watched the episodes with Sharona since the show’s first run, but I love everything about what Natalie Teeger (Taylor Howard) provides for the show. It’s one of those relationships where you never get tired of how these two interact. As previously mentioned, Monk runs the risk of looking like an unhinged man with tunnel vision when he follows his hunch, so it’s quite useful that Natalie is standing beside him. It’s also really sweet that Natalie often locks arms with him. It doesn’t have romantic connotations and it doesn’t look like a nurse helping an old man, but it’s a really nice show of support and comfort between the two. It’s also one of those beauty-and-the-geek things on a meta-level, because let’s face it: Natalie’s cute. Who wouldn’t want to be walking arm-in-arm with Taylor Howard through the streets of San Francisco.

6. The show might be formulaic on first glance, but many of the episodes are kind of must-watch based on the plots alone. A lot of it is based on fish-out-of-water set-ups. For a man is phobic and idiosyncratic as Monk, he’s pretty much a fish always out of the water, so when I see an episode description like “Mr. Monk goes to a nude beach” or “Mr. Monk goes to Vegas”, or “Mr. Monk goes to live on a farm”, I’m pretty sold instantly on how far out of his comfort zone Mr. Monk will be pushed.

And while the show isn’t particularly serialized, there are episodes like Monk’s reconciliation with his brother (John Turturro won an Emmy for this guest turn), father, or childhood crush that are pretty strong on pathos too.