The Problem With Dominant Narratives

It's not my turn to blog (and please don't ask why I'm doing this at 4 in the morning), but I wanted to write this down before I forgot it. I was reading the Horace Newcomb article on 1950s Television and I was struck by the argument he makes towards the end of the last paragraph on page 119:

"...most plots developed along lines of social discourse, asking over and over, Why should things be the way they are? The answer--because that is how we hold it all together--necessarily involved the repeated questioning of gender roles, family structure, the nature of authority that drove episode after episode of that series."

Basically, the idea is that in order to say that one way of doing things is better than another way, you have to acknowledge that the alternative way even exists, which gives the alternative a certain innate credibility -- the reader/viewer may not consider the alternative desirable, but they are aware of it. In attempting to establish a dominant narrative, no matter what the subject or context, the narrator inevitably establishes the seed of discord against their own ideas.

Elvis "Postwar Product" Presely

“Elvis was the purest of postwar products, the commodity that had been missing from the shelves in an expanding marketplace of leisure time and disposable cash”-Peter Guralnick's The Rise of Elvis Presley, 240

It isn’t that Elvis was the first musician to gyrate and sell his act with sex, but he was the first to do it on television. Even though he wasn’t the first, he received unprecedented attention. David Shumway reminds us that his acts “were televised and…watched by enormous audiences” (132). To the new audiences he was reaching, the teen and particularly teen girl demographic, he was performing music they had never heard and acted a way they hadn’t seen anyone act. He was a poor, white, Christian guy inspired by black culture and music and hitting against boundaries of decorum, gender and sexuality. It’s no wonder that he garnered so much attention. As Shumway notes: “Elvis transgressed gender boundaries in several ways, but…his most troubling transgression was to call attention to his body as a sexual object” (126)

David Shumway’s argument aligns Elvis’ status as the first pop sensation, a feminized, fetishized icon as a result of the “changes in the social relationship of the genders” occurring in postwar America in the 1950s. The period saw a blurring (less mature: tug of war) on gender roles; women who had been working difficult, traditionally masculine job weren’t instantly relieved to have their independence (and tangible satisfaction of a days work) just taken from them. Shumway quotes Bailey in saying “the fragility of gender was the root of the trouble. The necessary barriers had broken down and women were exercising too much power—whether by stifling masculinity or by assuming masculine traits themselves” (126).

Guralnick’s biography repeatedly makes mention of Elvis’ adopting what Shumway might define as “feminine codes” (visual presentation): affinity garish costuming (though never cross-dressing), meticulous hair styling, and appearing to wear eye shadow. The combination of this feminized persona and his heightened masculine sexual presence made women and girls hysterical. Guralnick paints a wonderfully insane scene: “these high school girls were screaming and fainting and running up to the stage, and then he started to move his hips real slow like he had a thing for his guitar” (182-83). Now, Shumway does not suggest that Elvis performed what he defines as “transvestite rock” (127), like more contemporary Boy George and David Bowie, opting instead to call him “androgynous”. He was adopting feminine codes, putting himself in a vulnerable, objectifies position (the object for the gaze), but he didn’t try to bend gender roles in his appearance.

His flamboyant and highly sexualized stage presence brought gained his both critical and mass appeal. But he claims that it was just the way he performed. Elvis allowed himself to be sexual on stage, essentially objectifying himself for his female fans. Though it’s a traditionally vulnerable position he seemed to relish in the attention. Shumway proves that there is much more to Elvis’ rise to fame than talent. Whether Elvis consciously realized what he was doing or not, or if “it was just the way he did it” (Guralnick, 248) a review of the social context within which Elvis was living and performing serves to better explain how he became “Elvis”.

Youtube Bonus! I found this video of a short interview with Elvis and a performance with some pretty substantial gyrating and greased (seriously, greased) hair.

A Little Less Conversation: Elvis The Musician

I'm no Elvis expert. If pressed, I can sing a few lines of “Hound Dog,” but before reading Last Train to Memphis, that was the only song of his I’d heard. Since I’ve never taken an interest in his music, it’s a credit to Peter Guralnick’s skill as a writer that I’ve been humming Elvis tunes nonstop for the past two days.

In the second segment of Last Train to Memphis, I was captivated by Guralnick’s portrayal of the songs Elvis performed and recorded. Rather than taking a sterilized, impersonal approach to Elvis’s musical career, Guralnick tries to communicate the essence of each song. After reading Guralnick’s vivid description of “Baby, Let’s Play House,” which Elvis opens with “an ascending, hiccoughing stutter that knocked everybody out with its utterly unpredictable, uninhibited, and gloriously playful ridiculousness,” I couldn’t resist the urge to listen to the song myself (179).  This wasn’t the only time Guralnick described Elvis’s music in such riveting detail: he waxes poetic when recounting Elvis’s recording session at Sun Studio, especially the final take, a rhythm and blues song called “Trying to Get to You.” In Guralnick’s words, “There was a floating sense of inner harmony mixed with a ferocious hunger, a desperate striving linked to a pure outpouring of joy, that seemed to just tumble out of the music” (205). Once again, I found myself on youtube, needing to hear the song for myself.

