ARTS The Michigan Daily Wednesday, January 8, 1992 Page 5 r/ /' ,4 Marcus examines our thing for the King ,, .. Lipstick Traces author records bizarre Elvisized sociology by Annette Petruso Dead Elvis, Greil Marcus' latest musical/cultural expos6, explores the images and place of Elvis Pres- ley in America, that is, the dead Elvis. Marcus began writing on Presley in his 1975 collection of portraits of certain key musicians in the American consciousness, Mystery Train, but Dead Elvis is of a more odd nature. The Presley legend has become more than just worship of a false semi-god. In a recent phone interview from his home in Berkeley, Marcus de- scribed the process of writing the book. "Around 1978, I began to notice that what I would've expected to be a finished story wasn't finished. People were refusing to let Elvis go and I kept reading odd articles or reading strange advertisements or hearing bizarre punk songs about Elvis. And I just began to throw things onto a shelf, and over two or they came along. The kind of stuff that just doesn't stop appearing. "Just yesterday, somebody sent me a comic book called Buzz Num- ber Three. The cover story is the 'Fetal Elvis,' the adventures of Elvis as a fetus fighting against the evil Jesse Garon who has stolen his television set in his mother's womb. Actually, it's funnier than it sounds. "I'd be walking by a newsstand and I would see things like that tabloid headline that's in the book, 'Statue of Elvis Found on Mars.' And I would just buy it. That's too strange to pass up." Because of Marcus' "research" methods and the manner in which the text is collected, Dead Elvis has a running theme, but is not a coher- ent whole. It has a random quality to it, shared to some degree by Mar- cus' Lipstick Traces, which he called a "five-hundred-page book about a three-minute song 'Anarchy in the UK."' "There's a lot of Lipstick that came out of cutting strange news stories out of the paper more than anything else and sticking them up on the wall and figuring they'll find their way into this book some- how," he said. "And some of them did and some of them didn't. But Lipstick was more of a conventional research project. I went in, I spent three years reading about Dada and I took two trips to Europe to talk to situationists and look for forgotten documents. The concepts for both books, however, are amusing. One of the ba- sic concepts of Lipstick Traces, that is that the "intellectual" move- ment Dada is related to the Sex Pis- tols and punk, descendants even, See MARCUS, Page 8 Sharon (Mimi Rogers) looks awfully mystified after inexplicably rejecting group sex in favor of God in Michael Tolkin's religious drama, The Rapture. Unfortunately, no Christ figures in this shot. The Rapture moves in mserious ways The Rapture dir. Michael Tolkin by Gabriel Feldberg The Rapture tells perhaps the most troubling story about what * people do for the love of God since Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac. It is not a very polished film, yet The Rapture is so intelligent and so powerfully unsettling that its shortcomings never get in its way. The picture is occasionally scattered and unclear, but writer and first- time director Michael Tolkin doesn't aim to make it explicitly The Rapture is so in- telligent and so pow- erfully unsettling that its shortcomings never get in its way. The picture is occa- sionally scattered and unclear, but writer and first-time director Michael Tolkin doesn't aim to make it explicitly simple... simple: The Rapture is as confusing 0 a parable as the Book of Job. The movie centers around an unfulfilled telephone operator named Sharon (Mimi Rogers of Someone to Watch Over Me) who tries to cure her emptiness by pick- ing up strangers for slightly deviant group sex. Religious messages seem to fol- low Sharon everywhere: there are born-agains at work and knocking 0 door-to-door, and one even tattooed on the naked back of a woman in one of Sharon's foursomes. Gradually, she internalizes Apocalyptic dogma, and has a near breakdown when she at last realizes the uncleanliness of her life. After a dream in which she finds God, Sharon's faith becomes limit- less. She joins a church, marries a Christian and begins a deeply reli- gious family. A vision carries her to the California desert with her daughter, Mary (Kimberly Cul- lum), where she waits, and waits, for God to call her up to heaven. Tolkin's script is deliberately