 | | without complaint, years spent dutifully making formulaic movies and unexciting music, marriage, fatherhood, a quiet life behind the walls of his mansion; then a stunning return, loud and vibrant; and then a slow, seemingly irresistible decline: divorce, endless tours as lifeless as his old films, news replaced by rumors of terrible things, and finally early death [pp. viii-ix]. . . .
|
| See also Jon Katz, "Why Elvis Matters," pp. 100-105; and Paul M. Sammon,
The King Is Dead,
for an anthology of stories inspired by dead Elvis that can be read in tandem with the present book. Wayne Koestenbaum concentrates on another major American symbol, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in
Jackie Under My Skin
; Koestenbaum reveals how far the fetishization of an icon can be taken. See, in particular, "Jackie's Death," pp. 3-14. In the June 1995 promotional music video for ''HIStory, Past, Present and Future, Book I," Michael Jackson used a huge statue of himself and mass parade scenesconsisting of the serried ranks of the Czech armyin a conscious emulation of the totalitarian style to affirm his iconic status. The booklet that accompanies the CD set features a testimonial by Jackie O. See also Stanley Crouch's comments on Jackson in regard to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in "Hooked: Michael Jackson, Moby Dick of Pop," p. 20.
|
| 237. The editors of
TMR
also referred to comments made by Robert J. Thompson, an associate professor of television at Syracuse University, to
The New York Times
that are noteworthy in relation to the kitsch and ironic aspects of the Mao revival. Thompson proposed "four rules governing the revival of crass products of the past. First, they must strike the reviving generation as especially and patently crap. Second, they must have been appreciated the first time around, with no awareness of this feebleness, by middle to lowbrow consumers. They are thus in a position to be revived in subsequent years by a clever bunch of ironists, perhaps of a socio-economic class superior to that of the first consumers. Third, the successfully revived product will carry several `markers' of the period which produced it." (Thompson's fourth rule is that revivals must always be spontaneous.) See "The Art of Revival" in
The Revival Handbook,
p. 8.
|
| 238. "Revive, Adapt, Improve . . .,"
The Revival Handbook,
p. 12.
|
| 239. Tang Can, "Qingchun ouxiangde bianqian: Cong Mao Zedong dao `Sida tianwang,'" p. 15.
|
| 240. The Four Devaraja * were the Hong Kong singers: Aaron Kwok (Guo Fucheng); Leon Lai (Li Ming); Andy Lau (Liu Dehua); and Jackey Cheung (Zhang Xueyou). Other popular H.K.-Taiwan singers included Tong Ange, Wang Jie, Zhao Chuan, Tan Yonglin, Deng Lijun (d. May 1995), Liu Jialing, Kuang Meiyun, and Weng Qianyu. Mainland favorites were Cui Jian, Cai Guoqing, Xie Xiaodong, Mao Ning, Wei Wei, Mao Amin, Hang Tianqi, Cheng Lin, Na Ying, and Ai Jing.
|
| 241. For a typical reaction to Hong Kong-Taiwan performers who were generally spoken of as being commercial carpetbaggers, see Guo Tianyun, "Zhengshi zhuixingzu."
|
| 242. See Tang Can, "Qingchun ouxiangde bianqian," pp. 14-15; Zhou Yongsheng, "Dangdai qingshaonian yingxiong chongbai yiqing qingxiang tantaojianlun `zhuixing' xianxiang," pp. 10-15; and Xu Fei, "Yu sanbai xuesheng tong `kan' gexing yu gemi," pp. 12-16. Equally, attempts made in the Mainland media to "talk up" Party-approved heroic models by depicting them as though they were H.K./Taiwan stars were risible and unconvincing. See Yu Tian, "`Chaoxingzubaozhuangshu' de qishi," p. 21.
|
| 243. "Shizong weixing jiang `za' xiang nali?"
|
| 244. "Revive, Adapt, Improve. . . ." in
The Revival Handbook,
p. 12.
|
|
