King Creole

In Rock ’n’ Film, David E. James describes how Elvis movies transformed classic backstage musicals into rock ’n’ roll musicals by mobilizing his particular combination of “a masculine outlaw aggressiveness and a feminine romantic vulnerability.” Taking place in the streets and nightclubs of New Orleans, King Creole is the only Elvis film that “attempted to articulate his complex relation to African American culture,” James notes. A rebel with a cause, Elvis as Danny Fisher provides a prototype for characters like Ivanhoe Martin in The Harder They Come and the Kid in Purple Rain, all lovers and fighters who resist a corrupt or complacent adult world and struggle to assert themselves through the power of their music.