1997

20.1

Michelle D. Davis
Quentin Tarantino's Post-Modern King on His Porcelain Throne

"When [Elvis] died, the event was a kind of explosion that went off silently, in minds and hearts; out of that explosion came many fragments, edging slowly into the light, taking shape, changing shape again and again as the years went on," begins Greil Marcus's introduction to his book Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. This cultural obsession has most interestingly taken the shape of a host of Elvis impersonators, both professional and amateur. For all of the thousands of people who earn their living embodying the American legend, however, there are countless other people who revere the King of Rock and Roll as their own personal Sacred King and spend their time embracing the King's way of life out of the spotlight. In his screenplay for the movie True Romance, writer and Tennessee native Quentin Tarantino explores the life of one young man who selects Elvis as his mentor and becomes an Elvis impersonator of sorts in his personal heroic quest. His Elvis obsession becomes indicative of a void in his own life which needs to be filled, a void which can be examined by coupling Robert Bly's study of manhood in his book Iron John with an understanding of contemporary American culture--with Elvis Presley as the kingly point of reference.

In his analysis of the Elvis phenomenon British critic Simon Frith has written: "Our joyous response to music is a response not to meanings but to the making of meanings. . . . Think of Elvis Presley. . . . He celebrated -- more sensually, more voluptuously than any other rock and roll singer--the act of symbol creation itself" (qtd in Marcus 38). Presley, according to Marcus, is a refreshingly new symbol. In reworking the traditional quest, Tarantino would have his audience believe that Elvis's symbol creation is even transcendent, with its beginnings in ancient folk tales. Like the archetypal initiate, Tarantino's Clarence must make his transition into manhood. In this modern fable, Clarence seeks the guidance of the King of American Cool, Elvis Presley. While this quest is ancient in its beginnings, Tarantino's Post-Modern spin on the tale is a provocative commentary on the misuse of American heroes, as they are no substitute for one's inner strength.

"In Jailhouse Rock he was everything rockabilly's about. I mean, he is rockabilly: mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he couldn't give a fuck about about nothin' cept rockin' and rollin', livin' fast, dyin' young, and leaving a good-lookin' corpse,'" insists protagonist Clarence Worley as True Romance begins. Clarence is delivering his pick-up line/Elvis eulogy to a Marilyn Monroe wannabe who has sidled up to the bar next to him. After a brief pensive pause, Clarence continues, "I've watched that hillbilly and I want to be him so bad." Returning to his touchstone, the King, Clarence wishes to become Elvis becoming Vince Everett in the 1957 sensation Jailhouse Rock, "the story of a surly singer-convict on his way to the top, evok[ing] all the juicy moral ambiguity that Elvis Presley represented to America" (Stern & Stern 53). The Sterns continue: "To understand the emergence of Celluloid Elvis, you have to know how much he wanted to be a movie star. . . . Think of Elvis the sixteen-year-old Memphian who had never known anything but the powerlessness of poverty. Movies were his escape. To star in them would be to have the status of a god" (53). By patterning his life after the life of Celluloid Elvis, Clarence also seeks "the status of a god." True Romance is Clarence's life as art imitating art imitating life imitating art as he places Elvis in the role of his personal mentor.

Jailhouse Rock is a considerable departure from the typical for Presley. In this third in a series of thirty-one motion pictures, Elvis's Vince Everett is anything but charming. He is, as Clarence notes, "mean, surly, nasty, rude." Like Tarantino's film, Jailhouse Rock opens in a bar as a woman approaches Vince with, "Buy me a drink, cowboy." Within seconds, the woman is hit by her jealous boyfriend and her jealous boyfriend is hit by Vince. In the course of the fight, the man is killed, leaving Vince to be convicted of manslaughter. Hardened by bleak prison life and dishonest record companies, Presley's Vince is drained of exuberance as he indifferently shuffles from scene to scene. Because he has lacked his own father's guidance during his adolescence, this is the hero of a celluloid reality whom Clarence wishes to mimic.

