Page 21 - Studio International - February 1971

emerged in recent American politics, the one discontent, and finally revolt. Without a Cause, 1955, with Marlon Brando
black and the other white, have singled out Presley's career began in the middle fifties and James Dean, respectively. Warhol's
Presley and the music he represents as one of the and spans a decade, a considerable period of time portrait of Brando, and his earlier dedication of
key symbols indicative of a younger generation's (by today's standards) for a popular musical a drawing to Dean,9 are explicit references to the
hostility and rejection of materialism, racism figure to hold the attention of a highly critical awareness of the new values in the process of
and the inequalities which now characterize audience concerned with genuine expression of being forged.
one of the wealthiest nations in the world.? emotive content. Presley's musical personality For this reason the actors Warhol chooses to
In essence, Rock and Roll is a lineal descendant is complex, and his sexy physical presentation portray, with the exception of Troy Donahue,10
of Negro Rhythm and Blues, and implicit in quickly earned him the nickname of 'Elvis the are very different from the women. And Brando,
Rock and Roll's audience is an egalitarianism and Pelvis'. Radio, as well as records, was the Dean and Presley are in turn different from
a consequent identification with disadvantaged medium of this new music. But Presley was the Donahue; in his treatment of Brando and
groups (though among white suburban first Rock artist to have an equally strong career Presley, Warhol acknowledges this. Both are
audiences of the fifties this connection was in movies and his depiction in the Elvis series, portrayed in a situation whereby they are being
tenuous and as yet tentative, to be sure). From with heavily-greased black hair, sideburns and a conditioned by their roles, whereas Donahue is
its inception Rock and Roll was the music of the surly facial expression, is typical of the new presented straightforwardly, as himself. Brando,
young, and in its sense of immediacy and the male images that were gradually to supplant the Dean and Presley are authentically creative,
manner in which its syntax and vocabulary crew-cut conventions of the fifties and all they and not merely products of Hollywood's fantasy
voiced the concern of the young, it linked and represented. or commercialism. All three had originative
bound a disaffiliated generation in common The attitudes underlying Rock and Roll, its lives, and therefore are strong personalities; all
cause.8 Basically, it is a music of rejection, and rejection of the established cultural mores, and three raised—at one level or another—important
(along with renewed interest in folk music in the the disaffiliation and alientation underscoring questions as to the quality of life in America and
late fifties and early sixties, and the emergence the split between generations in America, had the nature of its freedoms. Implicit in their
of folk-rock) it opened the pathways, a few years already been clearly expressed in several movies, attitude is a condemnation of society and its
later, to a more formidable expression of in particular The Wild Ones, 1951, and Rebel ways; they project an image of the necessity

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