Guralnick not only captures the unique sound of Elvis’s music, he includes excerpts from lyrics to many of the songs themselves. Elvis’s rewrite of the line “You may have religion” in “Baby, Let’s Play House” to “You may drive a pink Cadillac” may seem arbitrary, but reveals Elvis’s creative power (and interesting set of values J). In addition, Guralnick’s inclusion of a line from “Heartbreak Hotel” – “bellhop’s tears keep flowing and the desk clerk’s dressed in black” – allows the reader to assess the song’s morbidity instead of just taking the author’s word for the song’s “powerful, emotion-laden atmosphere of upbeat despair” (230,239).

One could argue that by trying to convey a sense of the music Elvis produced, Guralnick sets himself up for failure. After all, music is ineffable, and there is no objective way to describe a song. Many have tried and failed to describe Elvis’s musical style. One such singer, Buddy Bain, when trying to explain his impression of Elvis’s style, merely says, “I did mine just plain, and he did his, ‘Well-uh, uh-uh’ – you know, like he did” (162). However, Guralnick’s familiarity with Elvis’s music and commitment to expressing it in all its variety transports the reader into the recording studios and concert halls of the 1950’s. 

During the reading, whenever I would grow bored of the descriptions of contracts and negotiations between Elvis’s managers, I would be drawn back by Guralnick’s interspersed personal accounts of Elvis’s music. Although there is much to be said about the technical aspects of Elvis's career, he was a musician first and foremost and I appreciate the author’s emphasis on the way his music sounded.

Gender Roles: The Sponge and You

In David Shumway's "Watching Elvis" article, he effectively places an overemphasis on the change of gender roles in the 1950s. It's true that women entered the labor force, and in that sense the typical dynamic of a housewife, two and a half kids, and a bread-winner father did change slightly in a few families, but he makes it out to be a complete social upheaval like the bra-burning feminists in the 1960s.

Pre-WWII, approximately 15% of women ages 25-44 were active participants in the work force, and post-WWII this number increased to around 25%. A significant increase, certainly, but nothing like the 67% of married women working in the mid-1980s. Instead it was due to the necessity in a war economy to have laborers, and many of the male laborers being sent overseas to fight in the war. It was only natural women would start working, but it certainly didn't mean that there was a huge social upheaval or a complete change in gender roles just because 10% more women were contributing to what was a bustling economy. In the 1950s, of the women who had children who were 6 years old or younger, only 10% were actively seeking or already in possession of jobs. The role of women as housewives was still greatly widespread.

After about 3 hours of putting off writing this blog post by staring at 1950s advertisement, I came to strongly disagree with Shumway's comment, "...especially advertising, in which women's bodies are displayed to sell everything from women's clothing to motor oil" (128) and then states how Elvis moved into this feminine role of sexual display. Instead, I found women's bodies being used to sell Jantzen swimsuits, women not dressed provocatively at all but looking ecstatic advertising silverware that men should buy for their wives or the wonders of a washer and dryer, or how exciting an SOS pad is. Instead of women largely being sexualized or as the author suggests men being feminized through their own sexualization, images of family are strongly enforced for almost everything. Women clean and cook, men do the yardwork and cut the turkey, and the kids look cute and encourage parents to buy them things. Even car advertisements seemed to restrict their interest to how sturdy the car was, and only a few mentioned people whatsoever, with slogans like "take him fishing in style" with a little kid holding a pale and a fishing pole with his dad opening the car door for him. Most images of men involved them being with their sons, such as the car example above, or almost every food advertisment involved the family at the park together with the father barbecuing with his son. I certainly hope that doesn't count as the sexualization of men, but I know it doesn't make me go hubba-hubba.

Oh, and of course scantly clad women fawn over guys who are drinking whatever brand of booze is being advertised, but priorities while drunk haven't changed much since the middle ages.

If gender roles were changing and men were being sexualized, I'd think the advertisements would have changed to capitalize on this in a time where consumer studies were so wide spread and consumerism was on the rise. Even movies ranging from musicals like “Guys and Dolls” and the large output by Disney in the 1950s such as “Cinderella”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Sleeping Beauty” and so on all show women in their typical feminine role while men are hyper masculine, knights in shining armor, gangsters (who in the case of “Guys and Dolls” dance and twirl in the most masculine of fashions) and what have you. “The Seven Year Itch” with Marilyn Monroe has her being the breathy voluptuous blond bimbo like always, and even Doris Day, as much of a tomboy as she’s accused of being, eventually agrees with her fiancé in “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” to be a housewife while she repaired the broken engine of their car on her own.

