Elvis, Michael, and Other Celebrity Saints
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Filed under: Religion , Culture , Disputations The King — that would be Elvis Presley — turns 75 today. Or he would if he were still alive. Which he may well be, if the sightings and supermarket tabloids are to be believed. For everyone else who accepts that Elvis is gone but still doesn’t want him forgotten, there is the ancient consolation of religious devotion to the dearly departed — though in the modern guise of celebrity canonization that seems more intense and widespread every year. For evidence of this phenomenon look no further than the massive public outpouring after last June’s untimely death of the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. With public vigils and pilgrimages, online shrines and wakes, Jackson was venerated across the globe by hoi polloi and high and mighty alike, including his longtime friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and pop spirituality guru Deepak Chopra . Jackson was a “pop theologian,” wrote Anthea Butler , a historian of religion and popular culture — and more. “With his singing and dancing talent, Jackson became a god, moonwalking above the crowds into his own world.” That world was often a dangerous and lonely place for Jacko, as it has been for many celebrity gods. But in death, at least, Michael Jackson found himself in good company. From James Dean to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe to Princess Diana, the singer Selena to the actor Heath Ledger, the popular devotion to celebrities, notably those who die young, is one of the most explicitly religious phenomena in our secularized society. We are riveted by the living stars, the red carpet walk of the upcoming Oscars, the blood sport of the aptly named “American Idol” competition. But it is the dead celebs who give meaning to the lives of their followers through their unlikely afterlives. “When you look at all that cultural activity it suggests to me that there is something sacred going on,” said Gary Laderman, chair of the religion department at Emory University and author of a new book, “Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States.” “It suggests that there is more going on with fans than just finding idols.” Not everyone agrees, of course, or likes it. At the theo-con journal “First Things,” Richard Scott Nokes lamented that Michael Jackson was “a martyr to our culture’s true god: Celebrity.” TV producer and blogger Alison Hill wondered “if God is watching us down here and ripping out his hair at this awful idol worship of the newly dead.” But since God presumably has a long memory, the phenomena may well be frustrating to him — but not entirely unknown. Indeed, experts on religion and pop culture say the clearest historical parallel to today’s cult of dead celebrities is that of the veneration of saints. With the shrines and sacred dates of remembrance, the ubiquitous imagery, and the hunt for any relic associated with the deceased hero, fallen stars seem to mirror the cult of saints that has existed in many cultures across the ages. Every Aug. 15, for example, the evening before the anniversary of Elvis’ 1977 death, upwards of 10,000 fans gather at Graceland, the Memphis home where the King lived, died, and is buried, along with his parents and his stillborn twin. Each of them takes a candle and processes up the driveway, pausing reverently at the grave site, usually to leave some object, before moving on. No matter how many there are, they all get their turn. “And they do this all night, and it’s hot, it’s August, it’s Memphis, and it smells — it’s very, very sensual,” said Erika Doss, a professor of American studies at Notre Dame and author of “Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image.” It’s not necessarily blasphemous, either. “There are no particular tenets of faith” surrounding celebrity saints, Doss noted. “There are particular rituals.” And, she added: “Elvis fans would be appalled if someone were to say, ‘Oh, he’s a god in your life.’ He’s not. He’s much more a figure they call upon or pray to in the midst of whatever religion they are already in.” “I don’t think it’s particularly new. It’s just different, because more of it is being mediated by popular culture and the mass media.” Another difference is the very existence of celebrities themselves — beautiful creations of a mass media that began to transform culture in the early 20th century. In fact, Gary Laderman traces the origin of celebrity devotion to the 1926 death of the actor and sex symbol, Rudolph Valentino , at the age of 31. At Valentino’s funeral in New York a daylong riot broke out among tens of thousands of mourners, and there were reports of suicides by grief-stricken fans. Laderman calls it “the birth of the First Church of Celebrity Worship.” “His death and the reaction to it signaled something new in American culture, a shift in the twentieth century to a new and powerful religious culture that begins to take hold and grows with the expanding media.” From radio to movies to the Internet, mass media has made possible instant connections among huge numbers of people, creating networks of fans who can instantly morph into a congregation of devotees upon the tragic death of a well-known figure. A nother novel aspect of our media saints is that they not only died relatively young, but they often led profoundly dysfunctional lives — dysfunctions that at times contributed to their deaths after achieving the kind of success everyone else desires. Rather than functioning as traditional exemplars of virtue — sinners who repent and live lives of holiness — these dead celebs serve as models of redemption that the public can identify with because they are larger-than-life figures in their celebrity, yet all-too-human in private. In that sense Elvis is a classic. “He’s somebody who put it together on his own, then screwed it up big time — lost the wife, lost the kid, did drugs, died a fat, bloated wreck at a relatively young age,” said Doss. “He’s very much an American saint.” Experts also note that the secularization of the culture, with the decline in traditional religious practices and authority, creates a spiritual vacuum of sorts that is filled by all manner of rituals and figures, including celebrities. In addition, in an increasingly fragmented society, many people find community in a shared devotion to popular figures. And in truth, canonization has historically been a response to grass-roots devotion to a revered figure rather than the top-down process that one sees today in the Roman Catholic Church, for example. As Erika Doss notes, if corporate capitalism were behind the drive to promote Elvis or MJ or any other dead celebrity, it likely wouldn’t work because they would want to push a single brand image onto a public that prefers to create their own memory. Whether Elvis and Michael Jackson can continue to avoid such corporate control is uncertain. Celebrations for Elvis’ 75th have so far been dominated by highly organized productions, like the glittery “Viva ELVIS” spectacular that the Cirque du Soleil will unveil in Las Vegas next month, or the “Elvis 75″ concert in Amsterdam. The TCM cable channel will show Elvis movies all day long (he starred in 33 of them), the Newseum in Washington is opening an “Elvis!” exhibit in March, and there’s special new “Jailhouse Rock” Elvis doll . There will of course be many events at Graceland today — launching a yearlong extravaganza — including a cake cutting by Elvis’ ex-wife Priscilla and his daughter Lisa Marie. The one thing that can save Elvis and Jacko — and their fans — from the dead hand of marketing is, as always, the very thing that helped set them apart from the myriad other celebrities who die each year: their undeniable talent. Across the ages, people have always seen something of the divine in the remarkable artistry of creative geniuses, from Michelangelo to, yes, Michael Jackson. “What is most tugging to those questing for the religious Michael Jackson is not to be found in biography. Rather, it is, always and forever, in the deus of those songs,” Kathryn Lofton, an assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale University, wrote last summer. “It is difficult to think of another singer who has produced more music that serves such ritual function, be it Halloween (‘Thriller’), peace summits (‘We Are The World’), or the midnight club surge (‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’).” Elvis seems to have done much the same with his music, even if his songs were more about the pulsing rhythm than the deeper meaning. “While he may be flawed, there’s also that element that seems to touch on the transcendent, or something that is not of this world, and has cultural legs. Very few get there,” said Laderman. “But we’re in a cultural moment that allows this to happen.”
