Skip to main content

So i thought i should listen to: Elvis

31.8.17

 So I thought I should listen to some music. So I heard 'Lonesome Cowboy' by Elvis. It evokes this image of a wild west cowboy man who does good deeds on his own, travelling afar in search of cowboyness.

I don't think it's done ironically, but I hear all sorts of man-man ideas of isolation and independence. I don't know what Elvis was really going for here, but the thick waves of romantic manliness suggest he is trying to, sincerely, create the cowboy-man ideal he sings about.

I also don't see Elvis as a particularly manly type. I'm sure he intended to be, but he wore colourful clothes and does singing. Men aren't supposed to do either of those things- singing is a pretty thing (and 'pretty' is a word most men can't pronounce properly 'cos we say it so rarely) and colourful clothes are pretty as well.

So I thought I should put Elvis in the soundtrack 'cos he somehow messes up in the man-man picture. But not like the artists who traditionally did that deliberately. Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Prince etc, despite being groundbreaking in their way, were dressing their way in a very deliberate, conscious style. Part of this is, I think, his appropriation of black blues singer, in style and sound. Listeners to his first record- 'That's Alright' at Sun Studios thought he was black. He wore typical satin lace jackets, more commonly seen on the backs of the jazz and blues singers he stole from. His style was colourful and tight, more traditionally feminine than masculine. Maybe it's because the white image of masculinity doesn't sing or wear colourful clothes. So his appropriation of black musical culture means that he doesn't fit our/my idea of white masculinity.

So Elvis wore someone else's shoes in many ways. He doesn't evoke the lonesome cowboy man image successfully. So I thought I should put him in the soundtrack


(Admin note- I think this should be open to comment/criticise/add. So please do. If you can't, let me know and I'll see if I can change it

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guest 2. Eleanor Paisley

17.2.18 Eleanor Paisley moved to London in September 2016 London is many things to many people: formidable, dirty, modern, exciting, full of opportunity. For me, London represented a step towards the life I wanted to have: being at the centre of everything in a multicultural society. As a student, I did feel as if I was in another world. It didn’t feel like I was in England at all. I would regularly socialise with fewer English people than otherwise – which suited me just fine. In university as well as all over London, the word ‘metropolitan’ applies perfectly. However, the adjective that I would most use when describing my time in London is ‘lonely’. In a sea of people, running from A to C to B then back to A again on the tube, buses, bikes, taxis, cars and trains, you become totally anonymous. Despite walking every day from Southwark to Strand, I rarely got to see much greenery. The air is alive with the business of the people, and only myself and a handful of my cohorts dared ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guest 1. Mania Lewandowska

14/2/18. Mania Lewandowska I moved to London in (a) September. They had organised a farewell party for me, where my brother said: “ I remember when you were three and you would scream your lungs out every time you saw a fly. And now you ’ re going to uni. I can ’ t believe it. ” I couldn ’ t really believe it either. A week later, on the first day of Freshers ’ , I twisted my ankle running through Camden to catch a bus, and spent five hours in the accident and emergency waiting room of UCLH, dozing off with my head resting on my mum ’ s shoulder. She was supposed to fly back the next day, and I was supposed to stay, mature and independent, on my own. They told me the leg wasn ’ t broken and gave me a pair of wobbly crutches; it was 3a.m. as I hopped back to my dorm along Euston Road. It was the first time that I realised that traffic was a constant thing in London, happening not only in rush hour, but absolutely always. You could be stuck in a senseless jam at 4 at night ...
Post a Comment
Read more

So I thought I should say, that I'm only sayin..

12.9.17 So I want to follow on from my *highly* controversial blog about Elvis, mixed in with a little Daily Show and the ethics of blog-writing. So: Elvis. I argued that Elvis’ appropriation of black music and style meant that I didn’t really understand his masculinity. I argued that my understanding of masculinity was different from his because he mixed cultures and warped the pattern of masculinity I’m used to. My understanding of masculinity is obviously 50 odd years later than his, and there has obviously been change and (d)evolution. I focussed on ethnicity/culture as a key part of that transformation, but maybe this hasnt changed. How many prominent male black actors have been chosen to play the good guy in the last ten years in any Hollywood film? (Note- this is rhetorical: of course there have been- John Boyega in Star Wars and Detroit, Will Smith in anything, Morgan Freeman in anything. But when did Samuel Jackson play the nice guy?) How many black men have been chose...
Post a Comment
Read more