The King, his heroic ideal, dominates Clarence's conscious and subconscious mind as he radiates his energy downward from his pop cultural eminence. He is the Sun King in his gold lamé jacket who reigns supremely in Clarence's pop-culture other world. As Robert Bly explains, "Gold all over the world symbolizes sun-glory, royal power, self-generating radiance, freedom from decay, immortality, spiritual luminosity" (39)--every desirable quality that America has come to associate with Presley. Clarence has not himself "visited the King," as Bly recommends, but has "[made] a place where the King can visit" him. Instead of visiting Elvis, Clarence remains in his hometown, Motown, but has two specific rooms designated to the King, one mental and one physical. The room by which Elvis chooses to "enter the building" is Clarence's bathroom. Thus, the first time we witness the appearance of the King, Clarence is bending over the sink, splashing water on his face to achieve clarity. No room could be more perfect for the appearance of the King. There may not be a forest or a stream nearby for Clarence to dip his finger into and wait for his Wild Man to appear. The bathroom sink will work just as well when Clarence needs to summon Presley in his more modern fable.

Focusing specifically on Tarantino's script, "Elvis Dorado: The True Romance of Viva Las Vegas" allows writer Howard Hampton to further scrutinize the void filled "in a realm of pop insularity that effectively approximates the self-referential nirvana of [Elvis films] Paradise Hawaiian Style, Spinout, or Fun in Acapulco " (44). "In Quentin Tarantino's hyperallusive script," continues Hampton, " poor Clarence is haunted by Elvisness, as social reality and primal fantasy: Jailhouse Rock is his Holy Grail of cool" (44). As the editors write in Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture, "the suspicion lingers that our pursuit of symbolic expression in such analogues to reality means that we don't trust reality anymore to pay anything but lip service to our most cherished popular myths" (Browne et al. 35). This substitution for "our most cherished popular myths" creates a cavity in modern reality that mirrors in many ways the deficiency experienced by male initiates entering the adult world, in Robert bly's schema. This hollow in the modern male psyche is continually fed with the malnourishing junk food of a fantasy world, whether it is to be served up between pages or sprockets. The merge of the King with American culture is proof. Hampton believes that although the "despised, feckless Presley oeuvre deserves to have been expurged from human memory[,] . . . like the star it has had a curious half-life after death: it retains a bland, zombiefied insistence that will not be denied" (48). As Hampton notes, Elvis continues to cast his "long shadow" over all that is American (including True Romance).

Julie Baumgold's "E: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Elvis" is an examination of Elvis's life after death in the reworking of the American modern myth that she equates with celebrity status. Baumgold specifically focuses on the Elvis factor of pop-culture: "The pantheon changes but always is full of incarnate human gods. . . . Elvis [is an] example of contagious magic, the myths created by many. Myths were explanations, and Elvis still explains how the lowly can rise, how the high can fall, how the magician can enchant, how the ritual can thrill and how the man-gods convince each he has come only for them" (95). Scholars at an April 1994 conference entitled "Icons of Popular Culture I: Elvis and Marilyn," agree with Baumgold that "Elvis [is] so closely identified with American culture that the way [he] is represented speaks directly of America itself" (Fernández A10). This is the culture and this man-god that the burger-eating, roller coaster-riding, comic book-reading and movie-watching Clarence embraces as a youth.

Steeped in Americanized myth, Clarence wades through life in constant contact with his Sacred King. Like any good Elvis-inspired superhero, Clarence "gets the girl." Clarence's girl is Alabama, whom he meets in a darkened movie theater. Alabama also has a part to play. After all, she wears his ring and he hers (both diamond horseshoe rings, replicas of Elvis and Priscilla's own rings). There is a somber moment after they consummate their relationship, as the two hold hands at the edge of the bed, heads bowed before a candle-lit shrine to the King, a remembrance of ritual space in the Elvis mass. They may be two separate people, but they are joined by the hip as they join forces to start their new life together.

Clarence longs to externalize his heroic ideals, and Alabama provides his first opportunity to be a hero. Alabama reveals that she is a prostitute (like "the hooker with a heart of gold" from Presley's King Creole, the movie that followed hot on the heels of Jailhouse Rock). Clarence is her third customer, and she has fallen in love with him. Later, the lovebirds get matching tattoos. While Alabama is having a Cupid and Clarence's name inked on her stomach, she reveals that her pimp, Drexl, "got rough" with one of the girls. The internal hero in Clarence stirs, like surly Vince Everett when he witnesses a girl being hit in a bar. In a scene cut from the original script, Clarence even "imagines a monologue from a pimp talking about Alabama, virtually replicating that between Keitel and Robert DeNiro in [Taxi Driver]" (Dawson 107). Clarence's moral struggle manifests itself after they return to their apartment. It is at this point that he enters the bathroom and first "dips his finger in the stream."