Maybe Elvis did get popular because he was a sex object, but he became one through overemphasis of his masculinity. Hell, the relation between Elvis being referred to as a sexual object with emphasis on his masculinity and then being characterized as androgynous or a eunuch seems like a huge conflict in terminology to me, but fortunately in the context of the article it more or less makes sense. It’s just greatly troublesome to read an article when its premise is severely flawed. Gender roles in the 1950s were as strongly enforced as ever, and a few more women working as secretaries and stewardesses definitely didn’t spark any sort of drastic change in attitudes towards women, let alone women’s attitudes towards men.

Elvis Branching Out

I have always found Elvis’ roots interesting. He is of a humble and religious background, yet once he explodes onto the popular scene, he transcends the stereotypes of his upbringing. Elvis becomes one of the most controversial figures of the 1950s due to his unconventional behavior and style. Hip thrusting and gyrating was anything but typical of a good old religious mama’s boy, but some how he changed his persona totally breaking the mold.

Guralnick seems to think this sudden shift of style and personality occurred around Elvis’ days as an upperclassman in high school. Not so much a change in personality as it was a final exposure of his true personality, this new Elvis character “seemed as if he wanted to make a statement, he was intent on setting himself apart … by his dress, his hair, his demeanor, though, he was making a ringing declaration of independence” (Guralnick 49). It is also noted that he exuded much more self-confidence and an awareness of his self-image even though he was still being ridiculed by many of those around him. I think that Elvis took this ridicule and used it as fuel to feed his growing determination to be something great.

This creation of an alternate self, of Elvis’ true inner self, would never have been able to emerge had he not grown up suppressed by his classmates and various other influential figures. Had he fit into the crowd, his talents would have never been fostered or allowed to propel him to any level. It was his difference and his willingness to accept his difference that allowed him to strive towards his own unique desires and potentials instead of to that which was popular.

Quetzal states in his response that the author’s recognition of possible bias or uncertainty in facts is a good idea, but fails in the sense that the author tends to back most of his assumptions up with factual evidence or interviews. I don’t necessarily agree with this point, but rather agree that, yes, the author’s recognition that he might have some fact incorrect is a smart choice – besides dodging bullets from insane Elvis fans who claim to know everything about the King’s life, Guralnick also is able to uphold a sense of integrity and loyalty to the subject. Him backing up assumptions with evidence is no reason to find him as looking for an excuse, but rather, allows the reader to have some faith in the text instead of a constant doubting.

Also, this recognition of Guralnick is smart because so much false evidence about Elvis has turned up. By saying that this is his personal account of Elvis, rather than the story of Elvis, Guralnick doesn’t assume total control over the possibly inaccurate texts but still maintains a sort of personal integrity. He doesn’t fully commit to the more questionable documents, which keeps the reader from being tricked into believing that which is not real and possibly even proven false.

Authority

So, I don't really know that much about Elvis -- I was never particularly interested in his music or movies. When Guralnick lays out his information, I don't really have much of a basis to say 'yes that sounds right,' or 'no, I don't agree with that interpretation,' because I just don't have many other facts on which to base an opinion. Instead, I will address the way Guralnick presents and lays out his information.

On the back cover, Last Train to Memphis is labeled as 'Biography/Music', and to me biography is associated with the idea of an historical text -- that is, a text that aims (ideally) to be an accurate and authoritative depiction of historical events, which in the case of biography would be the events of a person's life. My expectation is that the available facts will be laid out for me, preferably in an interesting/entertaining manner.

Near the end of Gurlanick's Author's Note, at the beginning of Last Train to Memphis, he states, "This is my story of Elvis Presley; it cannot be the story of Elvis Presley. There is no such thing; even autobiography, or perhaps autobiography most of all, represents an editing of the facts, a selection of detail, an attempt to make sense of the various, arbitrary developments of real life." This seems like a reasonable premise -- if he, Guralnick, can't gaurantee the 'facts' with 100% accuracy, then it seems logical to simply lay out his account of the story of the life of Elvis Presley and then have us simply take that for what it is.

However, in these first several chapters, it seems to me that Gurlanick is not living up to the claim he makes. The bulk of the narrative is presented in what seems like the classic biographical tone, which is to say that there is little acknowledgement that the information being presented is subjective: "Vernon Presley was never particularly well regarded in Tupelo. He was a man of few words and little evident ambition..." and so on.

When he isn't stating things as fact, Guralnick supplements the narrative with quotes from interviews he has conducted with relevant people, and yet he leaves out what I find most interesting about interviews -- the back and forth play between interviewer and subject, the revelation of character. Instead the living voices chime in on the unfolding events as disembodied entities from on high.

Occasionally the narrative itself seems to break down, with Guralnick pausing to elaborate on how the motive or reasoning for such and such action or opinion is questionable or unknown, and then he offers some of the possible intepretations (see page 58 for example). These are the moments that I find most aggravating -- it seems to me that part of the compact between author and reader of a biography is that the author should at least claim to know what he is talking about, but Guralnick consistently throws his hands up in the air and leaves the work to us.

What's most notable about all of this is that the presence of Guralnick himself is strangely absent from all of it -- though he claims this is 'his' story of Elvis as opposed to 'the' story, it isn't until page 58 (that I could find) that Guralnick himself enters the narrative, and then only for a brief moment, with the preposterously unfortunate statement of "I don't know." Really? That's the best he's got?

