Cinema Therapy — Charlyne Gelt, Ph.D.

Elvis

Baz Luhrmann’s film, Elvis, starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, illustrates music as a powerful medium of communication and a vehicle for change that got absorbed into the mainstream.

Elvis is a 2022 biographical musical drama film directed by Baz Luhrmann, about American music icon ElvisPresley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950s. From the film we learn about the enormous influence of 1950-60s Negro music, dance and religious church services had on Elvis’s performance and success with his audience. He incorporated all the clandestine moves he witnessed as a child peeking through Negro revival tents, into his own music. We also learn how he attempted, through his music and song, to take a stand on segregation of the time. He has had a remarkable influence integrating black and white ethnic groups by courageously including both black and white performers into the limelight with him.

Elvis, illustrates the transformative power of his music, one that altered the culture and the thinking of the time. Elvis grew up under the influence of a segregated negro community, the rhythmic and soulful sounds of black music, which arose out of the historical condition of slavery, and the outspoken voice of Negro pastors and evangelical revivals. The influence of black churches and black entertainers like Little Richard and BB King reveal the roots of his appeal, the gift of black Americans, and while on stage, brought his own longing for love, to life. He was a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel.

The film takes us on a life journey with Elvis: from singing an old number called “That’s All Right, Mama,” to “Hound Dog,” to Beale Street in Memphis, in Army uniform wooing Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), being told that his career is “in the toilet”; renewed success at the famous comeback concert of 1968 at the International Hotel, in Las Vegas, at Colonel Parker’s urging, to be a movie star, and saying to Priscilla, “I’m gonna be forty soon, ’Cilla. Forty.” Central to that journey is one of the most significant and influential people in Elvis's life, Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge). Two years later, he is gone. Compromised by years of prescription drug abuse and overeating, tragically, our superstar of soul and change died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

Elvis, the film, shows us he was a threat to the 1950-60s white establishment, then becoming a successful conduit for change in American youth. He ran loose as a child, where he joined with black youths who became transfixed after peering through a crack in a shack, where they spied a couple of sexy dancers writhing to the lusty wail of the blues. Through his song, dance and rhythmic gyrations, he advocated for justice and humanity. For those HELD in BONDAGE, his full-bodied, passionate performances unleashed the girdle of legal, sexual, and emotional restrictions of the time. The film, which illustrates his riveting performances, always permeated with sex appeal and superhero qualities.

Psychological Implications
Have you ever wondered about facade? Who was Elvis without his music, song, and dance? We all create an identity, does it come from within, our environment, or both?

The film Elvis begs us to question his family of origin history and what he experienced as a child that would make him sensitive to the sorrows and the suffering of those around him. Elvis’ life story is about the highs and the lows, of adulation from his audiences, and dark side of addictions that fed that need and caused the demise of those he loved, including himself. Let’s look at the dynamics of a few people who influenced him so profoundly: his mother, Col. Parker, Priscilla, and the audiences he loved and who loved him.

Our guide through the life and music of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), is his spidery manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). “Are you ready to fly?” Parker asks. Elvis’ close, trusting relationship with Parker took the place of, filled the empty gap, of the father who didn’t support or guide him through childhood. Elvis’ vulnerability got used by Parker who represented the father figure he never had. This trusting dynamic between Presley and the Colonel spanned over 20 years, from Presley's rise to fame to his unprecedented stardom, against the backdrop of the evolving cultural landscape and loss of innocence in America. Though he was not a colonel, or a Parker, or even a Tom. He was a Dutchman, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, who went to America and erected a new identity for himself. He became Elvis’s manager, his father-figure, and his abuser/terminator. Elvis got used and abused as he became a drug addicted, submissive victim in the hands of the Colonel’s own addiction to gambling. He sold out Elvis to pay off his gambling debts. Still, Parker states, “I didn’t kill him. I made Elvis Presley.”

Elvis, an only child, grew up in Mississippi from what may be termed lowly stock. The family lived in a black neighborhood with few advantages because his father couldn’t provide for the family. The close mother-son relationship may have replaced the emptiness of an emotionally absent father figure who was a poor provider. Pleasing his mother was an important part of his life that later got translated into a loving relationship with Priscilla. When he found his voice, he learned that he could please his audience in a way he could never quite please his mother, who lived with the fear and anxiety of the times, “what would the neighbors think”? Their later mother-son relationship was both loving, and distancing due to his larger-than-life, in the limelight lifestyle, and his close association with Negro musicians. Elvis bought his mother a house and she made it a home unlike the one he never had in his impoverished childhood. Still, Elvis’ onstage sexually provocative performance style, Pentecostal shakes and political stance for equality and integration, gave her more than heartburn, to say the least. In the end, her apprehension over his ego-driven, break-all-the-rules lifestyle was her death warrant.

Priscilla, who he met while serving in the US Army, became the love of his life. Love and loss are part and parcel of Elvis’ story. Eventually, Priscilla was forced to leave him due to his drug abuse and overeating. Though still in love with Elvis, she left him to deal with his addictions, and given how the movie shies away from sex and drugs, she was able to spare their daughter and herself from living an unstable life of sex, drugs, and addictions.

For the audience who tuned into to Dewey Phillip’s slot on WHBQ, in July 1954, and heard the King sing for the first time, and felt the ground shift beneath your feet, Elvis the film is a reminder of the power of song and of a changing time. But we can never go back. The meaning of this man’s life dwells in the heartfelt way he sings about love, and love between man and his fellow man, regardless of color. In fact, Elvis explosively pushed the boundaries of the color barrier of the time. His success and his achievements as a musician are rooted in his impoverished childhood, peeking into the soul of what was then termed “Negro” music, including Little Richard, BB King and others of the time. As we see in the film’s final song sung by the real Elvis, the best Elvis impersonator was Elvis himself.

Charlyne Gelt, Ph.D. (PSY22909) is a clinical psychologist who practices in Encino. She leads Women's Empowerment Groups that help women learn the tools to move beyond self-destructive relationship patterns. She may be reached at 818.501.4123 or cgelt@earthlink.net. Her office address is 16055 Ventura Blvd. #1129 Encino, CA 91436.