Deja Oliver: Core Post #2--Elvis and Blackness

“Elvis is their image of an ideal American.” This statement explains why in the Black community there is a strange dichotomy in opinion of Elvis—he was what black people aren’t and cannot be, an “ideal American”. Either people felt (and still feel) he stole Black music, or they felt that the only “logical” situation where Elvis could make Black music popular was that he had to be secretly Black himself; much in the same way that lots of people claimed (and still do) that Bill Clinton was the first Black president. This may be a morbid way of framing it, but in America Black people are used to getting scraps. Whether the scraps are literal or figurative is immaterial; chitterlings or Elvis (or Bubba), we make do with what we can get.  It also seems evident that the tendency of African Americans to claim White things as Black stems from either a social necessity or emotional need to identify personally with Whiteness.  Even after our first literally Black president Barack Obama came into office, there were a multitude of people—mostly Black—who still viewed Clinton as the first Black president.

However with the passage of generations I think the tendency to “claim” Elvis has given way to criticizing him. Often the first criticism that comes to mind comes from pop culture: “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant sh*t to me”. The searing lyric comes from Public Enemy’s polarizing 1990 musical manifesto Fight the Power. From the critical perspective, Elvis is representative of White society’s relationship with Blackness; steal it,  try to replicate it, end up with something that’s barely recognizable in its original context, but label it as something different (or better) so people can’t compare it. “[H]e skillfully mixed black and white musical forms to create his own influential brand of rock and roll” this is putting it pretty graciously. Elvis didn’t “skillfully mix” or “create his own” anything; he flat out stole music from black artists. A contemporary situation that parallels Elvis is the presence of White rappers in Hip Hop; for example, Eminem and even more so with Iggy Azalea. Although I think the criticism levied against Azalea is justified, as compared to the criticism Eminem receives, some of the vitriol targeted towards Azalea seems possibly rooted in misogyny. Obviously there is a larger social media presence than during Eminem’s prime so any outcry seems louder now than in decades past but sometimes the Azalea slander borders on hateful—particularly when it comes from men and Eminem fans. The argument for Eminem’s legitimacy is often based on the fact that he writes his own content and he has a good lyrical “flow” but I’ve never found his raps to be on beat. Also, if it comes down to whether or not you write your own trash versus someone else writing trash for you, how different or better are you really?