As I sit down to watch the opening shots of Sofia Coppola’s latest film Priscilla, I think, not for the first time, “In another life, Coppola would be making a killing in the commercial industry.” The director’s films are always a montage of feminine imagery, and Priscilla, the story of Elvis Presley’s too-young and beautiful wife, is a story best-suited for Coppola’s unique film style.
John F. Sherry, Jr. defines advertising as a phenomenon that “contributes to the organization of experience through the shaping and reflecting of our sense of reality” (441). He describes advertising as a ritual or performance that contains special symbols or messages that hide the seller’s intent in such a way that a buyer is convinced of their own need for the item, perhaps without even being aware that they are being sold something. The film aspect that accompanies most advertisements today serve that performance purpose, using a visual sleight of hand to tug at the heart strings or elicit a laugh while also convincing the viewer that they need that item because of what it can do for them, not because the seller needs to make money. Indeed, this is exactly what Sofia Coppola communicates with Priscilla. First, she begins with a “Get Ready with Me” montage that evokes memories of teen movies and The Devil Wears Prada: painting nails, the application of eyeliner, a strip of eyelashes pulled from a box, a heavy spray of Aqua Net. These symbols of beauty immediately lure the viewer in, and though anyone who knows Priscilla will recognize her signature jet-black tease and winged liner, there is an element of mystery and glamor to these shots that could make any viewer sigh with longing. And thus, the advertisement of Priscilla’s life has begun.
As we become absorbed in this advertisement, however, it is important to note that Priscilla Beaulieu herself is first a consumer, with her own personal promotion of fame and fortune arriving with Terry West, the young officer who first proposes a trip to visit Elvis. At that first party, Priscilla becomes a spectator in her own life, watching that oh-so-pretty picture of the singer performing at a piano, surrounded by adoring partygoers. It is only a matter of time before she enlists in the fantasy that the advertisement, presented by a suspiciously persistent Terry, reveals.
Priscilla buys into the mirage of romance and glamor, disguised first in Elvis’s personal image as a Lost Boy grieving his recently deceased mother. As Elvis draws her further into his world, Priscilla seemingly becomes enamored with the high roller gambling and parties, and quickly takes to drugs to both wake her up and put her to sleep. Todd Kennedy argues that “Coppola’s women all struggle with expressing feminine agency in some form, thus they are often left to acts of consumption and leisure,” and agrees with Tasker and Negra in their assertion that she “works to commodify feminism via the figure of woman as empowered consumer” (2, 41). We might consider the first scenes of Priscilla in Vegas as her being “empowered” through her newfound freedom; or, perhaps she is simply swept up into her own fantasy. Nevertheless, she does consume, and Elvis encourages and facilitates that consumption and shapes it to his preferences. However, Beaulieu quickly moves from consumer to consumed, a viewer of ads to the ad herself under Elvis’s calculating gaze.
While Elvis, a veritable Peter Pan, plays football and goofs off with his Lost Boy lackeys, Priscilla Beaulieu is forced to grow up too fast in order to suit Presley’s preferences. He tells her to dye her hair black and wear more eye makeup, comments that blue and green are her best colors, and tells her not to wear patterns as they take away from her figure. Priscilla becomes his own personal Barbie doll, used in every way except, apparently, sexually. While the film doesn’t really touch on this subject much except to tout Presley’s fervent interest in maintaining Priscilla’s virginity, it is very odd that Elvis would shape her to look both so much more mature, and so much more like someone who might be related to himself. The addition of the pet name “Satnin,” one the King allegedly gave both his mother and his young wife, only further skews this bizarre picture. The young Priscilla Beaulieu has almost completely disappeared under hairspray and eyeliner, and she spends a lot of time looking in mirrors as if looking to see where that little girl went.
Many of Coppola’s films make an effort to give the spectator a feminine perspective, and Priscilla is no different. However, while works like Lost in Translation attempt to tell the story through the female lead’s eyes, we as viewers are firmly in position, watching Priscilla’s every microexpression for a glimpse at her inner thoughts. We are both spectator and participant, consuming Priscilla as the object Elvis intends her to be and as another powerless onlooker, sympathetic but ultimately unable to intervene. Coppola does a very good job communicating Priscilla’s youth through a baby-faced Cailee Spaeny and her towering Elvis, played by Jacob Elordi; young female viewers might easily imagine themselves as Cailee, especially given that Jacob Elordi is this year’s reigning heartthrob. The casting, combined with Coppola’s use of “personal cinema,” a device that she is often criticized for featuring, is well-suited to the young lady’s story. The onslaught of records and fan memorabilia that Priscilla collects as she waits for Elvis to finish on set is particularly familiar to any female viewer who has ever been a fan, and we are made to understand and identify with the choices Priscilla makes through this montage – after all, who would say no to the King? If the pop icon of your generation were to confess his feelings to you, ask you to wait for him even as he’s off gallivanting with some actress in Hollywood, wouldn’t you do everything you could to keep his attention? Even without the hair dye and makeup, the film communicates clearly that Priscilla was young enough to be totally dazzled by Elvis, made to feel as if she was the only one who could understand him (by Presley himself, no less), and was paraded before him as an innocent and adoring fan who would be all too willing to join the ranks of “yes” men that surrounded him.
It is no wonder, therefore, that Priscilla would become an object placed at Presley’s disposal. In the first shot of Priscilla at Graceland, she steps out of Vernon Presley’s car in a pink and white dress and takes a look at the dollhouse she is meant to live in. Next to me, my sister comments, “she looks like a little cake.” And indeed she does, fitting right into Elvis’s fluffy home to the sound of a chiffon cake commercial playing in the background. The King gets right to work accessorizing her, buying her all new clothes and adding a gun to every outfit, changing her looks and getting her a puppy to complete her pretty picture. And when she gets tired of being his doll and exercises independence by wearing patterns and bold colors (to silently protest? Or to try and catch his eye in any way she can?), he spells out his wishes for her to merely be an extension of him by telling her, “This is never gonna work if you don’t share my interests in philosophies. There’s a lot of women out there that would wanna share in this with me.” Unfortunately, though she has been made into an advertisement, Elvis is apparently not the intended audience. She is clearly only an object to him, to be used and tossed aside with childlike carelessness as he sees fit. Rather, she is a walking promotion for beauty products and fashion labels, and a symbol of Elvis’s virility and heartthrob status. Through Priscilla, any female fan, famous or otherwise, could imagine themselves on the King’s arm. She has brought his near-godlike status to something more attainable, and it seems that Elvis could care less.
Coppola’s masterful communication of the emotional whiplash that Priscilla was experiencing, likely every day since she was 14, is why it feels like such a triumph, and such a loss, when she finally decides to leave her husband. Though the end of the film felt quite rushed, we understand that Priscilla did love Elvis in some way, and perhaps saw another more vulnerable part of him that fans will never get to see. She clearly loved him in spite of his treatment of her, but it is clear that she also mourns the time that she lost trying to make herself perfect for a man who might not have ever truly cared about her. “You’re losing me to a life of my own,” she tells him, and she finally, truly, looks like herself again. Certainly, there is subtle makeup on her eyes and her hair is done, but it is no longer black, and she has traded short dresses and heels for blouses and suits. It is clear that these changes in image are her choice, and when she leaves Graceland for the last time, there is a rush of screaming fans, and then – she is completely by herself, driving off toward her future. An advertisement no longer, Priscilla Presley is writing her own story now.
References
“Advertising as a Cultural System,” John F. Sherry Jr
“Off with Hollywood’s Head: Sofia Coppola as Feminine Auteur,” Todd Kennedy
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