EPISODE 7 | Simulation = Memory + Emotion

Wooden Heart

ELENA PASSARELLO: If you’re like me, when you feel sad or overwhelmed or isolated, there are a few categories of videos that you like to search for online and watch until you feel a little bit better. Here are three of mine: classic movie musical numbers, Andy Kaufman’s Elvis impersonations, and most of all, kids having intense conversations with puppets.

You can find entire Youtube playlists of the children of the 1970s and 80s—kids like I was—staring deep into the eyes of an old school Sesame Street character, as if the kid and the puppet were the only two living creatures in the whole TV studio. 

[Archival audio of Herry asking John-John if they want to count]

One of my favorite videos is this Sesame Street clip from 1974 of a 3-year-old named John-John, who counts to twenty with Herry, the Blue Monster. 

[John-John asserts that he wants to count first, and Herry encourages him]

And when the little boy loses track of his numbers, he searches his scene partner’s inanimate face and really, deliberately asks Herry “hey, do you know what comes after fifteen?”  

[Herry: After fifteen comes….

John-John: uhhh

Herry: Sixteen!

Unintelligible noises of childish excitement]

It’s John-John’s total engagement that gets me. He seems to witness something in the puppet that resembles his own little heart, his own unadulterated magic. It’s his trust that makes the puppet all the more real to me. 

Performance scholars and child psychologists alike have noted the ways puppets disarm children. One detail I’ve read time and again is that even crudely designed puppets—socks with googly eyes, for example—still inspire children to endow the puppets full humanity and to tell them all their secrets. Sometimes, experts say the less a puppet looks like an actual creature, the better. 

[Counting between the two continues until Herry exclaims, “is that you all grown up John-John?!” John-John confirms.]

When I was growing up in the 80s in South Carolina, I had this terrifying first-grade teacher named Miz Rakestraw, and she showed her softer side via a troupe of puppets that she employed to various ends in her classroom. There was Word Bird, who taught us vocabulary; Inchworm, who had something to do with counting; and then there was Lamby, a sleepy baby sheep to whom we could talk about our feelings on bad days. And I have the clearest memory still staring into Lamby’s face and whispering my confessions. That’s got to be at least one reason why watching John-John count with Herry Monster soothes me so. 

[Cover of “Love Me Tender” by Tyler Tingey plays. A slow song reminiscent of a scene on a tropical island, played on steel pedal]

I was certainly visiting my stash of feel-good YouTube puppet videos about this time last year when the pandemic had begun shutting down our world. While I’m so grateful to have been spared any severe hardships, my latest writing  project was supposed to involve lots of time-sensitive travel, and so it absolutely tanked when things got locked down. The first among a dozen flights I had to cancel was a red-eye to the Georgia coast on the Ides of March, where I’d bought a non-refundable ticket to an Elvis Presley festival. This trip was supposed to be the next in a line of Elvis-related public events that I had planned to attend in 2020, because I was researching Presley’s legend in the exact year that the icon had been dead longer than he was alive.  

Most people agree that the real Elvis hasn’t walked this Earth since that August night in 1977 when he played a few games of racquetball then changed into his gold pajamas and retired to his spacious Graceland bathroom “to read.” 

But the opportunities to simulate Elvis as a living part of this planet are still, literally, countless, 42 years after his death. 

I was never alive the same time as Elvis—he died six months before I was born—but thanks to these myriad opportunities to visit some relic or reconstruction of the King, he’s never felt quite dead to me. 

Replications, emulations, and other forms of counterfeit are actually the only Elvis I’ve ever gotten to know in real time. 

[Cover of “Wooden Heart” by Arthur Moon plays in the background, an upbeat, groovy song]

In the months before lockdown, I had spent the night in Elvis’s teenage bedroom. I’d philosophized about death with a Tupelo security guard in the shotgun house where Presley was born, and I even married my sweetheart in a Las Vegas ceremony that was conducted by the same wigged and jump-suited Elvis minister that officiated Jon Bon Jovi’s wedding. 

But more than anything, for this project, I’d been travelling to festivals and competitions, to watch dozens—I mean at this point, it’s more like hundreds—of Elvis impersonators. 

Although the first rule of the faux Elvis world is to never use that word— “impersonator”—their preferred moniker is “Elvis Tribute Artist,” or “ETA.”

Any ETA you meet will stress that they have no aims to actually become Presley, only to adopt his unmistakable baritone and strike his signature poses while wearing perfect replicas of his classic outfits, sideburns and all. They see themselves just as entertainers who slip into the iconic image and work the gears of the Elvis legend from inside.

In movies and TV shows, impersonating Elvis is often depicted as chintzy or slapdash, a backyard thing, but don’t knock the art form until you’ve seen one of the real pros strut his stuff. Vocally deft, limber, clad in thousands of dollars of costuming, professional ETAs perform internationally on cruise ships, in TV commercials, and at lavish venues from Vegas to Branson to Graceland itself. 

