Elvis Read Books, Had Excellent Taste in Movies

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(photo: Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman, in Blazing Saddles, with books in background)
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Well, if you're in Memphis, you pretty much have to visit Graceland. I'm in Memphis, so I visited Graceland.

A "modest mansion" is an oxymoron, but I think the phrase fits Elvis's home, which he decorated immodestly. Actually, the place is probably decorated just the way most young working-class men in the 1950s-through-early-1970s would have decorated a place if a) they suddenly obtained a great deal of cash, b) were under no one's guidance, and c) were egged on by a bunch of "pals"--or hangers-on.

My second impression concerns just how much cash the site generates. The scale of the operation is difficult to fathom. It is a massive cash-machine. I do wish a significant percentage of that money were dedicated to not-for-profit aims, particularly in Memphis, to address poverty, educational needs, and even basic infrastructure-problems. That would be a good thing, such channeling.

On the tour of the larger airplane, I learned that Elvis liked to read and traveled with boxes of books. What exactly he read is unclear, but one site on the web points to some of his spiritual reading: http://www.bodhitree.com/booklists/elvis.presley.html

However, in the mansion, at least on the ground floor, there appears to have been no space for books. The scholar and bibliographer in me would love to acquire lists of books Elvis read. What was in those boxes he toted to Las Vegas? As a reader, he probably had the same habits, if not the same classical education (Humes High School v. Pembroke College, Oxford, so it goes) as Samuel Johnson, including impatience. Johnson famously tossed books across the room when he became bored with them, and one imagines the nervous, pharmaceutically sped-up Elvis reading voraciously but getting bored fast. Cat on a hot tin roof, so to speak. Go, cat, go.

I also learned that among Elvis's favorite movies to watch on the plane were Blazing Saddles and the Monty Python films. This confirms that Elvis had great taste in cinema, at least in the comedy column. Of course, as with the home-decoration, the taste in comedies also betrays a bit of male adolescent bias. As clever as Brooks and the Monty Python team are, they're also mischievous in an adolescent way.

Most of Elvis's own movies are (as you know) bad, sometimes so bad they're campy and good, but that was Hollywood's and the Colonel's fault. Elvis was actually a good instinctive actor, as Walter Matthau once observed. He worked with Elvis in King Creole, and he said that after a scene, the director told him (Matthau) to stop trying so hard, and Matthau was aware of the extent to which Elvis wasn't trying hard but had a good sense of timing. One imagines all the good, surprising, interesting movies Elvis might have made. Too bad he didn't collaborate with the Monty Python troupe early on. Too bad Samuel Johnson never got to visit Graceland.

Who's Crazier, Who's Funnier?

Apparently there are two new cinematic satires out there, Bill Maher's funny (Maher hopes) nonfiction take on religion and some guy's feature-length "comedy," "American Carol," in which documentary-maker Michael Moore (a character based on him, that is) is given a Scrooge-like tour of what would have happened had the U.S. not fought in certain wars. The tour sounds more like the one George takes in It's A Wonderful Life, but oh well.

I won't see either of these movies because I'm boycotting Hollywood films. Just imagine how terrified Hollywood moguls must be of my boycott.

I don't think I'll even watch these films when they percolate down the electronic strata and end up on cable or "free" TV.

I think they'll be bad satire; that's the main problem. Long ago and far away, I wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on satire, and I almost remember some of what I wrote.

The satire of Moore will be (is) bad because he's not a worthy object of satire, which ridicules vice and/or folly. As satire ridicules, however, it implicitly asks to be judged by the worthiness, the heft, of its target. For example, Jonathan Swift took on all of England, if not all of humanity.
In the cinematic realm, Mel Brooks took on the entire hallowed genre of the Western, as well as taking on the issue of race in the U.S., in Blazing Saddles.

