By Matt Shedd
Originally published at A MISSING AMERICA: American Entertainment Blog and Monthly Online Magazine
AMA Magazine launching this March at www.amissingamerica.com. Stay tuned!
In 1977 that black cloud famously gathered over Memphis when the world was scandalized to discovered the king of rock and roll as a corpse, collapsed in his vomit. America had not wanted to see the collapse for so long, what the devotees found traumatic should not have been so shocking. I believe the same applies for Michael Jackson. Many of us must have been lying to ourselves pretty hard over the course of his tortured life–which we were painfully implicated in–to be as shocked as we were. Just 5 years after Elvis’s death–I can’t tell whether that’s a long time or a short time–Eddie Murphy lampooned the older and overweight Elvis in his huge special DELIRIOUS.
When you watch the clip, notice that Murphy makes it abundantly clear when he moves from laughing with Elvis, and acknowledging the power of his performance, to laughing at Elvis. He feels justified in the joke, or at least, he feels safe making it, because the public had turned on Elvis. Whether this is an act or critique or malicious, I’ll leave for you to judge. But I will say, we could similarly make a joke about Murphy slipping into self-parody as his career moved into The Nutty Professor era.
To understand the significance of this thunderous approval of Murphy’s impression, we have to realize the extent of Murphy’s popularity at this point. Chris Rock–who early in his career won the favor of Eddie Murphy and was taken under Murphy’s wing early on–claims there’s never been a comedian that was as big as Eddie Murphy was. His genius for impressions serve him better on the stand-up stage than on the silver screen. He comes across more natural here than in his later film career. (That said, if you decide to watch the whole special, posted at the bottom, there are several jibes at homosexuals that seem particularly out of place in 2012, and are seemingly cruel for 1982 even. Murphy later in his career publicly apologized for his insensitive gay bashing.)
Nietzsche’s famously succinct description of the concept of the sacred as the things at which we cannot laugh. The approval and huge laughter Murphy gets from making fun of fat Elvis is telling. Even something as sacred as Elvis had only a five years before the older Elvis became a punchline. He was Johnny Carson’s bag during the “fat and 40” years, but his death, like usual, restored a certain aura to America’s biggest icon of the 20th century.
Murphy can joke about old Elvis because public perception had shifted in the five years after his death. Whatever you may personally feel about the Elvis of the 60s and 70s, it has become alright to make fun of older, which isn’t even that old, Elvis (I’m guilty; working on appreciating the 60s and 70s more.) But even the young Eddie Murphy, who seems to have a lot of misguided feelings about homosexuals, gives young Elvis the love and adoration that his early performances coax out of nearly anyone who gives them a chance. Case in point:
The honesty and vulnerability has something to do with sacred I think. What exactly, I’m not sure, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
(Also, below is the entire DELIRIOUS special. Beware of angry gay jokes.)
Note: This article was revised on 2/19/2012 in response to a comment from Tom Schreck. My gratitude goes out to him, despite a tone that I took to be unnecessarily hostile. I asked for it though: the first draft took some glib shots at Elvis. And we made our peace. You can read Tom’s thoughtful open letter in the comment section on the original post–including some friendlier back-and-forth, featuring ND’s own Michael Helwig, or as a separate post on his blog: http://tomschreck.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/elvis-in-the-70s/
