Professor David Peimer
Elvis: The King of Rock ’n’ Roll
Summary
A rousing overview of one of the greatest cultural icons of the 20th century, from his humble beginnings to his meteoric rise, to his massive cultural impact around the world.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
I think the director Baz Luhrmann’s visual spectacle in the 2022 film is contemporary and interesting. Some may find his style excessive, but I think he’s trying to find a current understanding of this icon and he’s taken an angle that works. The actor Austin Butler, who plays Elvis in the film, did an interview in which he was asked how he approached this iconic character, and he talked a lot about looking for the humanity behind the myth. Butler’s own mother died when he was 23 years old, the same age as Elvis when his mother, who he was so close to, died. He felt that moment gave him the humanity he could deeply connect with, and the singing could come from that place.
From my research, it appears that his great grandmother was Jewish. I can’t say definitively, more research needs to be done to confirm it. That may be why the Star of David is together with the cross on Elvis’ mother’s tombstone.
I don’t think he cared. There was an interview in which he said if you can’t move, you can’t sing. A district judge had banned him from using his body in sexually explicit or expressive manners, so he went on stage and just used his little finger and moved the top part of his body. I think the culture was ready at the time and he embodied that symbol and lived it. Elvis was a part of the sexual revolution.