It is time to call on Elvis Presley, Sacred King and Superhero to "take care of business," in the words of the King himself. Presley, by 1971, had designed a TCB necklace utilizing the Captain Marvel lightning bolt and had even composed his own TCB Oath, as the Sterns say, "his personal paean to instant gratification" including the all-important clause, "freedom from constipation." Elvis truly is, was and always will be the King of the bathroom. While the water flows from the faucet, the King appears in full regalia. This is Elvis, the Elvis of the 1950s in his $10,000 gold lamé suit "designed by a Brooklyn-born former boxer who had honed his skills making costumes for burlesque dancers" (Lovinger 40). As the title of his 1959 record album proclaims atop sixteen Elvi all clad in gold lamé, "50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong." Even his trademark mannerisms are visible to Clarence via the bathroom mirror as the King struts behind his protege singing "I've been so lonely, I could die." Standing before the bathroom mirror, Clarence views the reflected image of the Sacred King as Elvis appears behind him. "Can you live with it?" begins the King. "That sonofabitch walkin' around breathin' the same air as you, gettin' away with it everyday." Clarence is irritated but perplexed about how to solve his dilemma. "Are you holy?" continues Elvis. "You wanna get unholy?" Elvis advises Clarence to murder Drexl, sneering, "that punk don't deserve to live." When Clarence worries that he does not want to spend the rest of his life in jail, Elvis explains that Clarence can get away with killing Drexl simply because the police would rejoice in the murder of a drug lord. Having performed his task, Elvis takes his exit saying, "I like you, Clarence. Always have, always will."

The fact that Clarence is taking his cues from Presley is no accident. Like Woody Allen exploiting Humphrey Bogart's advice in Play It Again Sam, Tarantino is allowing Clarence to follow the King's lead (Dawson 106). Commenting on his male protagonist as a reflection of reality, Tarantino has said:

I think Clarence is very human. Part of the thing, though, is that he's had as much as a brush with this kind of stuff as anybody else. Everything he knows about this, he knows through seeing movies and when he goes to take out Drexl, you know he's like a guy in a movie, he's thinking of himself coming in there and kicking a-- and doing what a movie hero does. He shows up there but he comes somewhat into the real world when he goes to this pimp's place. It takes a lot of bravado to knock on that door and go into that room. (qtd in Dawson 107)

Actor Christian Slater, who portrays Tarantino's Clarence, also offers his understanding of the character: "You know he had to make up a kind of fantasy world for himself and Elvis is sort of the one he chooses to be his guidance counselor. . . . He loved the movies. He always wanted to be a part of them in some way and Alabama opened the door and gave him the opportunity to be the hero" (qtd in Dawson 106). Both Slater and Tarantino are clearly in tune with ramifications of achieving one's quest vicariously by way of the big screen.

"I want you to know that you can count on me to protect you," Clarence assures a nervous Alabama as he makes his first step towards bridging the gap between cinema and life. Still reflecting the radiated energy from the King, Clarence dons his Elvis-style sunglasses, Alabama's former address in hand. With a gun in his sock and the borrowed invincibility of his comic book and screen heroes, Clarence is ready to kill in his service to his King. When Clarence confronts Drexl, who is clad in a cheetah print robe--a sure sign of his sheer bestial nature--the pimp mistakenly assumes that he is dealing with a "motherfuckin' Charlie Bronson." In fact, Drexl is dealing with a greater power, the Sacred King as divined by Clarence Worley.

After several punches have landed and Clarence has received a swift kick to the groin, the hero appears to be at the point of emasculation as the pimp pins Clarence to the ground and examines his driver's license and discovers Clarence's identity. Just as Drexl calls to a fellow thug to get Alabama and "bring her dumb ass here," Clarence reaches for his gun and emasculates Drexl. He shoots straight for Drexl's groin and demands that Drexl open his eyes as the final bullet is placed in his brain. Drexl is castrated and dead. Clarence orders a prostitute to get a suitcase and "put Alabama's things in it." In his haste, he takes the wrong suitcase and leaves his driver's license on the floor of Drexl's room.

