Poor white fantasy-figure

John Grigg

At the memorial service for Elvis Presley held on 19 August at Christ Church, Cock fosters, Mrs Caroline Zetland secretary of the North London branch of the Elvis Presley Fan Club told the packed and blub

bering congregation: 'It's fantastic that you've all come, fantastic'. Presumably by accident, she had chosen the mot juste.

In The Times's obituary of Presley (which took precedence over that of an eminent

churchman, Dr Wand, and also appeared in early editions the following day) it was shown that his musical contribution, such as it was, became 'irrelevant to the immensity of his legend', and that the fact that he 'never did or said anything remotely outrageous, significant or even interesting has only

added to the purity of his myth'. Not content with a long obituary, The Times also had a

leading article on Presley, in which he was described as 'the catalyst of the still unabated youth revolution', and his music as 'classless and not aimed at a particular racial group'.

In the United States President Carter reverting to the silliness of his Playboy interview-paid a fulsome tribute to Presley, who was, he said, 'unique and irreplaceable', and

whose death deprived his country of 'a part of itself'. (John Donne said something simi lar about the death of any man, but he was referring to the event as a reminder and symbol of mortality, not as the removal, in all cases, of outstanding personal merit, warranting a tribute from a head of state.) At least Mr Carter resisted strong pressure to declare the day of Presley's funeral a national day of mourning, and he neither attended the funeral nor filed past the open coffin beforehand. But it was appropriate that one of the 100,000 who did file past was Caroline Kennedy, daughter of another god-substitute in the modern cult of 'youth'. The youthfulness of Kennedy, as of Presley, was of course very relative. When Ken nedy was assassinated he was slightly older than Napoleon on his way to St Helenaand Napoleon was not born to great wealth and privilege. Presley at the time of his death was , considerably older than, say, Mozart or Schubert when they died.His death was certainly premature, but it can hardly be said that he died young.

Is it true that his music was 'not aimed at a particular racial group'? According to

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, his 'mix

ture of Gospel and country music never caught on to a big degree among blacks', and although he 'avoided racist politicians like George Wallace' his audience was essentially the same as Wallace's-the poor whites of America. In a sense, one could say that his fans throughout the world were also poor whites, since they tended to be inferior, inadequate people needing emotional reassurance and with a natural propensity to worship a glorified version of themselves.

That anyone so lacking in genuine talent or originality should have made such a mark in the world is ghastly evidence of the homogenising, stereotyping, proselytising power of modern mass communications. In the past, enthusiasm had to be generated the hard way. John Wesley, for instance, built up his 'fan club' by travelling thousands of miles on horseback and preaching forty thousand sermons-without benefit of electronic aids. Elvis Presley only had to record a song and millions immediately pulsated to its rhythm.

Clearly it was much more difficult for the trivial or counterfeit to gain acceptance

when the process of communicating with humanity at large itself required almost superhuman effort. But nowadays any sort of rubbish can be projected urbiet orbi in the twinkling of an eye.

The word 'classless' which The Times applied to Presley's music needs to be

examined rather carefully. It is too often used, as in this case, to suggest the transcending of artificial barriers and the prom otion of human brotherhood. But was Pre

sley's music classless in that sense? Quite apart from its special appeal to one class in one race, it was more obviously classless in

another and bad sense, that it neither conformed to, nor set, a standard of excellence.

It was not so much that it made people less snobbish or exclusive, as that it simply lacked class.

Besides, there is a contradiction between the idea of fighting exclusiveness and the idea of a 'youth revolution'. To the extent that Presley was the 'catalyst' of such a revolution, his music was sectional rather than universal. Until recently, it was the normal aspiration of ambitious youth to learn from older people, to master their tricks, and to consort with them on equal terms. The young sought equality, not a separate identity and of course that is still the aspiration of all (fortunately very many) who are not deluded and brain-washed by false propaganda.

But there is also, certainly, a cult of youth for its own sake, and a jargon implying war between generations. This is the most terr ible nonsense, which has gained currency partly through the moral cowardice and trendy subservience of the middle-aged. If it is right that there should be a law against discrimination on grounds of race or sex, should there not also be a law prohibiting discrimination on grounds of age, with penalties for anyone claiming exclusive virtue for any particular age-group?

Nemesis awaits any Section of the human race that becomes too obsessed by itself, and by its own qualities, rights and grievances, actual or supposed. Even the movement for female emancipation (a far more genuine cause than the 'youth revolution') had the effect, at least temporarily, of reducing the calibre of women in public life. No British female politician in the first decades of enfranchisement could match the achievement, or the personality, of a Florence Nightingale, a Beatrice Webb, or an Annie Besant.

It will be the same with the ultraself-conscious, ultra-self-assertive movement to emancipate youth. Indeed, it manifestly is the same, because where are the teenage geniuses? The young Mozart did not waste his time thinking about a generation gap. He did not feel that he was in a state of rebellion against the adult world. No doubt it gave him some satisfaction that he could compose so much better than most of his elders. He may even have been stimulated by a sense of healthy rivalry. But the idea of proclaiming a separate musical culture for his contemporaries would have seemed to him barbaric and utterly absurd.

Human beings of all ages require myths to sustain them, but the best sort of myths are those which both represent and inspire major advances in human endeavour; the worst sort, those which mark a reaction against, rather than an enhancement or refinement of, civilisation. Insofar as a myth is focused upon an individual, the individual should be -or should have been really out of the ordinary. Cults that take the form of worshipping figures of little or no intrinsic merit are sheer idolatry. Most of the young or not-so-young people associated with the Presley myth and its numerous derivatives flatter themselves that they are liberated from ancient dogma and restraint that they are free spirits in a world still dominated by out-of-date convention (`Victorian morality' is a favourite butt). But no age has been more massively conformist than the present age. When 'rebellion' involves a fashionable uniformity of opinion, conduct, taste, vocabulary and dress, it is not rebellion at all, but slavish conformism. The true youthful rebels are those who defy the prevailing fashion, and who dare to challenge the new orthodoxy masquerading as heresy. Coinciding, as it does, with the decay el traditional Christian belief, and the rejection of a large part of traditional Christian ethics, pop culture and the worship of poP stars cannot be dismissed as a trifling phenomenon. However banal its actual con' tent, it is full of menace for civilisation and has to be taken seriously as such.

This is not to say, of course, that rock music has no charm or that Presley himsell was a bad man. But since both the music and the man were, as The Times obituary put it, 'it:relevant to the immensity of his legend', it is the legend itself that must be considered and exploded. Such a low-grade fantasy must not be allowed to creep in where Christian angels now fear to tread.