Only the very best Elvi on the planet qualify for a contest called “The Ultimate ETA,” a contest which is held just across Elvis Presley Boulevard from the King’s famous mansion. 

Every summer—well it was cancelled in 2020 of course—you can watch Ultimate Elvises from Brazil, Japan, the UK, and Australia out-gyrate one another for a 5-figure purse. Each of these men (they’re always men) chisels his repertoire from Elvis’s 600-plus song discography. They focus on just one of the many versions of Elvis known to his most loyal fans: Gospel Elvis, Vegas Elvis, Rockabilly Elvis.  

Younger ETAs with higher vocal ranges might step inside the gold lame jacket and wet pompadour of 1950’s Elvis. They must teach their bodies to pinwheel kick around the stage, and to let their hips work the same scandalous circles that banned the original Elvis’s lower half from Ed Sullivan. 

A bad-boy, thirty-something ETA in good shape might master the 1968 NBC Comeback special Elvis, which requires a lot of lunging around in black leather and mimicking the roster of moves Elvis performed in his famous TV concert.

But, by far, most ETAs choose to don spangly bellbottomed jumpsuits—oh my god, those jumpsuits—and pay tribute to the 1970s concert version of Elvis, with his karate kicks, mutton chops, and vigorous froog-ing. When a world-class Elvis in white gabardine and rhinestones takes the stage to the opening bassline of “Polk Salad Annie”—a staple song on latter-day Elvis setlists—today’s audience members still know the bucking windmill arm motions and the shoulder shimmies of that performance by heart, and they often bust the exact same moves out right alongside the performer onstage. 

[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]

Usually when people talk about Elvis as a puppet, it’s in reference to his relationship with Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, who some saw as a Svengali that kept Elvis locked in oppressive movie contracts and short-sighted royalty deals. But I see another puppetry in this decades-long remembrance of Elvis. 

One reason for his cultural longevity, I think, is that Elvis is easy to make a puppet out of. For one thing, his image is ripe for caricature—it can be painted by lots of bodies in broad strokes, with a structured  dark wig, a figure-obscuring rhinestoned white onesie, and two triangular sideburns.

And even offstage, fans have puppeted Elvis’s sweeping story to reflect the contents of their own hearts. Just as ETAs choose an era of songs to depict, fans can select an Elvis persona to celebrate. Because both his music and his biography are so varied—they’ve got high notes and low ones, moments of mastery and buffoonery—a fan can stare deeply into the face of this legend and see only what they want to: the polite mama’s boy or the man of God. or the soldier. Or the diva, or the lonely maximalist whose appetites outpaced him. 

[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]

Of all the eras depicted by ETAs, one is decidedly underrepresented, and that is Movie Elvis. Only a few of his 31 films—yes, you heard me right; Elvis made thirty-one films—seem to have stuck with fans, despite the fact that his acting work spanned the majority of his twenty-three year career. A few early flicks are pretty good, like King Creole or Jailhouse Rock, but, as the 1960s wore on, Elvis movie plots grew formulaic to the point of being interchangeable. As Girls! Girls! Girls! bled into Girl Happy, and Speedway became Spinout, Elvis phoned in his performances more and more, often with a faraway look in his eyes.

In scenes, he sometimes seemed to be orbiting his co-stars rather than interacting with them. By his eighteenth movie, Tickle Me (in which he plays an out-of-work rodeo rider moonlighting at a weight loss camp), Elvis was doing a sleepy onscreen impersonation of himself. 

[Sporadic, bluesy piano plays over a groovy bass and drums, reminiscent of a 70s movie bar scene]

I clocked only a few movie tunes during these home shows: “A Little Less Conversation,” or “Bossanova Baby,” maybe “Clean Up Your Own Backyard,” but I was hoping for some of the forgotten Elvis movie stinkers, like “Do the Clam” or “There’s No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car.” 

[Audio of Elvis’ song “There's No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car,” which sounds like a song that would be heard at an outdoor bar in Hawaii, plays]

Most ETA livestreams stuck to the hits, though. One noticeable development was how rarely the ETAs got into full Elvis drag. On the livestreams, we saw each guy’s real hairline and, sometimes, their kitchen décor. We even saw them in blue jeans, which was purportedly Elvis’s least favorite attire.  

I can’t help but marvel at the fact that, for the first time in my life, the pandemic levelled the playing field between the real Elvis and his thousands of tributaries. My whole life, I only accessed the original Elvis Presley via a screen, in a book, or on a recording. But suddenly, the 21st century, simulated Elvises that I had seen all over the planet were faced with the same limitations. And the leveling doesn’t stop there, I suppose. We all became Elvis for a time: existing mostly on grainy Zoom videos, filmed just from the waist up. 

