Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend - Hardcover

Rodman, Gilbert B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415110025 ISBN 13: 9780415110020

Publisher: Routledge, 1996

Synopsis

'For a dead man, Elvis Presley is awfully noisy. His body may have failed him in 1977, but today his spirit, his image, and his myths do more than live on: they flourish, they thrive, they multiply.'
Why is Elvis Presley so ubiquitous a presence in US culture? Why does he continue to enjoy a cultural prominence that would be the envy of the most heavily publicized living celebrities?
In Elvis after Elvis Gil Rodman traces the myriad manifestations of The King in popular and not-so-popular culture. He asks why Elvis continues to defy our expectations of how dead stars are supposed to behave: Elvis not only refuses to go away, he keeps showing up in places where he seemingly doesn't belong.
Rodman draws upon an extensive and eclectic body of Elvis 'sightings', from Elvis's appearances at the heart of the 1992 Presidential campaign to the debate over his worthiness as a subject for a postage stamp, and from Elvis's central role in furious debates about racism and the appropriation of African-American music to the world of Elvis impersonators and the importance of Graceland as a place of pilgrimage for Elvis fans and followers.
Rodman shows how Elvis has become inseparable from many of the defining myths of US culture, enmeshed with the American dream and the very idea of the 'United States', caught up in debates about race, gender and sexuality and in the wars over what constitutes a national culture.

About this title

Review:

"With painstaking thoroughness, Rodman explores how Elvis defined new popular cultural parameters during a time when America was in rapid transion--helping to give rise to the legend that still lives on....it can reward one with solid information as well as unique food for thought."
-Library Journal
..." this book is suitably flashy for its subject matter, but it is also a work of considerable scholarship and careful analysis."
-Brian Pennington, Emory University

Synopsis:

Nearly twenty years after his death, Elvis Presley enjoys the sort of cultural prominence that would be the envy of even the most highly publicized living celebrities. His body may have failed him on that fateful day in August 1977, but today his spirit, his image and myth do more than live on: they flourish and thrive. Elvis is everywhere, sneaking out of innumerable corners of the cultural terrain in ways that defy our common sense understanding of how dead stars are supposed to behave. This phenomenon is noteworthy, not just because Elvis refuses to go away, but because he keeps showing up in places where he seemingly doesn't belong. Drawing on a range of theoretical positions from cultural studies, Elvis After Elvis offers a series of explanations for the surprising potency and lingering presence of Elvis as a cultural icon. What is different about Elvis that allows him to enjoy a cultural ubiquity that other stars don't? What makes it possible for Elvis to be so readily appropriated in such diverse ways? And what is it about our time that makes Elvis's current manifestations so different from those that existed when he was alive?

Gil Rodman offers a series of interpretations for the extensive body of 'Elvis sightings'- from his repeated appearances at the heart of the 1992 Presidential campaign to the debate over his worthiness as a subject for a postage stamp. Rodman also looks at how the image of Elvis has been subverted (a drug-addled Elvis, acting as an early drug czar, shaking hands with President Nixon), to abuse heaped upon him by punk rock bands and rap groups. Elvis After Elvis is an accessible, often-times funny look at the relationship between popular culture and stardom in America.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0415110025
• ISBN 13: 9780415110020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278