Why Elvis?: A pivotal question to be considered is why is the Elvis impersonator industry a phenomenon? Why has it lasted so long and continued to grow from year to year?
There are impersonators of other artists: The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton to name a few all have a number of acts who 'impersonate' them.
The difference between these stars and Elvis is the vast numbers of people 'doing Elvis', so many that it is an industry. So what is it about Elvis that creates this industry? William McCranor Henderson offers one explanation for the phenomenon comparing Elvis to the Greek God Dionysus:
"Like Elvis, Dionysus was young and nocturnal and inspired mindless passion from women, who went crazy in his presence. Even in those primitive days, orgiastic passion was seen as hostile to social order. But worship of Dionysus was so widespread that eventually it was tamed (as was Elvis), made public and official, and became the ritual basis for what we know as Greek tragedy."
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"But most fascinating to me was the mask, the key functional link between Dionysus worship and its evolution into the secular ritual of tragedy (Greek tragic actors, like the priests of Dionysus, wore larger-than-life masks). The wearer of the mask (and here, of course, I wasn't thinking "mask" so much as Wig, Shades, jumpsuit) was himself - and yet not himself."
This series of articles are reprinted with the kind permission of www.elvisinfonet.com
Andy Stankovich
Elvis The Voice
www.ElvisTheVoice.com
One of the world's great Elvis Presley tribute artists
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