Fashion

Oscar Wilde reportedly said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” Typical Wildean wit, perhaps addressed to the smart London world of snobs and social climbers, in which worth and station were not given, but asserted. They were asserted through notions about clothes (“fashion”), but also attitudes toward illness. As Susan Sontag observes in Illness as Metaphor (1978), “Both clothes (the outer garment of the body) and illness (a kind of interior decor of the body) became tropes for new attitudes toward the self.”

Sontag goes on to write:

Shelley wrote on July 27, 1820 to Keats, commiserating as one TB [tuberculosis] sufferer to another, that he has learned “that you continue to wear a consumptive appearance.” This was no mere turn of phrase. Consumption was understood as a manner of appearing, and that appearance became a staple of nineteenth-century manners. “Chopin was tubercular at a time when good health was not chic,” Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in 1913. “It was fashionable to be pale and drained; Princess Belgiojoso strolled along the boulevards…pale as death in person.” Saint-Saëns was right to connect an artist, Chopin, with the most celebrated femme fatale of the period, who did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB-influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks—at a moment when aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“You can never be too rich. You can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.)

Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of that distinctively modern activity, promoting the self as an image. The look of TB had, inevitably, to be considered attractive once it came to be considered a mark of distinction, of breeding. “I cough continually!” Marie Bashkirtseff wrote in the once widely read Journal which was published, after her death at twenty-four, in 1887. “But for a wonder, far from making me look ugly, this gives me an air of languor that is very becoming.” What was once the fashion for aristocratic femmes fatales and aspiring young artists became, inevitably, the province of fashion as such. Indeed, twentieth-century women’s fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

For Additional Reading: Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.

 

A Few Songs About Fashion And Self As Image:

David Bowie – Fashion

Lady Gaga – Fashion!

Green Day – Fashion Victim

The Kinks – Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Suede – She’s In Fashion

Kanye West – Dark Fantasy

ZZ Top – Sharp Dressed Man

On the Road to Shambala

As is well-known, James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933) is the origin of Shangri-La, the fictional utopia nestled high in the remote mountains of Tibet. Apparently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt admired the novel—and perhaps the 1937 Hollywood film adaptation as well. In 1942, given increased German submarine activity along the Atlantic coast, the Secret Service, concerned about the President’s safety, requested FDR discontinue his frequent cruises aboard his yacht, the USS Potomac, along the eastern waterways. Seeking a retreat that would not interfere with the President’s medical conditions of asthma and polio, FDR's physician recommended a summer camp for federal employees as well as Boy Scout groups called Camp Hi-Catoctin, located in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Upon seeing his mountain retreat in 1942, President Roosevelt named it Shangri-La. In 1953, several years after President Roosevelt’s death, the retreat was renamed Camp David by President Dwight Eisenhower, after his father and grandson, the name it retains to this day.

That the utopian promise represented by Shangri-La (Shambala) captured President Roosevelt’s imagination is certain. Pure speculation, but I wonder whether the film adaptation of Lost Horizon (1937), directed by Frank Capra, was perhaps more influential on Roosevelt in its conception of Shangri-La than the novel. Capra’s adaptation makes several (important) changes to the novel, one of them being to intensify Conway’s internal conflict about whether to stay in Shangri-La. In Hilton's novel, Mallinson is his protégé, vice-consul to Robert Conway’s role as consul in the British diplomatic service, but in the film adaptation he is replaced by George, Conway’s brother. In the film adaptation, there are two women who live in Shangri-La, Maria and Sondra. Maria’s role is similar to that of Lo-Tsen’s in the novel, but Sondra is introduced in order to develop a love interest for Conway. Robert Conway’s love for Sondra makes his decision to leave even more difficult: he is torn between his protective and filial affection for his younger brother and his romantic yearning for Sondra, along with his conviction that he has found his utopia and place in the world. Hence, the stakes for Conway are far higher in the adaptation than in the novel.

Perhaps the most important change in Capra’s film adaptation, though, is the addition of the character of Gloria, who replaces the kind but largely ineffectual missionary, Miss Brinklow. As the terminally ill, cynical consumptive, Gloria recovers her health, an indication of the restorative quality of the (magical) “air” in Shangri-La (mountain cures were a common belief). The magical quality of Shangri-La is represented by the High Lama, who dies at the age of 249. He was originally a Christian missionary monk who became converted to the east, although Shangri-La, with its motto of “moderation,” is ecumenical rather than dogmatic in its approach to spiritual tenets. I believe it was these features of Shangri-La, its restorative, healing powers, and its ecumenicalism, that appealed to the polio-stricken Roosevelt. I am sure this is not a startling new insight. Rather, what it does suggest is the power of Frank Capra’s film adaptation in influencing our (mis)conceptions about James Hilton’s Shangri-La. Certainly we can see it in popular music, such as “Shambala” (1973), in which the healing powers of Shangri-La are invoked: "Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain / With the rain in Shambala / Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame / With the rain in Shambala."

Here are some other songs inspired by Shangri-La/Shambala (not to mention the 60s pop group, The Shangri-Las):

Shangri-La – Matty Malneck and Robert Maxwell (1946) (covered by numerous artists)

Shangri-La – The Kinks (1969) (from the album Arthur)

Shambala – Daniel Moore (covered by B. W. Stevenson and The Three Dog Night, 1973)

Shangri-La – Electric Light Orchestra (from the album, A New World Record, 1976)

Our Shangri-La – Mark Knopfler (from the album, Shangri-La, 2004)

 

I must not neglect Johnny Mathis’ album, The Wonderful World of Make Believe (pictured, 1964), a collection of songs largely about imaginary, utopian places (Shangri-La, Camelot), the longing for a place in the world (I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, When You Wish Upon a Star), and the hope for everlasting love (Beyond the Sea, Beyond the Blue Horizon) – all fulfilled by a utopian Shangri-La.

Hollywood Before the Code

Depending upon which pop cultural dilettante you choose to read, “Pre-Code Cinema” is confined to the first few years of the sound era, the period from the industry adoption of sound in 1929 to the enactment of the Motion Picture Production Code that began on July 1, 1934. Some may expand the period to include Hollywood’s early silent era, arguing the pre-code era should include films made from 1921 through 1934. In any case, the term has become synonymous with a time period (narrowly) characterized by cinematic expressions of the forbidden, daring subject matter, and certain deliberate provocations. In this view, the Hollywood movies of the so-called “pre-code era” blended a daring social consciousness with a certain frankness in its portrayals of the American social scene, not unlike the “problem pictures” of the post-World War II era (e.g., The Best Years of Our Lives, The Pride of the Marines, Crossfire, Pinky, The Snake Pit). Warner Brothers in particular made such pictures in the pre-code era, with “hard-hitting,” “socially conscious” films such as I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Wild Boys of the Road.

