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.
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