In his author's note, Guralnick abdicates the the traditional role of the biographer as authoritative/authorial dispenser of objective truth, so that he might at least present the subjective truth, his subjective truth -- only to simultaneously revert to the traditional biographic role as well as to discredit his own claim to authority. So I guess I'm a bit disappointed. The preface/author's note gave me the idea that we'd be treated to the account of Guralnick himself diving into the history books and brushing away the 'dreary bondage of myth' and the 'oppressive aftershock of cultural significance' so that we could finally see the 'real' Elvis, but so far I'm not seeing it.

Elvis's 6th-grade class photo

It's not my turn to blog or anything, but I wanted to share this photo--the one that Guralnick describes on pg. 24--because I found it and thought it was rather striking. I mean, you don't even have to know anything about Elvis to acknowledge which person in the photo is a little "different" from the others.

The Rise of an Unconventional Star

Peter Guralnick’s interpretation of Elvis’ rise to fame is based on a compilation of records from friends, family and a number of interviews between Elvis and the media throughout his career. Guralnick piles together Elvis’ early life and upbringing to show how he was in a category of his own. His music was not country but not rhythm and blues. Fame did not fall into his lap and he was not the Elvis that we have all come to know so well. This story, so far, allows us to get to know his back story and reconsider him as a person, not a brand. In the past when I have thought of Elvis, I’ve pictured impersonators at a 24 hour chapel on the side of the road in Las Vegas adorned in jeweled jumpsuits and fake sideburns. Elvis’ image has been branded and tied to the aura of the 1950’s culture and beyond. It has been interesting to read this biography because Guralnick’s portrayal casts a very different image, especially his demeanor as a performer early in his career.

Elvis’ first performance as a kid at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair left him scarred which led him to keeping his musical talents to himself. Throughout the book so far, Guralnick constantly mentions his shyness and hesitance on stage. He quotes Elvis on page 23, “’and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it, you know.’” This was surprising to me because the familiar image of Elvis is quite different. All the images and film footage of Elvis depicts him as a dreamy eyed confident pop star of the 1950s. However, he was unconventional and didn’t fit the mold of a pop star then. Instead he redefined music and entertainment.

Guralnick quotes Sam Phillips on page 43, “’He tried not to show it, but he felt so inferior. He reminded me of a black man in that way; his insecurity was so markedly like that of a black person.’” I found this particularly interesting because it reveals how Elvis was an outsider to his peers and people in the music world at first. He voice was “interesting” and his looks were even more so with his long hair and flashy apparel. As well as this, Guralnick mentions how Elvis could not be categorized, which probably brought him to the level fame he achieved. Guralnick shapes Elvis’ rise to fame around this idea that he was such an outrageous sensation because he was not like anyone else out there and was seen as edgy, almost dangerous, for the conservative 1950s culture.

The most famous image of Elvis is his gyrating performances that shook the conventional music of the time and brought sex appeal to the music world. I had always thought of Elvis as a confident performer but he did this out of nerves and not for entertaining anyone but himself. This is quoted on page 110, “’During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild, but he though they were actually making fun of him.’” When looking at images and film of Elvis performing it is hard to believe that he once only performed in the dark as Guralnick explains. As the book continues, it seems that Elvis is evolving into a skilled performer but much more for his own approval than anyone else’s. This is interesting since he becomes so recognized for behavior and appeal that he, at first, truly did for himself. It is crazy to think about Elvis as such a person when we have completely idealized him to the level of worldwide icon.

P.S. I enjoyed the biographer’s descriptive details of Elvis’ appearance even down to the numerous remarks about his pimply face. That too, was surprising that someone who becomes such a sex symbol had such a terrible case of acne!

Peter Guralnick’s interpretation of Elvis’ rise to fame is based on a compilation of records from friends, family and a number of interviews between Elvis and the media throughout his career. Guralnick piles together Elvis’ early life and upbringing to show how he was in a category of his own. His music was not country but not rhythm and blues. Fame did not fall into his lap and he was not the Elvis that we have all come to know so well. This story, so far, allows us to get to know his back story and reconsider him as a person, not a brand. In the past when I have thought of Elvis, I’ve pictured impersonators at a 24 hour chapel on the side of the road in Las Vegas adorned in jeweled jumpsuits and fake sideburns. Elvis’ image has been branded and tied to the aura of the 1950’s culture and beyond. It has been interesting to read this biography because Guralnick’s portrayal casts a very different image, especially his demeanor as a performer early in his career.

Elvis’ first performance as a kid at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair left him scarred which led him to keeping his musical talents to himself. Throughout the book so far, Guralnick constantly mentions his shyness and hesitance on stage. He quotes Elvis on page 23, “’and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it, you know.’” This was surprising to me because the familiar image of Elvis is quite different. All the images and film footage of Elvis depicts him as a dreamy eyed confident pop star of the 1950s. However, he was unconventional and didn’t fit the mold of a pop star then. Instead he redefined music and entertainment.

