Elvis Presley's Hips: An Introduction

A Film A Day -The original concept and title of this blog. The general gist was to use my voracious appetite for film as an excuse to improve my writing, by discussing, you guessed it, one film each day, normally one I'd just seen that day. ...And then it turned out that someone already did that - crafty sods. Admittedly they've not updated it since 2004, which at the time of writing is 11 years ago. But I'm not one to lift ideas, so instead we have this - Objects in Film.

So what is Objects in Film? Well, simply put, it's a sneaky backdoor-pilot sort of way to discuss a particular film. The idea came to me watching Tom Ford's beautiful adaption of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, starring the man above, Colin Firth. In this scene (and I strongly recommend watching it), our protagonist George Falconer, a closeted, gay, university lecturer diverges from the class discussion of Huxley, to present his views on fear:

Let's leave the Jews out of this just for a moment. Let's think of another minority. One that... One that can go unnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example... Or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, then the fear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you see there always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us.

Now, it's pretty damn obvious what George is getting at here, but remember this film is set in 1962, he can't out-and-out say that he's talking about gay people. In fact, what he says here isn't strictly tied to the invisibility of gay people, particularly in the 1960's. The link to the Jews is interesting as we know that the Nazi's approach to creating fear was to initially portray the Jews as the Other, being physically different, with large noses and the like, speaking their own language, having their own customs, and so on. When openly persecuted they were forced to wear the Star of David, the invisible enemy become visible, ready to ridicule, avoid, be prejudiced at, etc. But the Jews weren't a true threat, as George says, they were 'an imagined one', scapegoats.

What George does during this section of his monologue, in a not-so-subtle way to modern eyes, is slyly address the issues that minorities such as gay people face when they are targeted. The link to the Jews puts in the minds of his audience their plight, their stigmatization. A bit of brilliance in this scene is how Ford's cuts to the audience hammer home this message. He cuts to a straight audience member. How do we know this? Because during the pause after 'somehow invisible' we get the cut, the audience member casts his eyes downwards after George's pause, because he feels targeted by the silence and George's eyes, but it's likely he doesn't know why. Following this, still in the pause, we get cut to a close-up of Kenny's (Nicholas Hoult) eye, which doesn't look away, is the opposite in fact - rapt.

See the video 1:19 for the correct cut, this is merely illustrative

We'll know by the end of the film that Kenny is also gay/bi for certain, but it's this cut that tells us. He understands George's message, empathises with it, is enraptured by the fact that George is being so brazen (by 60's standards) by lecturing this point. And we'll know later of course that he's attracted to George, if not already. George's line ends 'then the fear is much greater'. Ford just told us that, he told us in that pause. We see the invisible in Kenny and George, we see the subconscious fear of the supposed-straight audience member as he misses the subtext. Even if I'm completely off the ball here, and I very well could be, the very fact this can be read out of two cuts is a testament to Ford for putting them in that pause. Hell the 'straight' audience member may just look away out of awkwardness at being stared at by a lecturer, and the cut to Kenny only reinforces his attraction to George. But I don't think so, there's a reason those specific cuts are in that pause.

We're going to talk about fear. Fear after-all is our real enemy, fear is taking over our world. Fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. It's our politician's federal policy, it's how Madison Avenue sells us things we don't need - think about it. The fear of being attacked. The fear that there are Communists lurking around every corner. The fear that some little Caribbean country that doesn't believe in our way of life poses a threat to us. The fear that Black culture may take over the world. The fear of Elvis Presley's hips! ...actually maybe that one is a real fear.

I got there in the end. Elvis Presley's hips. That's the object, if one can even call it an object, that triggered this blog. It perfectly encapsulates for me what this entire scene is trying to do. It's showing us how George thinks as a gay man in the 60's. No straight lecturer would give those hips as an example, but George would. He's incredulous at the idiocy that people have to fear Rock n' Roll, as a corrupting agent of the youth, and of society at-large.  The lines above encapsulate the fears of the late 50's/early 60's, and we as a modern audience know they weren't a real threat. Even back then they were never a true threat. They're only a threat in their perception. George sums up the pointlessness of all these fears in one object - Elvis' hips. His wry comment afterwards, spoken quietly to himself, betrays his attraction to those hips. It ties in everything that George said about the world at large, to him.

The lines following all outline George's fears, growing old, alone, with no one listening - these fears are real to him. That's the difference. His students don't listen to the very words he's just said, none expect Kenny who follows him after class. He lost his partner in a car accident, and is now growing older and alone, not only romantically but within the world at large. He may be an invisible minority, but George understands the consequences of becoming visible. If people fear Elvis' hips then what the hell will they think of George?


So that's why I'm writing this blog. The object of A Single Man, Elvis' hips, carry with them so much more meaning in the context of the scene, the character, and for the film as a whole. It's objects such as these that I'll be writing about in future. There may be diversions of my own into film reviews, and film news in general but I'll be keeping those to a minimum. As you have already seen above, I will tend to diverge, like George, quite a bit, but I'll try and keep it interesting. The format of the entire blog will become clearer as we go, so stick with it if you want, ignore it if not.

I'll end it on Elvis' hips.