Clarence returns home toting the all-American meal for two, burgers and sodas-- Presley-style food to feed the starving inner warrior he needs to resurrect. "The inner King, once recovered, requires feeding and honoring if he is to remain alive," claims Bly (113). For King Creole, burgers are in order. "Elvis loved burgers, well-done burgers -- mainly cheeseburgers. And the cheese he liked best was American cheese," writes Brenda Arlene Butler, who has compiled all of Elvis' favorite recipes into the cookbook Are You Hungry Tonight?. Thus, Clarence is eating his-and Elvis's--favorite meal as the suitcase is opened. A slack-jawed Alabama giggles, "These aren't my things," because inside the suitcase are bags full of cocaine. Clarence has inadvertently stolen the cocaine that Drexl had stolen before him.

Naturally, they plan to travel to California and sell the $500,000 worth of cocaine for $200,000 in a one-time deal. Clarence's childhood pal, Dick Ritchie, is his Hollywood connection. Himself a struggling actor who is shown reading for a bit part as the "bad guy" in a T.J. Hooker episode, Dick is the bobbling foil for Clarence's superhero. When Dick answers a phone call from the newlyweds, he is sitting on the toilet with a larger than life, black and white caricature of Elvis emblazoned on his T-shirt. This is not TCB Elvis with his superhero powers which grant "freedom from constipation." This is mortal Elvis in the Graceland bathroom , a bathroom which is now off-limits to even the most dedicated of pilgrims. As the perennial understudy, Dick is eager to please his old friend. The deal is negotiated by Elliott, an even more ridiculous "Yes-Man" for the Hollywood producer who is interested in Clarence's coke. Approrpiately, the details are discussed in an amusement park while flying high on a roller coaster. Both Elvis and the American theme park as symbols allow a proud backwards glance to the past and an optimistic hope for the future, in this case, for Clarence and Alabama.

While Clarence negotiates their future happiness, Alabama is discovered alone in the honeymoon suite of the Safari Motel by one of Blue Lou Boyle's henchmen, Virgil, who has been in hot pursuit of the cocaine since Drexl first stole it. Beaten and bleeding after putting up a fight with Virgil, Alabama regains consciousness in time to see the man find the suitcase and aim his gun. In one last effort, she plunges a corkscrew into the top of his foot, not his chest where he was expecting the blow to land, then grabs a ceramic head of Elvis and smashes it over the head of the aggressor who is stunned and angered. In retaliation, Virgil throws Alabama into the bathroom and through the glass shower doors. Knocking the faucet on as she is flung into the bathtub, the holy water trickles onto Alabama's head christening her into the magical world of the powerful bathroom. Unlike Elvis who fell into the tub while filming Clambake and suffered a concussion, Alabama is triumphant in overcoming the pitfalls of modern-day plumbing. Rubbing shampoo in the hit man's eyes and then lifting the lid off of the toilet's tank, Alabama delivers a more crushing blow than the first to a dumbfounded man who can find no talismans of his own in this sacred room. She then sprays his face with hair spray and lights the aerosol spray with a quick flick of her Bic. Alabama grabs his man-sized gun and fires, screaming like a banshee. Clarence arrives from his burger run and whisks her away in his purple Cadillac.

Along with Dick Ritchie, the two lovers, arrive at the Beverly Ambassador Hotel and meet Elliot, who is wired for sound courtesy of the LAPD, in the lobby. They join Lee Donowitz, the big time movie producer, and his two incredibly hulking henchmen in a posh hotel room. When the deal is finalized, Clarence leaves Alabama to count the money while he makes another trip to the bathroom. While standing to urinate, Clarence launches into "Heartbreak Hotel." In the foreground, the King's horseshoe ring decorating his finger is visibly tapping along in back-up as Clarence takes the lead. The two heroes converse, the King reassuring Clarence that "what [he's] doing is genuine." Elvis, who is even billed as "Mentor" in the movie credits, validates Clarence's actions and exits with his signal phrase: " Clarence, I like you. Always have, always will." Feeling confident and full of the radiated energy from the King, Clarence zips up and steps out into the hall only to be floored by a searing bullet.