However, unlike many of the “problem pictures,” the most daring pre-code films never made the yearly Top 25 box office hits list. For example, the “problem picture,” The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Thus, the designation, “Pre-Code Cinema,” seems perilously close to a marketing ploy, the assumption being that the daring, socially conscious films of the pre-1934 period are valuable precisely because they were, if not exactly avoided, neglected by moviegoers, who preferred more traditional, old-fashioned entertainment. The Criterion Collection’s forthcoming box set, Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, trades on the pre-code era as having a certain cultural cachet, the films’ significance a consequence of their daring, outré subject matter (a tautology), but—most importantly—due to the fact that they were neglected at the time of initial release (always an essential feature for any project of rehabilitation). I have seen two of the three films in the “Sideshow Shockers” box, Freaks (many times), and The Unknown (I have taught the film on a couple of occasions in order for students to study the performance of Lon Chaney, above), but I have never seen The Mystic (1925) and look forward to seeing it.

The reduction of “Pre-Code Cinema” to “forbidden” topics or to “hard-hitting” provocations impoverishes the films, ignoring how film genres evolved due, in part, to experimentation—the aforementioned films of Tod Browning were made possible because there was not yet a tendency toward genre consolidation or homogenization. If one wants to make the argument that “pre-code” Hollywood films differ from the films made after July 1, 1934, then it is possible to argue that genre homogenization (stereotypical narrative units, predictable conclusions, etc.) may have been an unintended consequence of the production code. It is naïve to believe that sex and violence vanished from Hollywood films after 1934; after all, sex and violence was (and is) Hollywood’s bread and butter, and the studio heads knew it. It is important to remember that the Motion Picture Production Code came about because the Hollywood studio heads endorsed it: the Hollywood film industry chose self-regulation as a way to protect itself from government regulation and censorship. “Pre-Code Cinema” simply names an earlier way of doing the same old business.

The Matrix at 25

Filmed in the first half of 1998, released in 1999, The Matrix is now 25 years old. The movie that was once considered the exemplar of avant-garde pop cinema has become déclassé. In his Variety review of The Matrix Resurrections (21 December 2021), Peter Debruge observed, “a property that was once so appealing for being cutting-edge is now being mined for its nostalgia value.” Clearly, in the pop cinema world, a quarter of a century is a long time: heavy-handed symbols such as red pills, blue pills, and disposable batteries have aged as poorly as non-fungible tokens. Few of those born after 1999 understand what a phone booth was for, the purpose or function of a (telephone) “operator,” or why this “operator” has to search for an available telephone in order to enable a character’s “exit” from the matrix (or “insertion” for that matter). The dial-up internet access that informed The Matrix is now as antiquated as a 1960s telephone switchboard. The green numerals of the opening credits, inspired by archaic CRT computer monitors, now appear self-consciously arty, and the greenish hue that influenced the color scheme of the film now seems quaint and affected. The virtual reality plot can now be seen for what it is, a variation of the time-travel plot, or asynchronous parallelism—co-existing parallel worlds on different time tracks—one time track being “subjective” reality, the other “objective.” The cumbersome dial-up access to the matrix occasionally gave rise to narrative implausibility, for instance, the betrayal scene, in which Cypher secretly meets with Agent Smith: how is Cypher able to insert himself into the matrix without the aid of an operator, and subsequently extract himself from the matrix without an operator’s assistance? However, given that its plot shifts are as abrupt as someone cutting the hard line, and given that its visual stylizations (e.g., "bullet time") take precedence over narrative coherence, one lasting achievement of The Matrix has made asking such questions seem improper.

A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy (Conclusion)

After roughly a decade, Angelique Pettyjohn resumed her career as a supporting actress in the movies. In 1979, for instance, she appeared as an extra in the comedy, Going in Style, but by then she was better known as a Las Vegas showgirl. In the mid-1970s, she had been a featured showgirl in the Vive Paris Vive show at the Aladdin Hotel, and by 1978 had teamed with comedian Bob Mitchell in an “Olde Tyme Burlesque” show at the Maxim Hotel & Casino which, at the time, was the only fully nude strip club in Las Vegas. (The advertisement is taken from the Vegas Visitor paper, October 5-11, 1979.) She was photographed by Robert Scott Hooper for the February 1979 Playboy pictorial, “The Girls of Las Vegas,” and beginning in the early 1980s, she began to make appearances at Star Trek conventions, appearing in her Shahna costume from “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” selling signed pictures for fans. She also appeared in several movies in the 1980s, and also married for the fifth time (not fourth), a marriage that also ended in divorce (1984-1989). Dr. Flynn met her on the Star Trek convention circuit in the early 1980s and became a friend of hers, remaining so until her death on February 14, 1992, at age 48. It was his friendship with her that prompted him to write the book, The Sci-Fi Siren Who Dared Love Elvis and Other Stars, although by the time of the book's publication, in 2020, the subject of his book had been dead 28 years.

Despite the argument put forth in Dr. Flynn’s book, there is no factual evidence that Elvis Presley was in Las Vegas in March 1961. There is not one shred of factual evidence in Dr. Flynn's book proving without doubt that Dorothy Perrins was in Las Vegas in March 1961, either. In 1967, she did indeed appear in Clambake with Elvis Presley, that is factually true. And she may indeed be the mother of the man who now calls himself Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr. About that matter, I can say nothing. For additional information about Elvis's activities in 1961, there is a several hundred-page, exhaustively detailed book by Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen, titled Elvis Day By Day (Ballantine, 1999), that provides additional evidence to support my claims. Ironically, Elvis's one child, Lisa Marie Presley (1968-2023) is now deceased, but the "zombie lie" of Elvis's supposed love children lives on.

A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy, Pt. 3

Unmentioned in any account of her life that I have come across, Angelique Pettyjohn had been married and divorced before she married Otho A. Pettyjohn, Jr. in May 1966. Her first marriage was to William Krebs (NOT his actual name; I am withholding his name out of respect for his privacy), which took place on April 6, 1963, in Elko, Nevada. Both of them were 20 years old. Did the couple impulsively choose to elope? The marriage lasted only two months. She and William Krebs separated shortly after the marriage, on June 10, 1963, with William Krebs, the plaintiff, filing for divorce on October 8, 1963, on grounds of “Extreme Cruelty.” The Certificate of Divorce indicates her address as Salt Lake City, where she may have been living with her parents. I am not precisely sure how “Extreme Cruelty” was defined by the courts sixty years ago, but after two months married to her, he had apparently endured all he could take, and the plaintiff’s divorce petition was granted under “Absolute” conditions.

