This essay was originally produced in Dr. John Shook's seminar on Social Ethics and Religion, during the fall of 2011, in Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program.
Elvis Presley remains a fascinating
example of how a performer working in popular music espoused a set of ethics:
as a public figure and early celebrity in the field, Elvis’ earliest intention
to sing gospel music resulted in his famous rejection by a gospel quartet (the
Songfellows), prior to his discovery at Sun Studios (Cusic, 1988)-- he was not
able to harmonize, but always sang the lead. Born to parents who met at an
Assemblies of God church in Tupelo, Mississippi (“Religious Affiliation,” para.
5), Elvis’ career in popular music became emblematic of new and transformative
experiences taking place within individuals and groups. While songs like “Love
Me Tender” and “Teddy Bear” dominated and defined an evolving musical genre and
public display of humanistic frivolity, Presley’s faith was an important part
of his creative output; by 1960, he released His Hand in Mine, his first of three studio gospel recordings.
While much critical attention has been paid to Colonel Tom Parker’s steering of
Presley’s career, away from being a hip-shaking revolutionary but to an
accessible and lucrative celebrity with both a music and film career, it is
interesting to note how Presley’s commitment to his traditional Christian
spirituality concurred with his manager’s image for him, one of widespread
appeal. His personal spiritual exploration extended to obscure and abundant
generosity, as well as an interest in metaphysical construction of Christ (it
is said Presley had been reading Frank Adams’ The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus when he was found
dead); Presley’s deepening of his traditional Christian vision may to some
extent reflect spiritual searches during the formative decades of popular rock
music.
Across songs such as “I Believe in the Man in
the Sky,” “Swing Down Sweet Chariot,” and “In My Father’s House,” Presley’s
first gospel album declared a vision of traditional Christianity, one in which humans’
knowledge of a concrete morality is derived only from an all-knowing God: “I’m
satisfied with just a cottage below/A little silver and a little gold/but in
that city where the ransomed will shine/I want a gold one, that’s silver
lined,” sang Presley in his arrangement of “Mansion Over the Hilltop.”
Songwriter Mac Davis wrote “In The
Ghetto” in the late 1960s; Elvis Presley recorded his version at American Sound
Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and was released as a single in 1969, earning
Presley platinum status, and a substantial re-entry into a rapidly-changing
sphere of popular rock music. While this song may represent a reconception of
social ethics in the catalog of Presley’s works, Davis’ lyrics concur with
Presley’s traditional Christian vision (Presley’s other singles that year
included “His Hand in Mine” and “Clean Up Your Own Backyard”):
people,
don’t you understand, the child needs a helping hand
or
he’ll grow to be an angry young man some day
take
a look at you and me, are we too blind to see,
do
we simply turn our heads and look the other way
well
the world turns
and
a hungry little boy with a runny nose
plays
in the street as the cold wind blows
in
the ghetto (Davis, “In the Ghetto,” recorded by Presley, 1969).
Presley’s
“In The Ghetto” encapsulated mainstream theological Christian response to social
turmoil and poverty: “are we too blind to see” the inequities that surround us,
the individuals whose chances of financial, intellectual, and spiritual success
may be, by their very nature, less than our own? In this stance, Presley’s hit
illustrates the “traditional” Christian view, based on two of three premises in
the Paradox of Divine Morality: as in his earlier gospel recordings, individuals’
knowledge of one higher spiritual entity remains a gateway to any release from
oppressive conditions. As God does not appear in Davis’ lyrics, the pursuit of
this comeback hit for the King of Rock and Roll is an important example of how
Presley’s traditional Christian ethics presented no conflict to his message of
public, and human, awareness of social ills.
“People, don’t you understand,” sang
Presley, in 1969; less than two years later, as Presley descended into his
status as a headliner in Las Vegas in what would be his last partial decade
spent in the public eye, Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Going On” delivered concern
for social problems in a more polarizing context than “In The Ghetto”: “picket
lines and picket signs/don’t punish me with brutality/talk to me, so you can
see what’s going on” (Gaye, 1971). While Gaye’s call for reason and
understanding may be categorized in separate analysis as an example of
progressive Christianity, the stance of the performer’s voice helps identify an
evolution in popular rock music’s response to problems in society related to
justice, and to what extent the genre of the humanities was able to speak for
an audience on one side of an issue: Presley’s 1969 hit “In The Ghetto” is a
universal address, while Marvin Gaye’s call to the further attainment of
knowledge regarding systems of oppression speaks to those seek conversation and
collaboration: “there’s far too many of you dying/you know we’ve got to find a
way/to bring some lovin’ here today” (Gaye, “What’s Going On,” 1971). While
Presley acknowledges and addresses a crowd that is not part of the societal
problem, but may be rallied to become part of the solution, Marvin Gaye’s 1971
“What’s Going On” may offer a voice representative of those immersed in the
conflict.
Contributing to a collection
regarding the cultural legacy of Elvis Presley, Lou Reed, performer and founder
of the unprecedented rhetorical-rock outfit the Velvet Underground in 1964, addressed
Presley directly:
What are we to think. A lack of
certain knowledge leaves things in a pure state. We have your work. The movement
from the exciting to the most mundane.
A movement from polar opposites. You became exactly what we had all imagined
you despised […] I think you saw every dream vanish
in a flurry of money and that you were so scared and so much tied up with being
Elvis that whoever you were never had a chance and that all you knew was that you were terribly unhappy and that
if Elvis-- the Elvis you played at
being-- couldn't be happy well then who could. I figure you thought you had less talent than a coon hound,
cryin' all the time (Reed, as cited by Sammon, 1994, p. 25-26).
Presley's
personal sense of identity was of concern to Reed (1994), and the “flurry of
money” that distracted the King of Rock and Roll may further define a
relationship between economics and tragedy at work in specific creative
individuals. Elvis was not a songwriter, and his personal life was
characterized by the results of his fame, which came early in his life, preempting
much of his functioning within normal parameters of society. While Presley’s
traditional Christianity provided him an ethics that were popular and
accessible to many, Reed’s characterization of Presley’s personal success—“you
became exactly what we had all imagined you despised”—is a remark on Presley’s
earliest and groundbreaking public image, one that is both spiritual and
existential: for Reed and others, the genre of popular rock music had, by the
time the news of Elvis’ passing had reached his audience in August of 1977,
extended its spiritual discussions far beyond omniscient and ever-powerful
entities of power at work in traditional Christianity and in Presley’s work.
For citations, please view http://www.commontimevt.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-paradox-of-divine-morality-and.html
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