Meaning of the madness in Memphis

[UPDATE: Moving images of Zany 'Zumi's Graceland antics can be viewed here, on the Channel 4 website. The report includes bowel-melting archive footage of David Owen and other Liberals chortling along to Elvis at their 1983 party conference.]

I can't make up my mind about the true meaning of Junichiro Koizumi's Elvis pilgrimage to Graceland with Bush, Laura and the Presley women yesterday (drolly reported by my colleague Time Reid here). I don't know whether to blush or to cheer, to punch the air or bury my face in my hands. As I see it, there are two opposite, but equally arguable interpretations of the extraordinary events in Memphis.

Interpretation Number One:

It was a disaster, a well intended self-humiliation by Koizumi, which will have the effect of obscuring his many achievements - as well as his disastrous failures.

I applaud Jun-chan for his unselfconsciousness and his passion for life outside the world of politics. On the whole, with his upright demeanour, well cut grey suits and air of mysterious detachment, he is a very dignified character. But yesterday - well, even Lisa Marie and Priscilla looked embarrassed.

From an extremely full account in the Washington Post:

By the time he got to the Jungle Room, decorated after Elvis's memory of Hawaii, Koizumi was ready to perform.

He smiled at Lisa Marie, her brown hair streaked with blond.

"You look like Elvis," he told her.

" Arigato," she answered, expressing thanks.

"My birthday is the same as Elvis," he noted.

"Even now," he added, "I often listen to Elvis CDs."

"You're a pretty good Elvis singer," Bush offered.

Koizumi demurred. "I'm not impersonator," he said.

But Washington Times reporter Joseph Curl recognized the moment of opportunity. "Let's hear some," he called out.

And Koizumi obliged. He started with a few words from "Love Me Tender," then segued into "Can't Help Falling in Love."

"I thought you were going to do 'Blue Suede Shoes,' " Bush said.

The first lady of the country and the onetime first ladies of music came over to pose for pictures. Koizumi wrapped his arm around Lisa Marie. "Hold me close, I want to hold you tight," he crooned to her.

Priscilla showed the prime minister a few of her former husband's personal items, including a pair of sunglasses that a museum employee in white gloves had gingerly placed on a table minutes before.

Koizumi eagerly grabbed them and slapped them on. Then, in the moment that thrilled television producers around the world, he crouched, seemed to play a bit of air guitar and emulated the late singer's motions while belting out, "Glory, glory, hallelujah."

To which one can only react: Noooo! Somebody stop him. The Bush crew are humourless, puritanical zombies - now thanks to Koizumi, they are able to pretend they have a sense of humour. Apart from being personally embarrassing (the only memory which millions of Americans will henceforth have of Junichiro Koizumi is as the weird Japanese guy who sang Elvis), this plays into the increasingly strong American sense of the United States as the normative country, the ideal place, on which foreign lands and their people are an eccentric and unsatisfactory variant.

When Bush meets foreign leaders he always looks to me as if he's secretly laughing at them behind their backs. This time he had a reason.

But hold for  ...

Interpretation Number Two:

It was a triumph, a devastating satirical expose, Pythonesque in its execution, of the uptight falseness of the Bush administration, and the triumphant apotheosis of Koizuminess.

Koizumi knew exactly what he was doing - having fun, indulging himself, without any pretence of serving the greater good, deepening ties between our great nations, the American people, the Japanese people, blah blah blah . . . This is the inspiring (and alarming) thing about Koizumi, and what makes him unusual among world leaders, as well as unique in Japan - when he has decided he wants to do something, nothing will divert him. And he is as much of a conviction Elvis fan as a conviction politician.

The ones who were all at sea were Bush and his aides. Having ballsed up the protocol for Hu Jintao's visit, they know found themselves faced with a visitor for whom no rules of protocol have yet been devised.

From the New YorkTimes:

Amid the faux leopard print chairs and green shag carpet covering both floor and ceiling, the prime minister then serenaded the president.

"Loooovve mee tenderrrrr," Mr. Koizumi crooned, as Priscilla Presley, Elvis's former wife, and Lisa Marie, his daughter, looked on.

. . . Mr. Bush, though, eventually cut off the performance, clapping the prime minister on the shoulder and firmly shaking his hand in a none-too-subtle message that the curtain was about to fall.

Bush is as incapable of this kind of fun as that teacher's pet, Tony Blair. Shamefully, it was left to Laura to feed the press the obvious lie that president and prime minister had "sung a duet" conveniently out of sight on Air Force One. In terms of subversion, this was the diplomatic equivalent of Jarvis Cocker's stage invasion during Michael Jackson's impersonation of the Messiah in the 1996 Brit Awards. And what genius to bring Bush to pay tribute to Elvis. From the NYT again:

The sight of the ordinarily strait-laced Mr. Bush, with his vigorous exercise regimen and disdain for alcohol, wandering about the home where a bloated, drug-abusing Elvis died in the bathroom might have seemed incongruous to some. Indeed, the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, on Thursday refused to answer a delicate question: Did Mr. Bush prefer a fat Elvis or a skinny Elvis?

"Uuuuhh, yes," Mr. Snow replied diplomatically.

So thumbs up or down? Was it Number One or Number Two? It can't be somewhere in between.

Comments

[CulturalSnow]

Great stuff, Richard. But I don't know how you can tell that Priscilla "looked embarrassed". She only has one expression these days: a condition that is, I believe, common to most women over 45 in the entertainment business.

