Early this year, I got a nasty cold and spent a couple of days on the couch in a NyQuil haze. This seemed like a good time to my severely addled brainEarly this year, I got a nasty cold and spent a couple of days on the couch in a NyQuil haze. This seemed like a good time to my severely addled brain to watch "Elvis" and "Priscilla" back-to-back. Both are incredible, albeit wildly different works of art. The first is bombastic, loud, glittery, and borderline hallucinogenic (or maybe that was the cold medicine) and the second is quiet, subdued and elegant. I don’t have a favorite, in case you are wondering: I never thought of those movies as competing to tell the same story, that’s really not what’s going on here. But "Priscilla" made me very curious about the book it was based on, Priscilla Beaulieu Prestley’s memoirs of meeting, falling in love with and living with Elvis. I wanted to see what Sofia Coppola had not put on the screen.
I want to clarify that while I really enjoy a lot of his music, I am a very moderate Elvis fan. His musical legacy is massive, but it’s also complicated, so I enjoy his work, but I never really idolized him.
While I read this book, I kept thinking: "poor, sweet little Cilla…"
The term ‘grooming’ is kind of weird, isn’t it? English is not my first language, and the first time I heard it, I thought of the lovely lady who used to trim my long-haired cat’s fur into a lion cut every summer. That’s not what it means, of course: it means to subtly (or overtly, in some cases) manipulate a generally young and inexperienced person into an idealized partner, the implication being that they don’t know any better, which puts them in a position where they are almost always being taken advantage of, if not simply abused. I thought about that term a lot while reading this, because dang! What Elvis did here is kind of textbook…
Priscilla was 14 years old when she first met Elvis. I tried to remember what I was like at 14, and I admit that’s far enough to be quite fuzzy now. I know I would have loved the attention, especially if it came from the biggest heartthrob of my generation. But even at that age, a ten-year difference would have felt like a lot… And while she insists, repeatedly, that Elvis was always nothing but a gentleman to her, that nothing he ever did was weird or perverted and that they didn’t have penetrative sex until they were married… she also often says that he taught her how to dress, how to do her hair and make up, how to keep house, and shared his drugs with her very liberally. I believe her when she says that he would never have hurt her or let anything bad happen to her, but at the same time, what he did was still manipulative and controlling. He didn’t like it when she talked back, when she behaved (in his words) like a man, by being strong and fighting back, he didn’t want her to go to college or get a job. Poor Cilla basically had to divorce him to have the space and the freedom to discover who she was, and I can’t help but find that tragic.
The book is strangely paced: they only get married in the second half of the book, and while they weren’t married very long, it still feels uneven. Priscilla loved Elvis with her whole heart (and probably still does) and she clearly wants to keep all her memories of him good, and that’s the way she spins – consciously or not. I don’t not get it; it must be difficult to think of such a major part of your life having been abusive. But from an outsider’s perspective, there is something off about what she thinks of as a great love story.
That said, her writing is sweet, if not terribly sophisticated, and while I often felt sad for how isolated she was during her years in Graceland, I also enjoyed learning what it was like living at the heart of this almost legendary place. It’s a shame that Elvis kept her so sheltered, because I think he might have been impressed with the woman she became....more
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