Interestingly, the divorce certificate lists their “Kind of occupation or business” as “university,” which I take to mean they were university students, not necessarily university employees. They possibly may have met as undergraduate students. Dr. Flynn avers that Dorothy Perrins spent two years attending Salt Lake Community College in the early 1960s, where she took drama classes and showed a keen interest in acting (p. 79). However, taking classes there would have been impossible since Salt Lake Community College did not exist in the early 1960s. What is now Salt Lake Community College was, until 1967, Salt Lake Trade Technical Institute. In 1967, by which time Dorothy Perrins' acting career had begun, it changed its name to Utah Technical College at Salt Lake. It did not become the Salt Lake Community College until 1987. She could not have enrolled in the Salt Lake Trade Technical Institute in order to study drama, since the institute’s aim and mission was strictly limited to those entering trade and technical vocations.

I found the name and picture of “William Krebs” in the 1962 Utah State University year book (called the Buzzer), but I did not, however, find any mention of Dorothy Perrins in the Buzzer or other year books of the time period. Pure speculation, but perhaps she and her first husband met at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, which is located about 67 miles from Salt Lake City. Although established as an agricultural college, she could have taken courses in drama and dance at Utah State if she were enrolled there as a student. Alternatively, it is possible she studied drama at the University of Utah, much closer to home. In any case, I do believe that she met her first husband while enrolled in courses on one of those two campuses.

In addition, an article published in the May 2, 1967, Salt Lake City Tribune, titled “Former Salt Lake Girl Makes Good in Films,” unmentioned in Dr. Flynn’s book, reveals that she returned home to see her family in Salt Lake after her film career had begun just a year earlier. She had only just finished filming Clambake with Elvis Presley about a week before the article was published. (She appears in a Clambake lobby card above next to actor Bill Bixby on her right.) The article tells us that she had driven her new sports car from California to Salt Lake “for a visit with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Claude Herbert, and two sisters, at 549 Colorado St. (1340 West).” The 549 Colorado St. address is the same address as listed in the 1950 census, and it is the street address listed in her mother’s 1973 obituary notice as well.

As for the expected “reunion” with her lover Elvis during the making of Clambake, we are told by Dr. Flynn that “Elvis didn’t remember the eighteen-year-old showgirl that he met so many years earlier when they were re-introduced” (p. 74). “Met” is a profoundly misleading choice of euphemism after the reader had been informed in the preceding chapters that she and Elvis not only had a sexual encounter in Las Vegas, but subsequently spent several days together in Hawaii while Elvis was filming Blue Hawaii. While he was making Clambake a mere six years later, we are asked to believe that Elvis has no memory of her whatsoever. If it is not clear by now, the alleged brief "love affair" she had with Elvis Presley is a hoax.

The newspaper article also indicates that, among other roles, she had appeared as the “bad girl” in Tale of the Cock, a film directed by John Derek and David Nelson starring Don Murray and John Derek’s then wife, Linda Evans, released in 1967. Tale of the Cock was re-released in 1969 under the title Childish Things, and so far as I know, the film is available only on VHS under the title Confessions of Tom Harris. I believe Tale of the Cock, filmed in 1966 and released the next year, is the first movie in which Dorothy Perrins appeared billed as “Angelique Pettyjohn.” Interestingly, her character’s name in the film is “Angelique.”

By 1967, Angelique Pettyjohn seems to have begun a career in Las Vegas as well. The newspaper article states that she was to appear “in a musical at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas for a 12-week engagement beginning May 9.” The “musical” referred to here is, I suspect, Minsky’s Burlesque, a “family burlesque” show which was a popular entertainment at the Silver Slipper for many years. (Incidentally, it was Harold Minsky who introduced the topless showgirl to Las Vegas, at the Dunes Hotel in 1957.) If the “musical” in which she was appearing opened on May 9, a 12-week run would conclude on August 1. At the time of the newspaper article’s publication, she had not yet filmed “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” filmed later that year during the week October 17-24, 1967, airing on television January 5, 1968.

Later that year, in December 1968, filming began on the AIP biker picture Hell’s Belles, in which Angelique Pettyjohn appeared as the female co-star. The movie opened in Los Angeles on April 16, 1969. Although reviews of the movie were mixed, the April 8, 1969, Daily Variety and the April 16, 1969, Los Angeles Times both considered the film to be a superior motorcycle drama, with both reviews praising co-star Angelique Pettyjohn’s performance, one of the rare instances of her performance being singled out for praise. Hell's Belles opened just over a year later in New York, on April 29, 1970, by which time her film career, for the next several years, had essentially come to an end.

To be continued...

A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy, Pt. 2

According to Dr. Flynn, Dorothy Perrins graduated high school early, at age 17, immediately moved to Las Vegas, and immediately became a showgirl. Serendipitously, shortly after she arrived, and a few days after her eighteenth birthday on March 11, 1961, Elvis showed up in Las Vegas looking for some action, and immediately singled her out from the many pretty girls swirling around him. Upon learning she was a virgin, he was immediately attracted to her, and subsequently had sex with her. She became pregnant and subsequently gave birth to a son, who now calls himself Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr.

There is no evidence given to support this series of events other than her own testimony, as my previous post makes clear. Moreover, there is additional evidence that exists, in print, that contradicts it. The Magnum Opus Con 4 Convention Program from 1989 contains a short, one-page biography of Angelique Pettyjohn stating that she first moved to Las Vegas at age 19: “Her love affair with audiences . . . began at age 19 when she left Utah to find summer work in Las Vegas.” Which is to say, summer 1962, contradicting the information in Dr. Flynn’s book, that she moved there at age 17 early in 1961. The program biography suggests that her initial move to Las Vegas was not a permanent one, essentially temporary summer employment. I believe this to be true, and will indicate why I think so.