ambiguous - it's hard to say if Sharon is going crazy or if she knows something we all don't. She says things like, "God made me an information operator for a reason" with such conviction that she makes the absurd seem sensible. Tolkin treats both believers and unbelievers with remarkable sensi- tivity and fairness. He conveys the alienation Sharon's old friends feel, but he also gets across how wonder- ful it must be to have the Universe made simple. Equally ambiguous is the film's capricious style. Quite a bit of the movie whips by without explana- tion, while in other places it passes as slowly as waiting for the Apoca- lypse. Some of the script makes faith sound perfectly natural, but other snatches of dialogue are as disingenuous as a Sunday sermon. Impressive in some scenes, many of the actors are wooden in others. Such inconsistencies make The Rapture unlike conventional Hol- lywood features. Tolkin isn't con- cerned with making things look ab- solutely real. The lighting is exag- gerated and theatrical, and the film's few special effects are pleas- antly goofy. Questioning the way things ap- pear in The Rapture is like fussing over whether or not the Red Sea could have parted. The Rapture is not meant to be a realistic movie: like other effective and moving parables, it is simply human and ac- cessible. THE RAPTURE is playing through Sunday at the Michigan Theater. Find yourself. Write for Arts! Come to the Mass Meeting Monday at 7:30 pm 420 Maynard Dead Elvis Grei Marcus Doubleday/Hardcover Arts criticism is a lot like jerking off: 1) You're not actually doing The Real Thing (although it does take some talent to do what you're doing if you wanna do it right). 2) Forcing your opinions on readers, like masturbation, has to be one of the ultimate forms of self-indulgence. 3) As long as you don't take what you're doing too seriously, it can be gobs of fun. Which brings us to Greil Marcus, rock 'n' roll es- sayist/pseudo-sociologist supreme. His last offering, the absurdly overwritten Lipstick Traces, which at- tempted to link punk, dada and lots of other flashy subversive movements, was a far cry from his latest, Dead Elvis. Subtitled "A Chronicle of a Cultural Obses- sion," this collection of previously published essays written between 1977 and 1990 attests more to the personal obsession of Marcus, who has not only managed to write about 200 pages (big type) on Pres- ley without really saying anything, but has also meticulously collected every pop culture reference to the Big Fella imaginable, from Sun headlines ("STATUE OF ELVIS FOUND ON MARS") to album covers (including Detroit's own Elvis Hitler's Disgraceland LP) to "The last Elvis imi- tator I fucked was carrying your sacred seed. Please send money..."). Sounds like a fun read, right? Well, at times, Dead Elvis can be. Marcus is obviously quite sin- cerely into the current subject of his spoutings, and while entire essays spent on cultural analyses of the seemingly trivial - Diego Cortez's Private Elvis collection of photographs, or The Last Temptation of Elvis compilation cover album - are definitely ex- cessive, they remain accessible as well. Unlike Lipstick Traces, which quickly became a convoluted mess, this group of shorter works is much easier to digest. But the problem is that they still ain't satisfying as a whole. In the opening essay, "Blue Hawaii," Marcus - writing from Maui after hearing of Pres- ley's death - eloquently states his general premise: I understood Elvis not as a human being (his di- vorce was interesting to me musically), but as a force, as a kind of necessity: that is, the necessity existing in every culture that leads it to produce a perfect, all-inclusive metaphor for itself. This, I tried to find a way to say safely, was what Herman Melville attempted to do with his white whale, but this is what Elvis Presley turned out to be. But from here, Marcus' work degenerates, mean- dering from such extremes as the overkill of a point by point diatribe attacking Albert Goldman's Elvis scam ("The Myth Behind the Truth Behind the Leg- end") to the intriguing outlandishness of an attempt to draw a connection between the King and Situation- ist theory ("A Corpse in Your Mouth: Adventures of a Metaphor, or Modern Cannibalism"). On top of (or perhaps because of) the overall lack of cohesiveness, the essays eventually dissolve into an almost indistinguishable, repetitious haze: Elvis was important. Elvis has