While Clarence is TCB in the bathroom, all hell has been breaking loose in the living room. The deal captured on tape, the LAPD storms the hotel room. Seconds later, the door swings open again and Blue Lou Boyle's heavily armed henchmen burst in. Extended arms and locked elbows swing 360 degrees marking everyone for death. A policeman fires, beginning the chaotic massacre which knocks Clarence to the floor. While the rest of the occupants either kill or are killed, Alabama crawls to Clarence. He is unconscious and bleeding, having been shot in his left eye, his wound perhaps indicative of his unhealthy vision and warped perception of reality. Surely Bly would agree that Clarence's vision has been skewed by the "worn out images of adult manhood given by popular culture" (ix). Wailing, Alabama coaxes Clarence to life. By the time Clarence regains consciousness, they discover everyone else in the hotel room is dead. Alabama places the King's sunglasses on Clarence. They pick up the briefcase full of money and stumble out of the room, out of the hotel and into their car.

As the story closes, the Elvis film genre is brought full circle with a reminder of Elvis on the beach. Clarence, Alabama and baby E make three in the promised land, or paradise, Mexican style. It is doubtful that the King will continue to reappear to Clarence in bathrooms. Clarence now has Little E on whom to center his hopes and dreams. Baby Elvis is the waddling yield of Clarence's lifelong desire to flesh out the King and create an Elvis incarnate. His Earthly King turned Sacred King has turned back into an Earthly King without the celluloid. Clarence as a father appears to have broken the cycle of dependency on popular culture to provide role models and a standard of living to a generation of fatherless sons, as Bly would suggest.

But this last turn of events is director Tony Scott's creation, not Tarantino's. In its original text, the screenplay read much like Tarantino's later effort, Pulp Fiction. The story is told out of chronological sequence with Clarence "expiring from a bullet to the eye rather than recovering to leave a set of tyre marks all the way to Mexico" (Dawson 107). Once the screenplay was rearranged in a linear fashion, the ending was modified. Christian Slater comments on the romanticized Hollywood rewrite: "I think it's very nice and sweet that we do end up together. And it's a beautiful sunset . . . but, yeah, in the original script, that's a rap, which made complete sense because they were living such fast and insane and chaotic lives. But this is the movies '" (qtd in Dawson 107). The original script also allows Alabama to shoot a member of the LAPD, whereas the rewrite leaves her unarmed. The rewriting is significant. When Elvis Presley was asked by Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits what his favorite group was, he seriously replied, The Los Angeles Police Department (Stern & Stern 105). In Tarantino's script, an officer, one of the King's men kills Clarence, and Alabama shoots one of the King's men.

"No one," Marcus writes in his introduction, "could have predicted the ubiquity, the playfulness, the perversity, the terror, and the fun of this, of Elvis Presley's second life: a great, common conversation, sometimes, a conversation between specters and fans, made out of songs, art works, books, movies dreams; sometimes more than anything cultural noise." Elvis Presley has triumphed over death as he is continually resuscitated by a people who refuse to let their heroes die on-screen or off-screen. Whether in the incantations of professional impersonators or in the daily routines of middle America's average working class, Elvis in his iconoclasm has become a transcendent force in popular culture as, typically, for Tarantino's Clarence Worley. Tarantino's Post-Modern myth is thus more real than the movies-including Elvis's movies--which previously dominated and shaped the audience's value system. Tarantino's film points to a hole in the American psyche, leaving the awakening of the inner wild man an impossible dream and leaving the American male all shook up.

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Browne Ray B, Marshall W. Fishwick and Kevin O. Browne, eds. Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture. Ohio: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1990.

Butler, Brenda Arlene. Are You Hungry Tonight?. New Jersey: Gramercy Books, 1992.

Dawson, Jeff. Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool. New York: Applause, 1995.

Fernández, Sandy. "The Iconography of Elvis and Marilyn." The Chronicle of Higher Education 4 May 1994:A10, A16.

Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. New York: Little, Brown, 1994.

Hampton, Howard. "Elvis Dorado: The True Romance of Viva Las Vegas." Film Comment 30 (1994): 44- 49.

Jailhouse Rock. Dir. Richard Thorpe. MGM , 1957.

Lovinger, Jay, ed. "On His 60th Birthday: A Celebration in Pictures." Life 10 Feb. 1995: 1-96.

Marcus, Greil. Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Stern, Jane, and Michael Stern. Elvis World. New York: Knopf, 1987.

True Romance. Dir. Tony Scott. Screenplay by Quentin Tarantino. Warner Bros., 1993.