Let's assume you don't like Moore's documentaries or you don't think they're very good. Fine. They and he still aren't vicious and foolish enough to fuel funny, worthy satire. Also, Moore never argued against all U.S. wars, just the ones lots of people have doubts about. Also, even if he's misguided, he's not mean, at least not in the way Scrooge is. Moore's a successful film-maker, a big moose of a guy, and a person with opinions, most of which are about social class, not war. Maybe you could squeeze out a three-minute SNL sketch on him--something about Michael Moore's Hollywood entourage, or Michael Moore in Cannes. There are some humorous possibilities there. Or Michael Moore dating Paris Hilton? That might be funny. For a moment.

But for a feature-film-length satire, you need to think big. Think Dr. Strangelove. The guy who got the financial backing for "American Carol" must have leveraged some moguls who simply don't like Moore and think he's too lefty. Maybe some of them thought the scene he did with Charleton Heston (when Heston was already clearly a bit befuddled) was gratuitous. Who knows? But satirizing Michael Moore is like satirizing Bruce Springsteen. If you hate the documentaries or the music or are bugged by the success or something, just say so, in an email, a blog post, or a review. Not in a full-fledged satire, for heaven's sake. The genre doesn't work that way.

Maher's satire will fail for similar reasons. Religion is indeed big enough to satirize (many have done it well, including James Hogg), but Maher's gone after small targets like a Jesus impersonator and some village (in Ireland?) that still pays homage to some kind of figure of legend. In the one clip from the movie I've seen, the Jesus impersonator says to Maher, calmly, "What if you're wrong [about God]?" (Maher is an atheist, of course). Maher responds, "What if YOU'RE wrong?" I had exchanges like this with my brothers when we were adolescents. The exchanges were not the stuff of world-class satire.

Maher also apparently presents such revelations that some people of faith use their religion as an excuse to commit violence and even atrocities, and that some religious people are hypocritical. Next, I suppose, he will reveal that some politicians are insincere.

Apparently, Maher has a "theory" that (all?) people who believe in a religion or even in God have a mental disorder. If that's the case, he'd better hope there's a God. Also, who's crazier (and sadder)? Someone who goes to church once a week, finds some fellowship and contemplation, and then goes out for pancakes, or a middle-aged stand-up comic running around with a camera crew making fun of Jesus impersonators or arguing with people about religion?

In the realm of the religious, the ones that seem foolish and vicious enough to satirize are the extraordinarily wealthy pastors of mega-churches who literally preach "the gospel of wealth." Just imagine what Jesus would think of these clowns, or how Jonathan Swift (or Mel Brooks) would satirize them.

I'd rather see videos of Maher talking to smart people who write about religion, people like Garry Wills, Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, and so on. They all have sense of humor, and they know a massive amount about religion. Wills even wrote a book on the very religious and very funny G.K. Chesterton, devoutly Catholic, satirical in a most British way, inventive--really a kind of grandfather to the Monty Python folk, artistically speaking.

Maher attended Cornell, if memory serves, and he seems quite confident in his intellect and his sharp social criticism. He's a smart, hip guy. He'd probably have fun arguing with someone like Garry Wills, and it would probably be funnier than "Religuous," his movie, with a title that's not funny.

A better satiric target for Maher (not that he cares about, needs, or wants my advice) would be ABC and its parent company--the ones who fired him for saying that it took more courage to drive a car-bomb than to bomb a city from 30,000 feet (I'm paraphrasing). They fired him from a show called Politically Incorrect for making a comment that was politically incorrect not in the sense that reactionaries take the term (as something that would offend feminists or liberals), but that was politically incorrect because some advertisers pulled their money from his show. Media conglomerates. Corporations that fund TV shows. Now, there are some targets worthy of first-rate satire. (But I guess it would be hard to get backing for such a film in Hollywood. )

But everyday, ordinary religious people? Michael Moore? Whatever you think of them, they're just not vicious, foolish, and powerful enough to sustain satire. It's a genre-thing.

Full disclosure: I'm Catholic, having converted from a spiritual stew of atheism, agnosticism, and Zen about 8 years ago. I attend a progressive Jesuit parish. I've met several parishioners and Jesuits who seem funnier than Bill Maher, but that's not his fault. My parish just happens to have some humorous, ironic people in it. The parish does insane things like distribute large amounts of food to families in economic difficulties (the religion, or not, of the families is not relevant to their getting food. There isn't even a means test, so Bill Maher is welcome to a bag of groceries). Yes, of course there are 3 masses per weekend in which the parishioners believe bread and wine are inspirited. If you think that's irrational, you're right. Hence the term faith. No, the parishioners don't think God is an old man with a white beard who sits on a cloud and directs traffic (one of Maher's favorite jokes). Incidentally, of the best naturally talented satirists I know is a product of Jesuit education. Hmmmm.