Guralnick quotes Sam Phillips on page 43, “’He tried not to show it, but he felt so inferior. He reminded me of a black man in that way; his insecurity was so markedly like that of a black person.’” I found this particularly interesting because it reveals how Elvis was an outsider to his peers and people in the music world at first. He voice was “interesting” and his looks were even more so with his long hair and flashy apparel. As well as this, Guralnick mentions how Elvis could not be categorized, which probably brought him to the level fame he achieved. Guralnick shapes Elvis’ rise to fame around this idea that he was such an outrageous sensation because he was not like anyone else out there and was seen as edgy, almost dangerous, for the conservative 1950s culture.

The most famous image of Elvis is his gyrating performances that shook the conventional music of the time and brought sex appeal to the music world. I had always thought of Elvis as a confident performer but he did this out of nerves and not for entertaining anyone but himself. This is quoted on page 110, “’During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild, but he though they were actually making fun of him.’” When looking at images and film of Elvis performing it is hard to believe that he once only performed in the dark as Guralnick explains. As the book continues, it seems that Elvis is evolving into a skilled performer but much more for his own approval than anyone else’s. This is interesting since he becomes so recognized for behavior and appeal that he, at first, truly did for himself. It is crazy to think about Elvis as such a person when we have completely idealized him to the level of worldwide icon.

P.S. I enjoyed the biographer’s descriptive details of Elvis’ appearance even down to the numerous remarks about his pimply face. That too, was surprising that someone who becomes such a sex symbol had such a terrible case of acne!

William Castor's post

In the second section of his book “The Sacralization of Culture”, Levine discusses the very distinct changes that begin to invade American culture during the years following the American Civil War and especially during the beginning of the twentieth century. As in the first section concentrating on the American representation of the works of Shakespeare, the second section follows the paths of the symphony, opera, museums, and even photography. Through his study of the changes present in art during this era, what Levine truly elaborates on is the more complicated maturing of a recently established nation. We would be wise to remember that many of the changes occurring in the arts, were occurring only a century after the American Revolution.

One of the most prominent aspects of both the first and second sections of this work is the necessity of the American wealthy class to separate and establish themselves as a new world aristocracy; an aristocracy that mimics, borrows from, and idolizes that of the continent that had been shrugged off only several decades earlier. On page 140 Levine writes, “The process of sacralization reinforced the all too prevalent notion that for the source of divine inspiration and artistic creation one had to look not only upward but eastward toward Europe.” What has happened in this process of sacralization, and especially of the art of European masters, is the early nineteenth century struggle against European class structures and elitism prevalent in the American people is being paved over for the emergence of American class structures and elitism. The earlier struggle against the traditional European class structure is present on page 97 as Levine quotes Parker Willis on Jenny Lind and her American tour (1850-1852) and highlights that the success of her tour “was ‘proof of the slightness of separation between the upper and middle classes of our country.’” By the twentieth century, that “slightness” will be under attack as the wealthy individuals within American assume the role of financially supporting and intellectually structuring artistic expression. These ideas are evident on pages 122 and 123 most notably in the phrases “merchant princes” and “paternal rule.”

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American performers and conductors often reinterpreted work of great masters to suit the tastes of their American audiences. Levine describes this as “a ethos that did not consider opera-or most other forms of music, for that matter-to be finished, inalterable works of art” (95). Levine later goes to great lengths to convey the notion that late nineteenth and early twentieth century “educated” artists and critics would not accept and deviation form the original piece. They viewed works, especially musical works, of the European masters to be infallible and unchangeable to any decent composer or performer.

In the concluding pages of his discussion of, or critique of, the change in American attitudes about the consumption of art, Levine makes a very important observation. He states that although the movement to confine art, i.e. opera, symphony, sculpture, etc., to locales of high appreciation and study was successful it was not permanent. On 167 he observes that institutions of high culture that had become elitist and sacred by the beginning of the century began again throughout the rest of the century to reach out to the masses. Although not completely returned to the days of the marriage of high culture and common performance in one evening, we do have a more accessible attitude.

Taste the Rainbow

Once a week, the best band kids played with the orchestra. I played the bass drum in orchestra, which meant that I never got to play. My participation ratio was something like seventy-five measures of rest per one big bass wallop. This gave me plenty of time to contemplate the class warfare of the situation. Here’s what I figured out: Orchestra kids wear tuxedos. Band kids wear tuxedo T-shirts.

The orchestra kids, with their brown woolens and Teutonic last names, had the well-scrubbed, dark blond aura of a Hitler Youth brigade. These were the sons and daughters of humanities professors. They took German. They played soccer. Dumping the fluorescent T-shirts of the band kids into the orchestra each week must have looked like tossing a handful of Skittles into a box of Swiss chocolates. (27)

--Sarah Vowell, “Music Lessons” from Take the Cannoli

Readers take away many life lessons from Sarah Vowell’s incredibly awkward childhood. In this class, we can see Vowell’s discovery of “Marxism for Tenth Graders” as testament that the division between band and orchestra music that Levine introduces is indeed pertinent to today’s own division of the tuxedo-wearing orchestra musicians the tuxedo t-shirt-wearing marching band musicians. Levine’s examination of the shifts in popularity and accessibility to opera, symphonic music, museums, libraries, and so forth indeed gives us a fair foundation in which to examine how other pop culture artifacts have gone through similar process of “sacralization.”