Although it does make her look more Japanese than Koizumi...

[Matthew]

That's a tough one. I'd really like to think 2, but probably more likely to be 1 with a few bits and pieces from 2 in there for good measure. Check out the two (security?) guys in the back of the picture to the right. I think you need to get a caption competition going for what they are saying...........

Either way, I found the thing fantastic to watch. I have a Japanese business acquaintance who sings in a covers band (he's about 50) and can, on demand, sing pretty much any Led Zep, Beatles or Stones song in it's entirety - Koizumi sounded exactly like him. The fact that he nabbed the glasses and then threw the pose was genius - Whatever he meant by it, it made Bush look like the humourless, wooden man that he really is.

A bit more of this stuff in world politics please.

[Yusuke]

The thing is that he is just being himself. Sometimes his "performance" turns out to be impressive and unique and sometimes simply crazy and mad. Japanese voters have got used to it after 5 years of his administration and people just say, ah again, Jun-chan is going...

This is not his first unique behaviour overseas. At one of G8 summits, he walked literally hand in hand with Berlusconi and kept talking about how much he liked pasta and Sophia Loren... When he met the decendants of Japanese immigrants in Brasil, he burst into tears in front of them and apologized for his country forgetting them for a century, sending his aids and PR squad into panic. Or when he visited the Japanese POW monument in Siberia, he spent almost 10 minutes praying on his knees without a coat in a sub-zero temperature, again making Japanese and Russian diplomats very nervous. I still remember the faces of officials from both countries, showing exactly what they were thinking "Is he frozen and dead or what??"

He's extremely down-to-earth, ordinary, but a bit funky and crazy guy. And people absolutely like or hate him for that. But obviously he was a stranger and a sheer shock for Japan's Nagata-cho and Kasumigaseki political/bureaucrat inner-circle where gray suit clad expressionless men dominated everything in the backroom. I think I'm gonna miss this guy.

[bugiewugie]

What? The President of the US and the Japanese PM weren't allowed upstairs?

Anyway, maybe the Japanese PM is artfully mocking - or at least signalling his awareness of - the bloated corporatism that if taken to it's furthest level kills.
Or perhaps it's what it looks like, he's just enjoying himself etc..
Or perhaps we're (being guided?) to wonder if the US is using and/or abusing Japan before taking North Korea to task because they might have nukes, or South Korea for whatever 'reason' or China because it's China and not America. So, is there a strategic advantage for George Bush in having Japan on board?
Back to the interpretations: like Matthew, I'd prefer to say the second, but probably some truth in the first too.
The Wash. Post article does seem to be aiming to belittle Koizumi, so who knows what's in store.

btw, Mr Koizumi looks like Richard Gere - just a bit more fragile.

[A gaijin in Japan]

Having listened to Prime Minister Koizumi speak and sing in English, I find his singing ability much better than his speaking ability. I haven't heard him play the guitar, yet, but I suspect his Air play is much better than his ability to play a real guitar. It would be really refreshing to hear a leading Japanese politician speak English well, expressing their views on matters such as Yasakuni, instead of the circus act that was put on in Memphis. It's not that I have a wooden heart, you understand.

[Copacabana]

Number two, all the way ... from Koizumi's own perspective at least. As for what image your average Yank (or Brit, or whatever) will get of him, well, I don't see that really matters a great deal. The interest of most in foreign cultures rarely extends beyond caricaturing their people and their leaders anyway. Those who take a genuine interest will remember Koizumi by more than just his Elvis impression. I'll miss him.

[former bureau chief]

I suggest a third take - two mediocrities at play. Well, at least one -- the terminally odd Curly Locks whose lasting image in the US will be precisely as you described it, unless his next, upcoming visit to Yasukuni plays even more poorly than all the other trips.

And by the way, the reason he and so many other Japanese pols are brain dead on this topic is that the American occupation regime reversed course on education and political reform in 1949, in the face of the communist revolution in China. The result - no national discussion of the war years and an undercutting of the political left that polarized Japanese politics for more than a half century.

[Mrs. Margaret Hooker]

Well I think the Japanese guy was cute, and so unselfconscious in his impersonations - honesty is surely a rare commodity in the political arena.
He provided a bit of 'comic relief' so God bless him!

[passerby]

I think the world's political stage lacks this sort of personality. Everyone is so uptight, rigid and stonefaced about their work, it's good to see a leader so willing to relax in front of the world's eye. It shows that the leaders are people just like us, and in a democracy, I think that's very important to be able to remember that a little humanity in our leaders is a good thing. Especially in times like this when people are launching missles or bombarding other countries and making outrageous demands with little regard to their fellow man around them.

[Gaijin in Tokyo]

Surely more than anything this was a display of classic "oyaji" power? For those who don't know this Japanese word, "oyaji" means something like "geezer" and refers to the middle-aged men who have transcended shame and sit atop Japanese society. Oyajis work hard and play hard, well-lubricated karaoke being among their favorite forms of relaxation.

If nothing else, Koizumi's song succeeded in making Bush look uncomfortable—a reaction that the bloodbath in Iraq has yet to provoke from this president so stoic in enduring other people's suffering.

[Jack]

To be honest with you CulturalSnow, they are all happy and smiling. In fact, our beloved president George W. Bush is the happiest man alive on this picture. And of course, ladies look just fine.