Elvis Presley Sociology

Elvis Presley reigns as one of the biggest success stories and music innovators in American history. He was a man whose short lived career brought the birth of rock ‘n’ roll and hope to the common man. As a popular artist in the mid 1950’s, “Presley became a symbol of a youthful determination to push at the borders of the conventional and acceptable.” Born January 8, 1935 in a family of poverty, he rose to fame in a matter of months, attracting large audiences at concerts and teenage girls everywhere he went. Presley was young and attractive and possessed a sound and style that was something totally unique. He was “hip” and represented the sex and drug culture that would sweep through the United States only a few years after his breakout. People

Unlike the adults, teens saw him as perfectly moral and as a new role model. Girls fell in love with his looks and clothing. However, “the overwhelming nature of the arrival of Elvis Presley as a national figure, and particularly the sociological furor that had been stirred up in his wake, tended to overshadow what should have been the heart of the matter- his music.” For the younger generation, his rock ‘n’ roll music was not what caused all the uproar of this breakout star, it was his fashion and lifestyle. Presley showed that with only a little bit of talent, you could become a phenomenon with as much wealth as you wanted. Because of the path to glory that Elvis encountered, teenagers were being corrupted by his realm of fame, and that is ultimately the reason why they dressed and danced like him. Teenagers wanted to be him. According to Carol Beinhart, who was a massive fan of Elvis, “the way he dressed and the way he performed by singing into the audience's heart caused me to faint and scream” For her and many other young ladies in the 1950’s and 60’s, just the sight of Elvis would make them yell in excitement and wish for a night with him. They got lost in the virtual world of Elvis falling in love with them. An excerpt from a newspaper in Chicago Tribune stated, “When the girls had shouted long enough and loudly enough,

Even though the adults did not personally know Elvis away from his performances, many still grew a profound hatred for his immoral stage manner. If only they would have known the way their “darling daughters behaved at his concerts. On the stage of the auditoriums and movie houses where he had been packing audiences on an exhausting series of one-night stands, he was primarily a hip-tossing contortionist whose singing was all but ignored as he indulged in a suggestive male version of the ‘bumps and grinds’ that were part of the burlesque dancers routine.” For the elder generation in the 1950’s there was no way else to explain the way Elvis performed than unethical. He was influencing their own daughters to dress immodestly and to get involved in the sex culture. He was embracing the lifestyle of doing whatever he desired, and teenagers began following him by doing the same. An example of Elvis embracing the life choice of being a “free bird” is from a1956 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article that said, “He had no steady girl, but dated almost every night a girl from the mob of cuties who waited for him after his show.” Elvis enjoyed the idea of spending each night with a different girl, an idea that made fathers squeal, as it was very untraditional and unlike the typical ways of dating in the 1900’s. While girls mobbed him, their parents