I think the most effective way to take a look at Levine’s argument in this section is to look at the conclusion first. Levine notes, “It is important to understand that although sacralization became a cultural fact and shaped twentieth-century cultural attitudes and practices, it never became a cultural reality. By its very nature it remained an ideal” (167). I almost wish that Levine would have thrown this idea in the pot at the beginning of the chapter so that it could stew with us for the duration of our reading. Still, as we reflect on today’s reading, let’s keep that hambone of a quote in mind.


Levine begins Part 2 with an examination of the sacralization of opera in the nineteenth century. He notes that like Shakespearean drama, opera was “simultaneously popular and elite” (86). The complex relationship between popularity and elitism becomes easier to see as the century goes on. First, the operas begin in traveling companies which make the opera experience accessible and popular to those towns that were given the opportunity to see the companies. Thus, the music from the operas became a part of American culture’s supertext, which led to parodies and new words set to more operatic melodies. Soon, English translations of operas also became a part of the pop culture. Opera left in its original Italian, according to Levine, came to represent the “snobberies that so frequently angered play-goers” (94), yet later these snobberies were embraced as the opera, by 1916, became a thing controlled by a few rich men in search of fineries rather than as something that would enrich the whole city. Levine uses the evidence from W.J. Henderson of The New York Times to effectively wrap up this section as Henderson saw opera becoming “more a symbol of culture than a real cultural force” (104). This idea of cultural symbolism manifests itself in the remaining examples of similar trends in symphonic music, museums, lithography, etc.

I’d like to return my Sarah Vowell passage as a transition to how Levine’s claimed patterns are still present in today’s culture and the symbolic divisions of culture. Vowell’s observation that band kids playing in the orchestra must have looked like Skittles in a box of Swiss chocolates is applicable in a variety of modern day situations. However, what changes is what is a “Skittle” and what is a “box of Swiss chocolates.” Take the Beatles for an example. Their rock music was a sensation in its day for the popular culture. Today, it has become that box of Swiss chocolates as the most hardcore of Beatles fans are disgruntled with how iconic the band is with the more recent generations as everyone recognizes the face of John Lennon and several of the album covers as they appear on t-shirts in stores like Hot Topic. I can remember the mixed reviews when Across the Universe made its debut in theaters across the country. Those who view the Beatles as sacred were outraged by the covers of the songs done by seemingly amateur singers as the rock opera appealed to the culture at large for the sake of a box office hit. These tensions between popularity and elitism fit very well with Levine’s observation of the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s shifts in how art should be handled and who has the right to handle it.

On a personal note, I prefer Skittles to Swiss chocolates.

The struggle of art appreciation

The struggle of art appreciation

Why did the masses enjoy art?

In the section “The Sacralization of Culture,” Levine makes a variety of claims about the popularity of many art forms. One of the most debatable assumptions that Levine seems to make during section two, is that the average American patron of the arts enjoyed these activities on a level that did not go beyond simple viewing pleasure. Levine writes,
“Opera was simultaneously popular and elite. That is, it was attended both by large numbers of people who derived great pleasure from it and experienced it in the context of their normal everyday culture, and by smaller socially and economically elite groups who derived both pleasure and social confirmation from it,” (86). The assertion that the greater American population saw opera through a very restricted lens that only pertained to their own culture and could not see the larger scope of art seems unfair. In relation to this topic, Levine writes about European visitors dominating the cultural scene, “it should hardly surprise us then that three of the most popular European visitors to the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century…along with many less well-known foreign stars, symbolized the best of European culture without an aura of exclusiveness. But would gladly play ‘Yankee Doodle,’” (108). I find it strange that Levine points out how well Americans loved European stars such as Jenny Lind but does not seem to consider that perhaps this interest in foreign stars is at least in some part due to a curiosity about the world outside of their own. It can be assumed that there were citizens in America who could sing, dance, and act yet Levine points out, “The great European opera singers did exactly what the great Shakespearean actors did: they journeyed to America where lucrative tours awaited them,” (89). It seems strange that these tours were so popular just because the masses liked what was being performed. I think tours might not have been lucrative simply because the masses could only relate to it in the context of their own lives, but perhaps because they could see past the obvious beauty of Jenny Lind’s voice (and outward appearance) and saw what she represented. By importing talent the everyday American could see what was popular in other lands, and perhaps get a glimpse into how people in different countries entertain. Yes, Levine asserts that the population did love it when one of these stars would sign a patriotic song such as Yankee Doodle, but I cannot help but think that the average American saw more in these performances than the most base level enjoyment.