But to return to Dr. Flynn’s account, the romance between Dorothy and Elvis doesn't end with an early morning kiss goodbye on the streets of Las Vegas after a brief session of lovemaking. We are told by Dr. Flynn that Elvis, while lounging around backstage waiting to go on for the U.S.S. Arizona charity event in Honolulu on March 25, phoned Dorothy Perrins in Las Vegas and asked her to fly to Hawaii to spend some time with him during the filming of Blue Hawaii. She, of course, said yes, and immediately boarded a plane for Oahu. As I mentioned before, we are not told when she gave Elvis a slip of paper with her name and phone number on it, but this is a minor omission in a confabulation that is so utterly preposterous that it does not merit any further discussion. She did not fly to Hawaii to spend a few days with Elvis while he was filming Blue Hawaii.

But we may have already suspected what happens next, and it comes as no surprise. Having become pregnant with Elvis's child, now enters the villain of the story, although his sudden entrance from stage right should come as no surprise either: Colonel Tom Parker. As Elvis's handler, he has Elvis’s career to think about, and no eighteen-year-old tramp from Las Vegas is going to destroy it. We are told that Dorothy “managed to contact the Colonel and set up a meeting through a series of backdoor maneuvers worthy of a top spy. Her number one concern was she didn't want Elvis to know of her pregnancy, until Parker agreed” (pp. 64-65). Secretly, behind Elvis’s back, she and the Colonel worked out a deal in which she would move into a small apartment on the far south side of Chicago, “modestly furnished and stocked with everything the expectant mother would need” (p. 66). So accommodating and sentimental was the Colonel that near Christmas 1961“he brought her a small fake tree” (p. 67). Of course, everything depended upon her keeping her mouth shut, and being the good girl she was, she did. Although eighteen, unmarried, and alone, she was apparently transported by the Colonel to the far south side of Chicago and put up in an apartment all by herself. We are never told the month she was transported to Chicago and installed in an apartment in the south side of Chicago, whether her parents knew of her pregnancy or whether her parents were informed of the arrangement. In fact, although she was barely eighteen, they are completely absent from narrative, vanishing from the narrative as soon Dorothy graduates high school “early" and hightails it to Las Vegas. Fast forward to the day her baby boy is born: Christmas Eve, 1961. Given up for adoption, the boy is adopted by circus people and given the name Phillip Stanic. Years later, he would legally change his name to Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr.

Why the south side of Chicago, of all places? Why an anonymous hospital in Gary, Indiana? The latter location is explained by Dr. Flynn: the Colonel “secretly bribed several officials at a nearby hospital” located in Gary. (p. 66). Bribed these corrupt officials to do what, to keep the whole thing quiet? Destroy the birth certificate, pretend the whole thing never happened? As should be increasingly apparent, Dorothy Perrins’ claim about her brief affair with Elvis is a fantastic confabulation designed to cover up the father’s true identity, whoever that person may be.

Assuming she ever gave birth to a child in the first place.

Marty Lacker:

There's some guy making the rounds of the tabloid TV shows saying he's the love child of Elvis and Dolores Hart, who played his girlfriend in Loving You and King Creole. She left show business in 1963 and became a nun, and this guy claims she dropped out because she was pregnant and that she kept quiet about it for the love of Elvis and his career. All of us were around all the time then, and if something like that had happened, Elvis would have talked about it He would have been scared as hell. (Nash, Elvis and the Memphis Mafia, pp. 76-77)

One thing we do know, with absolutely certainty, is that Dorothy Perrins never became a nun.

Let us flash forward to May 11, 1966, Dorothy Perrins’ twenty-third birthday, her alleged fling with Elvis now five years in the past. On this day, she wed Otho Albert Pettyjohn, Jr., and in less than a year will henceforth become known as Angelique Pettyjohn. They met in Las Vegas, Dr. Flynn tells us, Dorothy Perrins having resumed her career as a showgirl, and he, unsurprisingly, a gambler, but a nice gambling man though, from Glendale, California. My research indicates that Otho A. Pettyjohn Jr. was born on December 11, 1921, and by 1966 had been married and divorced twice. He was 44 years old when he married Dorothy Perrins; he was a World War II veteran who would die at age 59 in 1980. Her marriage to Mr. Pettyjohn would last slightly over two years, by which time her film and TV career was established and her most famous role, Shahna, in “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” was behind her. She was 24 years old when she played Shahna, and as Fate would have it, her life was half over. The marriage was dissolved two years later, finalized on May 31, 1968. By this date her movie and TV roles had become fewer, the production budgets more parsimonious. Her film credits vanish for about a decade after 1970, although she did resume her career in 1979, as an extra in the Las Vegas sequence in the George Burns comedy, Going in Style. Dr. Flynn states that she made a film released in 1974 titled Bordello, but I have been unable to find out much information on this film. I am not especially inclined to do so.

To be continued...

A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy, Pt. 1

They say rock ‘n’ roll will never die. If so, then neither will the myths about it. Among the most persistent myths are those that claim during a concert Alice Cooper bit the head off of a chicken and drank its blood, that Michael Jackson once owned the skeletal remains of the “Elephant Man,” and that in 1968 Jimi Hendrix introduced the ring-necked parakeet to the isle of Britain. Recently, I heard a phrase used that I had not heard before: “zombie lie.” A “zombie lie” is a lie that everyone knows to be a lie, but despite it being a lie, it lives on, everyone acting as though it were true. One of these so-called “zombie lies” is that Elvis Presley fathered children outside of marriage. Such rumors first swirled around young actress Dolores Hart, the love interest of Elvis Presley in Loving You (1957), and who appeared with Elvis a second time in King Creole (1958). The gossip mill held that she left the Hollywood spotlight at the height of her career in 1963 after Elvis impregnated her. In fact, she joined the Abbey of Regina Laudis and became a nun, a story that has been well documented.

Now in his early 60s, many years ago a man having the adopted name Phillip Stanic came forward alleging his father was Elvis Presley. As if to proclaim the name of his father, he had his name legally changed to Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr. At issue is the identity of his biological mother, whom he believes to be the actress Angelique Pettyjohn (pictured above, in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion"). His assertion possibly may be true, that she may be his biological mother. I am not saying it is true, I am simply saying it may be possible. I don't know. That is one issue. The other issue is the identity of his biological father, whom he believes, or once believed, or once thought possible, to be Elvis Presley. While I believe Elvis Presley is not his father, and will show why I do not believe it, according to John L. Flynn, Ph.D., author of The Sci-Fi Siren Who Dared Love Elvis and Other Stars (Galactic Books, 2020), Elvis is his father. I will hereafter refer to John L. Flynn, Ph.D. as Dr. Flynn. In his book, Dr. Flynn claims that Elvis Presley is Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr.’s father—or to be clear, that is what his friend and the subject of his book, Angelique Pettyjohn, claims to be true. However, simply because Phillip Stanic changed his name to Elvis Aaron Presley, Jr., does not thereby point to the identity of his biological father. As far as I can tell, his current occupation is that of an Elvis imitator, so I suppose one could argue that the name change was, in a way, justified, given the way he earns his livelihood.