permeated American cul- ture, deeply. Many people are obsessed with Elvis. So the final question, the one that everything hinges upon, remains: Is Marcus really taking this shit seriously? At times, with section headings such as "The Absence of Elvis," the answer is undoubt- edly, "Probably not totally completely." But even if the author is being serious, the reader can't be. The only thing Dead Elvis is good for is a few laughs, and reading it won't make you grow hair on your palms. -Mark Binelli Marcus three years, the shelf became a cou- ple of shelves, and then it became a whole bookshelf, and then it became a second bookshelf," Marcus ex- plained. "This wasn't a file. This wasn't anything kept in an orderly manner. It was really, 'Oh, just look at that,' 'Oh, look at this,' and throwing it on there. Strange records. Books as Soundgarden Badmotorfinger A&M Records Soundgarden has definitely come a long way since its 1985 debut EP, Screaming Life. Some fans of the Seattle quartet, however, wouldn't necessarily declare this a good thing. No longer will one hear the raw, emotionally draining guitar sound that spawned many a Sub Pop band. In that respect, anyone expecting another Ultra-Mega OK would do best looking elsewhere. In its place stands a more polished hard rock outfit with a greater vision of its destination. Badmotorfinger sounds more like a total group effort than any previ- ous Soundgarden release. Guitarist Kim Thayil successfully tries his hand at lyric writing on the song "Room A Thousand Years Wide." Throughout the rest of the al- bum, Thayil produces a cleaner, richer guitar sound that allows him to show off more of his technique than in earlier efforts, which were drowned in a wall of guitar noise. Hiro Yamamoto, with his inno- vative bass style, is absent from this album, replaced by newcomer Ben Sheperd. Sheperd fills the vacant role admirably. In "Somewhere," his playing is quite reminiscent of Yamamoto's own standout bass performances. Sheperd seems to fit in nicely with the rest of the band, especially with Matt Cameron, the other component of the rhythm sec- tion, who delivers yet another mas- terful show on drums. The center of attention, never- theless, largely continues to be lead singer Chris Cornell. Although Cornell's voice has sometimes lacked sincerity, he gives a very powerful performance throughout Badmotorfinger. POSTERS Millions of 'em... all your faves! 340 la S. State STAIRWAY 994E3888 OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK TO0 HEAVEN With the ability to change from a low growl to a high-pitched frenzy, Cornell doesn't seem to be half-hearted about his singing any- more. "Room A Thousand Years Wide" displays him at his finest - changing from his husky, mild-man- nered voice at the beginning to an all-out vocal beating by the finish. Don't let the polished sound fool you. Soundgarden continues to break traditional heavy metal/hard rock clich6s. Lyrically, Cornell sub- tly rips apart various stereotypes in our society. Everything from over- using the Christ figure ("Jesus Christ Pose") to people forcing their views upon others ("Holy Water") is fair game for Cornell's criticism and biting abuse. Badmotorfinger has a degree of depth that is quite uncommon in music today. Granted, it still offers a hard rock workout all by itself. But, for the more attentive listener, Soundgarden actually has some in- teresting things to say. The band doesn't beat you over the head with politically correct See RECORDS, Page 8 v Program in Film and Video Studies Available Courses --Winter 1992 Film\Video & English 412 Sec 002 Major Directors The films of Max Ophuls and Joseph von Sternberg. Prerequisites: None Lecture: T & Th, 9:30 -10:30 pm, MLB Aud 4 Screening: W, 7:00 pm, Angell Hall Aud A Instructor: Visiting Professor Susan White -nm 0 I'A A Af% - e flf AFRICAN-AMERICAN RIGHTS. WOMEN'S RIGHTS. DATE RAPE. See how students in the 60s dealt with the same issues facing you today. THE ZOO ZOO CHRONICLES a play written and directed by Elise Bryant Bring Your Best Friend to revisit life on campus in 1969-1974 as Chronicles takes you effortlessly on a journey of self-definition for three college roommates who form life-long friendships at the height of the Viet Nam war, the escalation of the Afro- American movement and the beginnings of the women's movement. The foundation of our future, built by students then, is awaiting completion in our choices of today.