What Is Shakespeare Really Worth?

In the first section of Highbrow / Lowbrow, Levine suggests, somewhat squeamishly at first, that the works of William Shakespeare were once integral parts of nineteenth-century American popular culture, familiar and available to all Americans regardless of race, class or gender. He points out that those attending Shakespeare performances at the theater represented a “microcosm of American society” of which Shakespeare spoke to every segment (25). The production of various farces and parodies of Shakespeare’s plays suggested that not only were Americans familiar with the work, but also understood and made some connection with its content. The great transition of Shakespeare’s works from entertainment to “classics” is a matter of perception rooted primarily in a class hierarchy led by elite intellectuals, and regardless of their effort to preserve the literary genius of Shakespeare’s creations, all that remained was William Shakespeare the creator.

Increased consumption was more than likely another explanation for the gradual demise of theater popularity that Levine alludes to but does not expand upon. With the increasing availability of alternate forms of entertainment—i.e. television, film, radio—consumers delighted themselves in other venues, leaving the theater no longer a main site of social interaction, which could spark the argument that society abandoned Shakespeare rather than vice versa. However, I’m on the advocating end of this blog and more interested in Levine’s discussion of changing social conventions within the theater, drama, literature, and refined, “cultured” taste.

While the division of the theater highlights an already existing class hierarchy, Levine seems to suggest that the tension between the boxes and the gallery heightened into and throughout the latter half of the century, possibly as a result of shifting tastes, refinement, and construction of appropriate social behaviors. Simultaneously, two very separate ways of viewing and appreciating Shakespeare were developing. The nineteenth-century audience related to Shakespeare’s characters’ values “that seemed real and came to matter the audience (who also enjoyed the action, entertainment, comedy, and great actors). The refined intellectual audience sought the deeper meaning, “the subtleties” (35), in Shakespeare’s verse, analyzing the literary merit, and deeming it Literature. (Of which I am not critical since, of course, drama is literature and certainly worthy of literary analysis) Yet, when the elite abandoned the common theater for more upscale renditions, they took Shakespeare with them, (which seemed like an intellectual colonization of the theatre) making him “the possession of the educated portions of society” (31). Shakespeare plays became something the viewer or reader had to understand, not merely enjoy, which removed them from society at large.

I’d like to take up Levine’s question from the prologue in which he briefly mentions the shift in social conventions during the nineteenth century into the twentieth and asks “what was lost to our culture in their demise?” (9) Because of this shift to understand, particularly in the 20th century when flowery poetic language was on the decline, it seems to me that a question arose as to who was even trained and worthy of analyzing or discussing Shakespeare. I don’t think this is uncommon today and Levine himself comments in the prologue that as a historian he questioned his authority to comment on Shakespeare. Similarly, does a chemist have the authority to comment on a painting or sculpture; a financial advisor on the Italian opera? Or better yet, to create art? While I’m certainly not advocating for the de-intellectualizing of Shakespeare’s work, or any other form of art, I think Levine’s question of what was gained and what was lost is one that warrants further contemplation. Levine informs us that the average Joe in nineteenth-century America was randomly reciting verses of Shakespeare in the streets, that it was a part of everyday culture, that Americans were familiar with and knowledgeable of not only Shakespeare the creator, but Shakespeare’s creations.

It Had to Be Good to Get Where It Is

It’s a good thing that I was assigned the role of advocate for this reading, cuz I don’t have much in the way of quibbles with Levine. What I want to offer here are two minor interventions, two suggestions that I feel accord with Levine’s discussion but are things that he doesn’t ever quite say.

First of all I want to talk about how something becomes a “classic.” When articulating the way that Shakespeare’s oeuvre was transformed from popular culture to high culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Levine quotes someone named Alfred Harbage: “The plays of Shakespeare, he reflected ‘have ceased to be plays at all—they have become classics’” (32). Now, as we saw in the chapter, Levine cites a number of possible explanations for Shakespeare’s transition during this period: an influx of non-English speaking immigrants, the emergence of radio and cinema, business changes in the way theaters were operated, and so on. But one simple variable he doesn’t mention: time. Perhaps he treats it as a given, but clearly time is the most critical factor in determining the status of a piece of art as a “classic.” For instance, look at this weird Coke ad that I found: it suggests that Coke is parallel to Shakespeare to the extent that “It had to be good to get where it is.” In other words, both have stood the test of time.

While reading Levine and thinking about “classic” status, I thought of this great line in Roman Polanski’s film Chinatown that’s contributed by John Huston’s character. He says that “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all become respectable if they last long enough.” (There's a certain ironic self-reference in this comment considering Chinatown revives 1940s film noir themes and aesthetics, but that's another story.) I’d argue the same happened with Shakespeare during the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Now, granted, Shakespeare’s work was already old during the earlier period that Levine characterizes as his popular American heyday (the 18th cent.). But I’d suggest that Shakespeare had to be displaced before he could really feel old: in the period in question things like radio, film, and television replaced Shakespare and the theater at large as the dominant popular, communal entertainment. In this way Shakespeare and drama were for the first time palpably of another era.

