Sounding Like the King?: Representing the Dialect of Elvis Presley on Screen - A Phonological Analysis
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Elvis Presley, a Memphis-born musician, whose unique voice and sound were famously shaped both by his geographical and social background, as well as by the influence of other cultural and ethnic groups, has been represented by more than a dozen films, including both biopics and documentaries. This presentation will address how actors and directors recreated Presley's signature accent as part of his cultural image. The real-life Presley’s idiolect was unique thanks to the combination of his Lower Southern accent and his upbringing with African Americans; in interviews (and less so in his songs), Presley’s speech was heavily marked with a distinct drawl with which he prolonged the vowels. It could be argued that Presley’s distinct speech pattern was part of his public persona as much as his costumes, music instruments or even his dyed hair. While all these features are, more or less accurately, recreated in biographical films about the musician, his accent and speech patterns have not always been paid the same level of attention. This study will thus present a phonological analysis of the most prominent features of Elvis Presley's idiolect and compare them with those in the most prominent biopics about Presley since the 1970s, including John Carpenter's 1979 Elvis, Chris Columbus's 1988 Heartbreak Hotel, D. Edward Stanley's 2007 Protecting the King, Liza Johnson's 2016 Elvis & Nixon, Baz Luhrmann's 2022 Elvis and Sofia Coppola's 2023 Priscilla. The presentation will show various strategies and approaches, on the part of the filmmakers, to the representation of Presley's speech idiosyncrasies, ranging from almost perfect recreations to their deliberate omission in favour of other visual or physical aspects of Presley's persona. The paper will also propose the trajectory of the development of recreating accents of important persons not only in recent films about Presley, but in biographical feature films in general. |
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