Finding the 'Un-American' in Elvis

Devotees of Elvis Presley marking this summer's 30th anniversary of his death at a key Paris exhibit will know they're not in Memphis anymore. The French capital is offering up a decidedly more cerebral look at the rock 'n' roll phenomenon, attaching it to a socio-political critique unlikely to be found at Graceland. The show, Rock 'n' Roll 39-59, at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, views Elvis's hip-shaking and Jackson Pollock's drip-painting as reflections of the same impulse:"Two young people living in a society that they want to provoke, to rebel against, and to mock sometimes," as Foundation president Alain Dominique Perrin puts it."This was the America that had liberated the world of Nazism," says Perrin,"but this was also a racist America, a puritan America, a hyper-conservative, McCarthyite America."

Elvis as an"Un-American" in Paris? Obviously, this is no Lite FM stroll down memory lane. Rock 'n' Roll 39-59 traces its subject back to the Dec. 23, 1938, Carnegie Hall concert titled From Spirituals to Swing, which ignited a nationwide boogie-woogie explosion and marked the breakout moment for African- American music. Boogie-woogie dug the well from which rock 'n' roll would later draw its attitude and rhythm.

For rock critic and historian Greil Marcus, who lectured on Buddy Holly at the exhibit opening earlier this summer, the orderly, complacent society of postwar America was a tinderbox ready to explode."In the 1950s, the official story was that America was back to normal: women were out of the factories, everything was working like clockwork," he said."But underneath this was an entirely different story of confusion, conflict, desperation, desire for grandeur. Life could be an epic story, life was dangerous, you could step outside the role that had been preordained for you."