In recent years it seems that, with the proliferation of popular culture and entertainment, nostalgia and “classic” status come about at a much faster speed than in the past. There’s more coming and going, so there’s more to take the place of what we had before. Recall our discussion from Monday: many of us quickly became nostalgic about pogs, TV shows we grew up on, and so forth. Hell, Vh1 even started airing I Love the 90s as early as 2004. Everything gets respectable if it lasts long enough, and time has a way of making almost anything--even Mr. Ed, which, like Kathy joked, was an awful show--"a classic" once it's no longer the entertainment of the day. I think that happened with Shakespeare. As the age of the theater waned, his works became classic entertainment rather than mainstream entertainment; they became respectable objects instead of just diversions.

My second point can be made more briefly. Did anyone else think that it’s not a coincidence that the period when Shakespeare became elite entertainment was the same period in which English Studies and English Literature as disciplines were born? Levine almost suggests this when he talks about Shakespeare’s “shrine makers,” who believed that “the reading of Shakespeare is an art, and the editing of him a mystery” (70). And Levine mentions that some folks of this time argued that Shakespeare was “too complex for untrained minds” and that appreciating his works required “rigid mechanical training” (71, 73). But Levine is a historian, not an English person, so the development of “English Literature” might not have been on his mind. I’m no expert on the birth of English, but I think it’s fair to say that the early English field was obsessed with legitimating itself and justifying its necessity. For that reason it makes sense that early literature scholars would claim propriety and authority over Shakespeare’s works, in the process elevating them from entertainment to an object of study. I feel like the same sort of thing has happened with old movies and Film Studies. Take Hitchcock, for instance: when they originally came out, everyone and anyone saw Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and so on, but in recent years I feel they’ve been sort of co-opted by the cognoscenti and academics, who, presumably, appreciate them on a level that the naïve rubes in the 1950s cinemas couldn’t.

Not Just Aping the Brits

Levine's first chapter of Highbrow Lowbrow provides a solid introduction to his work's premise: by the turn of the century, American culture had shifted from a heterogenous and democratic arena allowing for the mixing of classes to a series of discrete venues segregated by refinement of sensibilities. Levine does such a good job positing arguments, spinning them to take another perspective, and moving on, that it is hard to find fault with a particular argument. He writes at the end of his first chapter that the shift in American appreciation for Shakespeare must be so thoroughly (and yet vaguely) theorized, because it parallels the development of all "Culture" and art in the country. In passing through so many positions, he does not do justice to one in particular, that of the nationalist implications of the mass eschewing of Shakespeare.

Levine argues that Shakespeare was "in tune with much of nineteenth-century American consciousness," but then somehow this changes (39). If Shakespeare had been "presented as 'moral dialogues'" (and presumably appreciated as such), why did that appreciation stop? Did America become a less moral place? Shakespeare's "plays had meaning to a nation that placed the individual at the center of the universe" (40), so why did that nation give up those stories of individuality? I doubt America had become less individualistic. Levine even presents the case for greater individuality at the time of Shakespeare's decline, arguing that people of different artistic sensibilities opted to segregate into audiences based on taste (60).

It seems clear that class is an issue to the rise of taste, but Levine might be missing something here with his argument regarding Shakespeare. Shakespeare, though speaking to the American mood, was not American. While America had no great cultural creators, it was easy to adopt the seemingly eternal (and therefore perhaps nationally neutral) Shakespeare, who came from mean beginnings, as an icon of American gumption and thus of America. Once America began to foster its own artistic geniuses, it would seem possible that Shakespeare might seem out of touch. American artists in the mid- to late- nineteenth century were writing and performing their own works, works that were contemporary and more understandable, or at least inherently more interesting, to their fellow Americans. With art of their own, at all levels of taste, Americans could leave behind the (im)perfectly popular Shakespeare, with its mixture of refined and vulgar tastes. Similarly, with greater opportunity for national (as opposed to neutral) amusements, Americans could divide themselves how they saw fit.

Given that there were more everyday entertainments of esteem and also of humor in America than Shakespeare, it seems odd to think that Shakespeare, a foreigner with royal patronage from his historically oppressive country, would have had such a place in American culture as Levine argues. But perhaps the prospect of a long-dead foreigner's works, however difficult they might have been to read (though certainly not to watch), were more appealing to a nation still finding its chauvinistic footing than a contemporary foreigner's entertainment. I would not argue that Levine is wrong, but I do believe he has glanced over an important American ideal in his attempt to cover so many bases. To prefer American works, whether reinterpretations of Shakespeare's work, parodies of it, or simply more vulgar fare, might have been the patriotic thing to do.

Welcome to the study of the brows!

Dear Class: Welcome to our class blog. You will soon receive an invitation to contribute to the blog. Before each class meeting in which we have readings three of you will "advocate" or "dissent" some aspect (your choice) of the assigned reading. 500 words is a good gauge; if you go over we won't mind, as long as it's not too long.