It’s not often you get to read a Marxist appreciation of Elvis:
Elvis posed a dilemma for capitalism, but it was not an insurmountable one. Eventually it preserved him as a commodity but destroyed him as a musician. Often this is blamed on “Colonel†Parker. Parker was both incompetent and scared that Elvis might do something outrageous or unpatriotic.
But things would have gone the same way without Parker. As Karl Marx noted, “capitalist production is hostile to art and poetryâ€.
Comments are closed