But it's not a religion-thing. It's a genre-thing. Satirists need worthy targets.

Clough (Rhymes With Tough) and Ten Revised Commandments

Here's a poem from 1862 that seems to resonate nicely in 2007; the poem presents a revised version of the Ten Commandments:

The Latest Decalogue

by Arthur Hugh Clough

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for for they curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

The sum of all is, thou shalt love,
If any body, God above:
At any rate shall never labour
More than thyself to love thy neighbour.

from Victorian Poetry: Clough to Kipling, edited by Arthur J. Carr (2nd edition), New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1972), pp. 25-26.

Clough--pronounced "Cluff"--experienced something of a classic Victorian crisis of spirituality. The Victorians, at least those who had time to think about things, had to contend with Origin of Species (1859), which indirectly called into question a literal reception of the Bible's report about how Creation came to be, and they had to contend with what was known as the "Higher Criticism" of the Bible--an approach that was more historical than theological. Such criticism was symbolized by a biography of Jesus written by a German named Strauss. The very idea of approaching Jesus an as historical figure was, understandably, a blow to conventional theology.

Clough was at Oxford when some of this tumult occurred, and the tumult included the Oxford Movement, a kind of struggle between Anglicanism and Catholicism. Thereafter, Clough had trouble accepting traditional dogma, but he also developed a sour view of a world that seemed to have no spiritual anchorage, so "The Latest Decalogue" satirically derides a morality of convenience.

The lines about "graven images" make me think of debates about whether to keep "In God We Trust" on American currency. I'm pretty sure Clough would argue that the debate--regardless of which side one takes--is beside the point. It's the money, not the slogan, that's being worshipped, so who cares what's printed on the money? The poem cautions against cursing, but only from a practical standpoint: we're in a modern age now when curses don't work, so don't waste your energy. Yes, it's still a good idea not to kill anybody, but don't go out of your way to prevent others from killing others. This made me think of how I did almost nothing to try to stop the U.S. from invading Iraq and thereby killing thousands of Iraqi citizens and getting thousands of Americans killed or wounded. As with cursing, adultery is still a bad idea, but only because of practical concerns, suggests the poem. Honor your parents--and anybody else who's in power and can help you get ahead. Don't covet, but continue to compete like a maniac in the economy of capital and laissez faire. Clough wrote when England was, arguably, at the height of its colonial prowess, so there is a sense in which England coveted all the world's goods, just as the U.S. seems to covet all the world's markets and most of the world's inexpensive labor. But fear not: we are a Judeo-Christian nation! Of course we don't covet! And we may not hate our neighbors, Clough suggests, but it's imperative to love yourself more than anybody else. Take care of Number One.

Clough was good friends with Matthew Arnold, author of the famous (and well parodied) "Dover Beach." Oddly enough, although Clough was born in England, he spent his early years in the U.S.--in Charleston, South Carolina--before returning to England to go to school. He came back to the U.S.--to New England--in 1852 and got to know Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow (see the brief biography in the Rinehart edition cited). Unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis, and he died in Italy in 1861 (he was born in 1819). So "The Latest Decalogue" was published posthumously.

A side note: I think it may have been George Bernard Shaw who observed that all you need to do to realize how difficult English is to learn as a second language is to think about how differently such words as "enough," "though," and "slough" (and Clough) are supposed to be pronounced. A second side note: I can almost never think of the Ten Commandments without thinking of Mel Brooks's schtick wherein he plays Moses, who walks out from behind a rock with two stone tablets and proclaims that he has 20 commandments--then he drops one tablet, which breaks--then he recovers and says "make that TEN commandments"--to proclaim. Clough's humor is a little more subtle, to say the least, than Mel's.