My actual subject is Angelique Pettyjohn, a minor actress who became famous because of an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series titled “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” filmed in October 1967 and which aired on television in January 1968. In his book, Dr. Flynn discusses her troubled life and provides a useful catalogue of the films and TV shows in which she appeared prior to her death in 1992, at the young age of 48. In truth, she was an actress for a very short period time, because Angelique Pettyjohn was primarily a Las Vegas showgirl, a burlesque dancer and stripper, and it was in Las Vegas that she spent much of her life. At issue is not her chosen career as a burlesque dance and stripper, since it is widely known that many current celebrities, both male and female, have been strippers. The issue is whether her claim that she gave birth to Elvis Presley’s son is true. I do not believe her claim is true, and I will present evidence to prove that it cannot be true.

Angelique Pettyjohn was born Dorothy Lee Perrins on March 11, 1943, in Los Angeles. Her father was Richard Lee Young Perrins (1909-1983). Richard Lee Young Perrins’ father, Ross Young (born 1885) died in 1919, and his mother, Rosa Dodson (1890-1979) subsequently remarried. Angelique Pettyjohn's mother, Maia Irene (Enke) Herbert (1921-1973), was a German immigrant, who married Richard Lee Perrins in 1942. Richard Perrins' marriage to Maia Enke was his third marriage. They divorced soon after Dorothy Lee Perrins’ birth in 1943, and Maia Perrins subsequently married Claude Herbert, living the remainder of her life in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the 1950 U. S. census report, Dorothy Perrins is listed as Dorthy [sic] L Herbert, age 7 years. At some point, she chose to take her biological father’s surname, not her adoptive father’s. Her high school yearbooks show that she was active in the drama and dance clubs at West High School in Salt Lake City, where she graduated in 1961.

Dr. Flynn, however, claims—almost certainly based on information given to him by Angelique Pettyjohn—that Dorothy Perrins graduated high school early, but if so, the West High year books do not support this claim. The entire narrative that unfolds about her alleged meeting with Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in 1961 rests on this one critical point, that she graduated high school “early.” Below are pictures of Dorothy Perrins from the 1960 and 1961 West High yearbooks, her junior picture below left and her senior picture below on the right.

Dr. Flynn avers (p. 42) that Dorothy Perrins appeared in the school play, Arsenic and Old Lace, in 1960, but cast and performance pictures from the play appear in the 1961 year book, not the 1960 year book. Below is Dorothy Perrins’ cast picture from Arsenic and Old Lace in the 1961 West High year book. In addition, she appears in group pictures of both the drama club and the dance club in the same 1961 year book.

If we are to accept the narrative offered by Dr. Flynn, Dorothy Perrins graduated high school early (December 1960, presumably? We are not told) at age 17. Eager to get away from home and start a career, she immediately moved to Las Vegas, presumably in January or February of 1961, since she allegedly met Elvis Presley there in March. According to Dorothy Perrins’ account, as told to Dr. Flynn, she met Elvis Presley shortly after her 18th birthday, that is, sometime after March 11, 1961, and became pregnant with his child. She was selected by him from among lots of pretty Las Vegas showgirls, apparently because she was young, just 18, and a virgin: 

I think he [Elvis] singled me out from all the other girls because I was so young—I had just turned eighteen only a few days before—when most of the other showgirls were in their twenties and thirties. . . . Later, when I told him Iwas [sic] still a virgin, which most people find pretty hard to believe when you’re a showgirl, it just blew his mind. I thought it would be great to have him as my first lover. (pp. 57-58)

There are a number of problems with her account. One is that Elvis was not in Las Vegas at the time. Another is her assumption that Elvis was sexually attracted to her because she was a virgin: this is merely conjecture. Marty Lacker, one of Elvis’s bodyguards and a member of the so-called “Memphis Mafia,” said, “Elvis didn’t think virginity was really all that important” (Alanna Nash, Elvis and the Memphis Mafia, p. 170 [UK edition]). And, according to Lamar Ficke, “When it comes to sex, you've got to remember that Elvis was more interested in titillation than anything else. He didn’t like penetration that much because he was uncircumcised, and sometimes intercourse tore his foreskin and he'd bleed. But he was a stone freak, and don’t ever think different. He had every fetish there was” (Elvis and the Memphis Mafia, p. 170). In Dr. Flynn’s account, we are also told that on the evening she confessed her virginity, the chivalric Elvis volunteered to walk her back to her (shared) apartment at the Flamingo Hotel. If so, presuming they met at the Sahara Hotel (Milton Prell, its owner, was a friend of the Colonel's, and Elvis usually stayed there in the early Sixties) the distance between the Sahara Hotel and the Flamingo Hotel would have been a walking distance down the Las Vegas Strip of about 2.5 miles (one-way). Moreover, we're also supposed to believe that as the two of them strolled leisurely hand in hand for over two miles, they were unaccompanied by any of Elvis’s bodyguards. There is no mention in her account of meeting Elvis that his bodyguards were anywhere near. This is highly improbable, as Elvis didn't even go to the bathroom in a public place without at least two of his bodyguards accompanying him (see Elvis and the Memphis Mafia).

I will return to my central question: Is there any evidence that Elvis was in Las Vegas during the time period from March 11 to March 20, 1961? No. There is no evidence to support this claim. One reason is that on March 12 and 13, 1961, Elvis was in Nashville, recording several tracks at RCA Studio B. These tracks would soon be included on the album, Something For Everybody, released in May 1961. Once these recording sessions were finished, Elvis returned to Memphis. From there, according to the chronology published in Inside Blue Hawaii (Elvis Unlimited Productions, 2009), Elvis boarded a plane for Los Angeles on Saturday, March 18, and had a layover in Chicago, where he stayed at the O'Hare Inn (p. 18). The next day, March 19, he stayed at his home on 525 Perugia Way in Bel Air. On Monday, March 20, he had a preproduction meeting at Paramount Studios. According to Dr. Flynn's account, Elvis left Las Vegas for Los Angeles on Saturday, March 18 (p. 58), which contradicts the known facts. As one might expect, he provides no source or sources for this piece of information. Dr. Flynn gets many other details wrong as well. For instance, he writes, "On Monday, March 20, 1961, Elvis Presley began work on Blue Hawaii, splitting his time between the location filming and at the recording studio, doing the film’s soundtrack” (p. 59). (We are told this because during his down time, Elvis was calling Dorothy Perrins in Las Vegas. We're not told when, precisely, she gave him a slip of paper with her name and phone number.) The Blue Hawaii recording sessions took place March 21 through March 23 in Los Angeles, not in Hawaii (the "location"), and Elvis did not begin location shooting until March 27. He also states that Elvis, the Colonel and the members of the so-called “Memphis Mafia” flew from Los Angeles to Kauai and stayed at the Coco Palms Hotel, where they were “mobbed” by eager fans. This assertion also contradicts the known facts: Elvis landed at the Honolulu International Airport on March 25, 1961. Here is a detailed account of Elvis’s arrival:

 

The morning of March 25, 1961, Elvis boarded a Pan American Airways jet in Los Angeles to start what he knew would be a long, tiring day for him. Even before the plane took off from LA, an estimated crowd of 3,000 began gathering at Honolulu International Airport to greet Elvis on his arrival. At 12:15 p.m. the plane carrying Presley touched down in Honolulu, and at 12:27 Elvis, wearing a black suit and a ruffled white shirt, appeared at the rear door. “For 10 minutes the handsome lad with the baby blue eyes passed in review,” reported a local newspaper, “just like they do in the Army--up and down before the crowd with the wire screen and a cordon of Honolulu and military police between him and the fans. Some of them looked as though they were ready to tear him limb for limb, and take home the pieces for souvenirs....  Then Elvis jumped into a waiting car and was escorted by police to the Hawaiian Village Hotel, where he would stay for three weeks while filming Blue Hawaii. (Source: http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/elvis-uss-arizona.html)

 

The Coco Palms Resort [to refer to it by its proper designation], to which Dr. Flynn refers, is indeed on the island of Kauai, but the Coco Palms Resort is where Elvis and Joan Blackman’s characters are married in Blue Hawaii. It is also the site of other key scenes in the movie, including the final scene in which Elvis sings the “Hawaiian Wedding Song” and holds Joan Blackman’s hand while they board a raft to cross the lagoon. While it is true and well documented that Elvis and his entourage would party in Las Vegas for a few days, the partying occurred almost always after a movie had been completed, not before it was made. Blue Hawaii wrapped on May 23, 1961. I have not taken the time to find out whether Elvis and his buddies did, in fact, stop in Las Vegas on the long way back to Memphis. Did he take time for a clandestine liaison with Dorothy, his latest flame? No, Dr. Flynn tells us, because “by then, the romance had started to cool down" (p. 60). By the end of May, however, she would have been two months pregnant, at least according the narrative we are asked to believe.

However, Dorothy Perrins would indeed meet Elvis Presley, that much is true. She would also have a role in one of his films; that is also true. But that was six years later, and the movie was not Blue Hawaii, but Clambake, released in 1967.

To be continued...

Sweet Songs

“Who can take tomorrow / Dip it in a dream / Separate the sorrow / And collect up all the cream?”, asks Bill, the candy store proprietor (played by Aubrey Woods) in “The Candy Man,” the famous song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Like the children who fill his store as he sings, we know the answer: “The candy man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good.” Here, the candy man is represented as a benign figure from an imaginary land of plenitude, where our wishes for endless bounty come true, and the idea of scarcity is unknown, a place of luxury and ease and comfort, without sorrow. He comes from an idyllic place which might well be nestled in “The Big Rock Candy Mountains”: 

There’s a land that’s fair and bright,

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night

Where the boxcars all are empty

And the sun shines every day

On the birds and the bees

And the cigarette trees

The lemonade springs

Where the bluebird sings

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

 

But there’s another kind of candy man, the one who we can hear in the materialistic world of Roy Orbison’s “Candy Man”: “C’mon baby, let me take you by the hand / C’mon sugar, let me take you by the hand,” ‘cause he wants to be her candy man—an appeal to her avarice. “I met him at the candy store,” sing the Shangri-Las in their quaint 1964 hit, “Leader of the Pack,” the band named after an imaginary paradise, not unlike the one to be found in the Big Rock Candy Mountains. The candy store is a site of innocence, just as it is in Johnny Cash’s fable, “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” (1958), a song about a beauty queen who “loved the boy next door who worked at the candy store.” Not so in “Leader of the Pack”: the father does not approve of his daughter hanging out with a juvenile delinquent, the leader of a pack of motorcycle-riding hoodlums. And why wouldn’t the father be suspicious, for isn’t there a hint of danger in a figure who hangs out in a candy store, tempting innocent young women with sweets?

The candy man is a culturally ambivalent figure. The candy man makes his candies with love and makes the world taste good, but isn’t Willy Wonka also a vaguely sinister figure, luring children to his factory with a Golden Ticket that promises the lucky winner with a lifetime supply of chocolate? It is not clear that the odd and mercurial Wonka actually likes children, even though, paradoxically, he makes “scrumdidilyumptious” candy bars. The mystery that surrounds Willy Wonka fits a larger tradition of works such as Edward Fenton’s Penny Candy (illustrated by Edward Gorey, 1970), with its uncomfortably strange candy shop owner.

The candy man can remove the sorrow from tomorrow, and make his candy with love, but he also seeks to control us through our gastër, our ravenous stomach, our gluttony. The candy man’s shadow self is the witch from “Hansel and Gretel,” who lures the unsuspecting children by appealing to their infantile, insatiable appetites for candy and sweets. Here is a passage from Robert Coover’s revision of “Hansel and Gretel” titled “The Gingerbread House” (Pricksongs & Descants, 1969), a tour de force of the image of gluttony. The “black rags flapping” is, of course, a metonymy for the witch:

The children approach the gingerbread house through a garden of candied fruits and all-day suckers, hopping along on flagstones of variegated wafers. They sample the gingerbread weatherboarding with its caramel coating, lick at the meringue on the windowsills, kiss each other's sweetened lips. The boy climbs up on the chocolate roof to break off a peppermint-stick chimney, comes sliding down into a rain barrel full of vanilla pudding. The girl, reaching out to catch him in his fall, slips on a sugarplum and tumbles into a sticky rock garden of candied chestnuts. Laughing gaily, they lick each other clean. And how grand is the red-and-white chimney the boy holds up for her! how bright! how sweet! But the door: here they pause and catch their breath. It is heart-shaped and bloodstone-red, its burnished surface gleaming in the sunlight. Oh, what a thing is that door! Shining like a ruby, like hard cherry candy, and pulsing softly, radiantly. Yes, marvelous! delicious! insuperable! but beyond: what is that sound of black rags flapping?

