In Elvis Presley's Trailer

"I adored Elvis. (...) We became very good friends. He was warm and kind and full of love. He had this tremendous desire to please people. We watched the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. together over lunch in his trailer. He cried. He really cared deeply."
Celeste Yarnall



Celeste Yarnall played Ellen in "Live a Little, Love a Little"; she was the girl Elvis courted by singing "A Little Less Conversation".

Dolly Parton Said No to Elvis Presley

"Mark was really passionate about championing this story as a tale of female confidence, and self-belief, as it must have taken so much strength for her to say no to 'The King' at that point in her career."
Heather Colbert



"The idea that the size of the puppets would denote their confidence and control in the situation came from my listening to the track over and over and finding where the shifts in power fell in the narrative of the song.
Once we had agreed on the metaphor – using size to denote confidence – it was very interesting to create these polar opposite characters and work out how to show the balance of power shifts through the track."
Heather Colbert

Animated and directed by Heather Colbert
Song by Mark Nevin

Elvis, Racism & Rumours

"To Elvis people are people, regardless of race, color or creed."
Louie Robinson

In his early years, Elvis Aaron Presley (1935-1977) - who always believed in the breakdown of barriers - used to be a sort of hero in the black community. He publicly stated that he was listening to black blues singers such as Arthur Crudup; as a teenager he attended the church of a celebrated black gospel composer with a clear stand on civil rights. Others highly criticised him for embracing black music, for not being racist. Two Nashville music executives, for instance, demanded that Billboard stopped listing Elvis's records on the best-selling country chart "because he played black music." Elvis was "too no-class", too indifferent to the then usual social distinctions.

“The lack of prejudice on the part of Elvis Presley had to be one of the biggest things that ever happened. It was almost subversive, sneaking around through the music, but we hit things a little bit, don’t you think?” Sam Phillips  (Sun Records founder)

"Asked to characterize his singing style when he first presented himself for an audition at the Sun recording studio in Memphis, Elvis said that he sang all kinds of music — “I don’t sound like nobody.” This, as it turned out, was far more than the bravado of an 18-year-old who had never sung in public before. It was in fact as succinct a definition as one might get of the democratic vision that fueled his music, a vision that denied distinctions of race, of class, of category, that embraced every kind of music equally, from the highest up to the lowest down." 

Nevertheless, rumour started that Elvis had made a racist comment ("The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.") in Boston or on Murrow's "Person to Person" TV programme. The fact that he had never appeared in Boston or on Murrow's programme did not stop the rumour from spreading. In an interview, he told a reporter that anyone who knew him would immediately recognise that he could never have uttered those words. The rumour, however, continued (via). Elvis was accused of both not being a racist and being a racist.

“Let’s face it, nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”
Elvis Presley

Wonderful YouTube Clips:

::: Suspicious Minds (Las Vegas, 1970): WATCH/LISTEN (show gets better with every second)
::: A Little Conversation (movie "Live a Little, Love a Little", 1968): WATCH/LISTEN
::: Something (MGM Studios, 1970): WATCH/LISTEN
::: Little Sister/Get Back (MGM Studios, 1970): WATCH/LISTEN



photographs (Black Leather Stand-Up Show) via and via and via

Narrative images: Bacon and eggs

Elvis Presley is waiting for his bacon and eggs at a segregated lunch counter in Tennessee sometime in 1956. A woman is waiting for her sandwich - standing. She is not permitted to sit.



In 1962, the desegregation of 29 department store restaurants in Tennessee were tested, many of them were still refusing service to black customers. Tennessee law allowed restaurants and hotels to exclude persons "for any reason whatsoever" (Lovett, 2005).

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Lovett, B. L. (2005). The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee. A Narrative History. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press
- photograph via, photograph information via

Warm? Cold? Competent? Incompetent? The Stereotype Content Model and the Image of Made in Germany

The Stereotype Content Model defines two dimensions which seem to be universal features of social perception: warm vs. cold and competent vs. incompetent. Competence refers to people who are capable, skillful, intelligent, and confident while warmth describes those that are good-natured, trustworthy, tolerant, friendly, and sincere. According to this model, perceived warmth and competence differentiate group stereotypes which are applicable on e.g. nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and gender subgroups. In other words, groups can be classified as a) warm and competent, b) warm and not competent, c) competent and not warm, and d) not warm and not competent. Hence, ambivalent stereotypes are possible, i.e. a positive evaluation on one dimension and a negative one on the other.



Ingroups, in other words groups we belong to, are perceived positively on both dimensions. The group we belong to is both warm and competent (i.e. we are nice and work so well). Stereotypical examples for warm but not competent are the disabled, the elderly, housewives, the Greeks etc. (i.e. nice but not really efficient).



Asians or Germans are stereotypically perceived as competent but not warm (i.e. we think they are efficient but do not really like them). The stereotypical notion of the efficient German is also communicated in Marketing. Watch: Lufthansa Clip "These Germans"



Unmistakeably German: The Citroen C5 advertising campaign in the UK was themed "unmistakeably German". In 2008, it won first prize at the car advertising awards but was not spared criticism. The clip used various German stereotypes ranging from sausages, beer, lederhosen, dirndl to blonde women and many more. The "background" music is, by the way, Wagner's Ride of Valkyries - often used in filmmaking since Die Deutsche Wochenschau (via). Not only was Citroen accused of creating a caricature of Germany but also of using aesthetics and symbols that are associated with one of the darkest chapters in history (via). Attempting to understand stereotypes in Marketing on the basis of the Stereotype Content Model, one might encounter "positive stereotypes" not that rarely. Here, German is used as a synonyme for competence. And most interestingly, as we have the stereotypical background knowledge we get the message of what is meant when a French car is "unmistakeably German".



Cuddy, A. M. C., Fiske, S. T. & Glick, P. (2008) Warmth and Competence as Universal Dimensions of Social Perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 40
Photos of Messerschmitt via and via and via