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.

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.