And I’m sorry to say that limiting all my social interactions to these virtual spaces was much easier than I’d like to admit. The pandemic unwittingly turned my friends, family, and colleagues into somewhat simpler versions of the complex humans I know them to be. My community of three-dimensional figures flattened into eyes, noses and mouths traveling in pixels toward me. So, I guess, in that way, we all became puppets, too. 

Around Labor Day last year, I was stuck inside even more than usual, thanks to terrible Oregon wildfires that spiked air quality ratings beyond “hazardous” and all but blotted out the sun. We were ordered to stay home and limit resource use, so, I decided to use the housebound time not to watch more ETA livestreams, but mainlining the real deal. Because I am both an extremist and an escapist, I watched all thirty-one Elvis films pretty much back-to-back over four bleary days, which is an activity I wholeheartedly do not recommend. But still, this became the longest  elapsed time I’d ever spent with the moving image of Elvis, in all my years of researching his legacy. 

And there were several moments in his movie catalogue I knew to watch out for, like his chemistry with Anne Margaret in Viva Las Vegas, or his tiny white shorts in Blue Hawaii. I was really excited to see his famously disturbing duet about yoga with Elsa Lancaster, the actress who played the original Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, which, by the way, was the same year that Elvis was born. 

But around the twelve-hour mark of the first day, I discovered a musical number that I’d never heard about before, and it straight up knocked me out. Buried in a low-stakes moment of Presley’s fifth film, GI Blues, is one of the most breathtaking Elvis performances I have ever seen—it’s right up there with Ed Sullivan and the That’s the Way It Is. 

[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart,” which has Elvis singing in a goofy, crooning voice over Italian-esque music, plays in the background.]

The song is called “Wooden Heart,” and it’s another anodyne Elvis movie ballad, but is unique because it’s the only one that Elvis sings while staring into the button eyes of a puppet. 

In the movie, GI Elvis is strolling around Frankfurt, Germany with his human love interest, and for some reason, he crashes an outdoor Punch and Judy-esque puppet show. His stage partner is a Fraulein hand puppet in a dirndl skirt and winking eyes. As a kindergarten class watches them, the decidedly randy doll chases Elvis around the proscenium. In that confined space, Elvis masterfully executes a sequence of comic beats. 

[A syncopated, electronic version of “Wooden Heart” plays in the background]

He beckons to the puppet like Patrick Swayze. He holds her wooden hand and bops from stage left to right. At one point, she whirls to advance on him, and he takes the energy that she throws into his own body and lets it propel his shoulders backward. Then the Fraulein’s puppet father enters with a long stick, ending the number by hitting Elvis in a series of smacks, which Elvis telegraphs with clownish accuracy—bonk, bonk, bonk—inching downward until his chin rests on the stage, his eyes crossed, and all die kinder in stitches.  

This is great bit-work, and he’s selling it, man. He’s quick in his body; he’s very funny. Sinatra was never so sharp in any of his musical films. A lot of people hate GI Blues because it’s a film utterly devoid of Elvis’s Rock and Roll chops, and sure, this performance didn’t start a cultural movement like “Mystery Train” did, but it’s so alive. 

It’s also a kind of steamy number, thanks to the intensity of Elvis’ gaze at the puppet, the soft approach of his lips when he kisses her hand. I can’t help but note that, to my eyes at least, Elvis is so much more fluid with her than with any human co-star from his other films. 

Watching “Wooden Heart” again today, I still get the sense that Elvis totally believes in his co-star—no visible part of him acknowledges the hand up her skirt. They’re just two performers, both of them vessels for other people’s imaginations, working against what they originally represented, but still making a crowd of people smile. 

Certain artists are just like that, I guess. Sometimes I think I’m better with puppets, too. After all, what is writing if not staying away from humans in order to interact with their facsimiles? 

[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart” plays in the background]

If I were an ETA, this is the number that I’d select; this would be my tribute: not “Hound Dog,” or  “Heartbreak Hotel,” or even “Hunka Hunka Burning Love.” I want to simulate the moment in which Elvis put all of his trust in a puppet. My costume would be a replica of this Army blouse and a high and tight wig, no sideburns. I’m sure ETA fans would raise their eyebrows when they watched me lug a puppet theater up onto the stage of the Ultimate ETA’s Final round. The crude puppet over my right hand wouldn’t be a blond Fraulein, but a puppet version of me in my Sesame Street days: a freckled Punky Brewster look-alike in pigtails, an only child more comfortable with dolls than other people. 

The wooden little girl would follow my ETA body around the stage, watching me for cues as I sang, fascinated by the melody coming from my mouth. She would bop along as I crooned the lyrics in the closest thing to Elvis’s warbly baritone that I could muster, and I would make sure to gaze at that puppet reassuringly, to let it nestle onto my shoulder and hold her hand. 

“Treat me nice,” we would sing.  “Treat me good, ‘cause I am not made of wood, and I don’t have a wooden heart.”

[Archive audio of “Wooden Heart” plays to fade-out]