The American people have, like us, a great many serious things to think of now, but one of the less serious but not totally unimportant things they debate is the Elvis Presley phenomenon. Is he a credit to his state, as the Governor of Mississippi has asserted, or is he only too representative of that most backward and savage of American commonwealths? Should he be paid nearly as much as Miss Mary Martin on television? Is he going to get married? Is he about to be drafted?
Such are some of the questions that the American public, in a muddled and often angry frame of mind, puts to itself. And it has, on the whole, rejoiced when it has learned that teen-agers in Manchester have wrecked a cinema under the inspiriting influence of ╥Rock Around the Clock╙ and that our adolescents are ready to give to ╥Elvis the Pelvis╙ the same adoring reception that the two-way-stretch girdle age-group gave to Liberace. We are all in the same boat, so it is gladly believed. Not only American kids are crazy, and English parents will know, do know, the reproach of being ╥squares.╙
In one way there is no novelty in the Presley boom. In its most preposterous form it recalls Frank Sinatra of ten years ago, as Liberace recalls the Valentino of nearly a generation ago. ╥The Charleston╙ and ╥The Black Bottom╙ were as much a source of scandal as ╥Blue Suede Shoes,╙ and the American child is quite ready to tell Mom or even Grandma where she gets off. These infatuations are no novelty, and having to
listen-in to only too many discussions of Elvis, I recalled that day in New York when the Sinatra fans stormed Times Square, tearing each other╒s clothes off when deprived of the chance of stripping and perhaps dismembering their hero.
After all, the Bacchae had been there before. And my taxi-driver, philosophical in spite of the hold-up, had found the right answer for a sulky colleague ╤╥What has he got that we haven╒t got?╙
╥I don╒t know, but I sure wish I had it.╙
As we all know, Mr. Sinatra has gone on to become a very serious actor and Mr. Presley is following in his first footstep. Has he not announced that ╥I didn╒t take a singing test when I had my screen test. It was an acting test.╙ Well, seeing will be believing, but in the meantime Elvis is a symptom all right. A symptom of what?
In one way it is easy enough to answer. The screaming adolescents who wreck cinemas and terrify ministers and parents are disciples of the goddess
╥to whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.╙
╥What,╙ asked a lawyer friend of mine of his Irish-Catholic office girl, ╥What does your mother think of your rushing off to see Elvis Presley?╙ ╥Oh, she doesn╒t mind; she doesn╒t know anything.╙ ╥But what about the wiggle?╙
╥Oh, that╒s just his way of expressing himself.╙ To-day, as we know, to cripple self-expression is a sin.
In spite of the prayer meetings and the refusal to hire halls that are reported, self-expression rages. Yet Elvis is a good boy; he doesn╒t smoke or drink; so what? In the William Faulkner country which he comes from, that is all the law and the prophets. It is, indeed, probably only an accident that had made him a master of Rock ╒n╒ Roll and not a gospel-singer or a minor warbler of ╥country music╙ (not ╥hillbilly╙ songs).
Already someone unknown is on Elvis╒s trail. For leadership in this world is ╥a garland briefer than a girl╒s.╙ Only death can confer real immortality, as the cult of James Dean shows. ╥Somewhere some young musician is working on something which will make Rock ╒n╒ Roll sound like the genteel tinkling of a spinet,╙ says a Rock ╒n╒ Roll organ. This is the Big Beat that is on the way. We have been warned.