The difference between plenitude and gluttony, need as opposed to excess, is a very fine line.

 

Here is a big box of sweet songs:

 

Harry McClintock – The Big Rock Candy Mountains (1928) (Frank Luther recorded a version at about the same time under the title, “That Big Rock Candy Mountain,” released on the Banner label)

Haywire Mac – The Big Rock Candy Mountains (1939) (as “Haywire Mac,” Harry McClintock apparently re-recorded “The Big Rock Candy Mountains” for Decca in 1939; the song went to #1 on the “Hillbilly” charts and helped to popularize the song; this is possibly the 1928 recording reissued on Decca)

Harry McClintock with Hal Borne & His Orchestra – The Big Rock Candy Mountains (1942) (McClintock re-recorded the song yet again, in 1942, with modified “swing era” lyrics, for RCM Productions’ “Soundies” series; “Soundies” were musical shorts capable of being viewed on “Panorams,” coin-operated, 16mm rear-projection machines—not “jukeboxes”)

Burl Ives – Big Rock Candy Mountain (1945) (Burl Ives’ version, recorded in March 1945 for Decca, with bowdlerized lyrics, widely popularized the song in the years after the war; the “mountains” of Harry McClintock’s version, where plentitude can be found, has become a singular “mountain,” which is how the song is popularly known now—even the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) removes the definite article and uses the singular “mountain” in the title, as if the song refers not to a paradisiacal land to be found hidden within the mountains, but a big, candy-colored free-standing mountain)

The Chordettes – Lollipop (1958) (also a hit by Ronald & Ruby the same year)

Dorsey Burnette – Big Rock Candy Mountain (1960) (an audible expression of what Lawrence Grossberg calls “sentimental inauthenticity”)

Roy Orbison – Candy Man (1961)

The Drifters – Sweets for My Sweet (1961) (one should listen to this song every day)

The Searchers – Sweets for My Sweet (1963) (please see my blog post on Timbre below, and then decide which version of “Sweets for My Sweet” you prefer; I prefer The Drifters’ version)

Elvis Presley - Cotton Candy Land (1963) (covered by Stevie Nicks & Chris Isaak, 2022)

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – Candy Girl (1963)

Lesley Gore – Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows (1963) (an example of what is called “affective inflation”)

The Strangeloves – I Want Candy (1965) (covered by Bow Wow Wow 1982) (an example of appellatization, when a proper noun, Candy, is confused with a common noun, candy; think: Kleenex)

Roy Orbison – Sugar and Honey (1965)

The Strawberry Alarm Clock – Incense and Peppermints (1967)

The Archies – Sugar, Sugar (1969)

The Clique – Sugar on Sunday (1969)

The Ides of March – Vehicle (1970)

Aubrey Woods – The Candy Man (1971) (from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, lyrics and music by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley)

The Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar (1971) 

Sammy Davis, Jr. with the Mike Curb Congregation – The Candy Man (1972) 

Montrose – Rock Candy (1973)

Barry White – Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe (1974) (included here because it easily could be about candy, simultaneously invoking hunger, insatiable appetite, and oral gratification)

Ohio Players – Sweet Sticky Thing (1975)

Led Zeppelin – Candy Store Rock (1976)

The Cars – Candy-O (1979)

Mary Jane Girls – Candy Man (1983)

Sheena Easton – Sugar Walls (1984) (written by Prince—enough said)

Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me (1987) (the lyric, “I’m hot, sticky sweet,” suggests this song’s likely inspiration was Montrose’s hard-rocking “Rock Candy”)

Counting Crows – Hard Candy (2002)

50 Cent – Candy Shop (2005)

Rihanna – Sell Me Candy (2007)

Madonna – Candy Shop (2008) (impossible to miss the many similes for insatiable appetite in the lyrics for this one)

Assay Office

Assay office [from Wikipedia]: “Institutions set up to assay (test the purity of) precious metals . . . . often done to protect consumers from buying fake items.”

Music critics are motivated by opposing, mutually exclusive, desires. On the one hand, they strive to identify and distinguish the very best albums currently being marketed to mass audiences. On the other, they seek to shelter those same albums from mass consumption—from a homogenizing process that consists of assimilation or “popularization.” The critic’s sorting process is predicated on an epistemology that makes real/fake distinctions, its aim to vilify the counterfeit and praise the genuine item. Because of the critic’s status as an expert in the field, the critic’s discourse, merely descriptive or impressionistic, has the rhetorical force of science (applicable to critics of the arts in general, in fact).

Fortunately, the authenticating discourse of the critic can be subject to parody, undermining the critic’s epistemological certainty. Jazz critics have been especially subject to parody, and rightly so. Steve Allen’s spoken-word recordings, “Cinderella” and “Crazy Red Riding Hood,” issued on record in 1953 prior to the publication of his collection Bop Fables (1955), satirize hipster bop talk. Marshall Brickman’s hilarious “What, Another Legend?” (1973), mocks the jazzographer’s tendency to erect a jazz hall of fame. Perhaps the best parody of critics’ attempts to transform jazz into language is Donald Barthelme’s short story “The King of Jazz.” In Barthelme’s humorous story, a jazz fan responds to a question about how to describe the peerless sound of trombonist Hokie Mokie, the current king of jazz:

“You mean that sound that sounds like the cutting edge of life? That sounds like polar bears crossing Arctic ice pans? That sounds like a herd of musk ox in full flight? That sounds like male walruses diving to the bottom of the sea? That sounds like fumaroles smoking on the slopes of Mt. Katmai? That sounds like the wild turkey walking through the deep, soft forest? That sounds like beavers chewing trees in an Appalachian marsh? That sounds like an oyster fungus growing on an aspen trunk? That sounds like a mule deer wandering a montane of the Sierra Nevada? That sounds like prairie dogs kissing? That sounds like witchgrass tumbling or a river meandering? That sounds like manatees munching seaweed at Cape Sable? That sounds like coatimundis moving in packs across the face of Arkansas? That sounds like—“

Barthelme’s metaphorical feat, in fact, illustrates “the normal practice of music criticism,” translating “a work (or its performance) . . . into the poorest of linguistic categories: the adjective" (Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, p. 179). 

Whistling A Different Tune

Several years ago, I published a blog post on songs that feature whistling. At the time, I wrote about the many significations of whistling: contentment (“Don't Worry, Be Happy”), solitary, melancholy contemplation (“(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay”), self-absorbed autoeroticism (“Centerfold”), pleasant, relaxing idleness (the theme from The Andy Griffith Show), or simply to pass the time, to avoid monotony when speech is either impossible or forbidden (“Colonel Bogey March”; “Whistle While You Work” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). Whistling can also simply represent an individual’s joie de vivre ("Daydream").

But there's another aspect of whistling that I ignored when I wrote the earlier post, that whistling can bring bad luck. A popular superstition holds that whistling at night is dangerous and may bring unwanted attention from creatures that stalk the night, or perhaps may attract evil spirits. There are some world cultures that believe whistling is a means to summon supernatural beings.

Perhaps because of the association of whistling with certain morbid superstitions, movies have used whistling as means to establish an ominous mood or atmosphere. Each of  the films in Columbia's 8-film Whistler series (1944-1948) begins with the slightly sinister narrator whistling an eerie tune, soon to introduce himself as The Whistler: “I am the Whistler and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.” A few years prior to the debut of the Whistler series, in Fritz Lang’s M (1931), throughout the film the child murderer, Hans Beckert, identifies himself off-screen by whistling Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” An inspired cinematic use of whistling is Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score for the psycho-thriller Twisted Nerve (1968), widely known as the “Kill Bill whistle song,” having been appropriated by Quentin Tarantino for a sequence in Kill Bill Vol. I (2003). Tarantino follows Fritz Lang’s lead in having the whistler introduced off-screen prior to the character’s actual appearance. The “whistle song” was again used by Tarantino as a phone’s ringtone in Death Proof (2007).

I find Herrmann’s melodic theme for Twisted Nerve powerful and haunting because, to use a linguistic analogy, it is like an antonym: it is both tranquil and foreboding at the same time. It is the sonic equivalent of M’s Hans Beckert, whose jolly smile and jaunty whistle cloaks his murderous intent. I hear Twisted Nerve’s whistle in many songs that use whistling but are musically much different. I hear it in Roy Orbison’s “Here Comes the Rain, Baby,” the beginning of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” (1977), the whistling that closes Peter Gabriel's masterful “Intruder,” Roxy Music's cover of “Jealous Guy,” and Scorpions’ “Wind of Change," among others. 

Here are a few songs to listen to and think about in the way they use whistling:

 

A Fistful of Dollars (Main Title) – Ennio Morricone (1964) (Alessandro Alessandroni, whistler)

Here Comes The Rain, Baby – Roy Orbison (1967) (Mickey Newbury)

One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong – Leonard Cohen (1967) (Features Cohen using a hand whistle)

Twisted Nerve (Main Title) – Bernard Herrmann (1968) (Gareth Williams, whistler)

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life – Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) (Eric Idle)

Intruder – Peter Gabriel (1980)

Generals and Majors – XTC (1980)

Roxy Music – Jealous Guy (1981) (John Lennon tribute)

Patience – Guns N' Roses (1988) 

Wind of Change – Scorpions (1990)

The Big Bang – Rock Mafia featuring Miley Cyrus (Video, 2010)

The New School

How many critics—of the theater, movies, music, contemporary fine arts—wake up each morning with the uncomfortable feeling that someday they will be wrong in their critical judgment? After all, what is a critic’s deepest fear? To have erred in judgment, to have made the wrong call, to have missed the boat. Certainly, no movie critic wants to miss the boat—to have critically underestimated, or what’s worse, to have dismissed the next Citizen Kane (1941), for instance—so in order to avoid making such an unwitting mistake, the critic engages in what Robert Ray, employing a term taken from Max Ernst, calls critical overcomprehension (How a Film Theory Got Lost, Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 82). Ray writes:

 Aware of previous mistakes, reviewers become increasingly afraid to condemn anything....Hence ... [one] ... of modern criticism’s ... great dangers, what Max Ernst called “overcomprehension” or “the waning of indignation”.... (82)

 

No critic, of course, can see beyond the curtain of Time. Time is the ultimate critic, and the critic’s limited perspective doesn’t allow him to see beyond his own pitifully narrow moment in history. Critical overcomprehension—the act of giving every new movie an equally glowing reception—is a result of the critic’s deep fear that history may prove him wrong. No one wants to be, for instance, television critic Jack Gould, who reviewed The Milton Berle Show appearance of Elvis Presley for the New York Times in 1956:

 

Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. For the ear, he is an unutterable bore, not nearly so talented as Frank Sinatra back in the latter's rather hysterical days at the Paramount Theater. (qtd. in Robert Ray, 80)

 

However, as Ray points out, Gould’s kind of critical misjudgment has its own unintended consequences: such gross critical mistakes have led to “rejection and incomprehensibility as promises of ultimate value” (82). For instance, if a record album sold poorly, or the artist who recorded it was given little or no attention—or worse, completely neglected in his or her own time, the record must therefore be great, perhaps even a masterwork. The initial neglect of 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico serves as a useful example. Ignored upon release, it is now considered a classic. Initial neglect as a sign of greatness is a powerful myth and governs much of modern criticism of the arts.

 

According to Self-Styled Siren (critic and film historian Farran Smith Nehme), whose knowledge of silent era Hollywood is nothing short of encyclopedic, the practice of critical overcomprehension is currently being applied to Babylon (2022), a box-office failure upon release last year that also divided critics (“Bye, bye Babylon,” August 23, 2023). While the Siren believes it is a “lousy movie,” nonetheless she has noticed that there are “ongoing attempts to enshrine last year's Babylon as some kind of masterwork,” which is to say, for some, the movie's initial rejection is a surefire guarantee of its ultimate value. The myth serves to shield such movies from negative reviews.

In addition, the Siren refers to a recent New York Times article about the new phenomenon of “MovieTok” influencers. The Times calls them “the new school of film critic,” observing that “some tenets of the profession—such as rendering judgments or making claims that go beyond one’s personal taste—are now considered antiquated and objectionable.” Critics of the new school are never going to make an egregious mistake like Jack Gould made with Elvis Presley. More than that, by insisting that the tenets of a previous generation of critics have become antiquated—meaning they are too old to get what’s really going on—the new school of film critics seeks to shield itself, not simply certain films, but from criticism as well. The new school influencers have little concern for the movie itself. Instead, they are far more interested in the multiple ways they can attribute significance to the movie, e.g., “outrageous,” “extravagant,” “over the top,” “mind-blowing,” “thought-provoking,” on and on. Criticism is simply a form of publicity, and the film itself a commodity.