Prefatory Note: Back before the days of "blogging," I was already blogging. On a site that will remain nameless, written and posted as a real website in HTML, I was once hard at work on a book/body of work/blog called "Adventures in Ambiguity: Strange and Amazing Tales from the Margins of Race, Identity, and Culture." I've lifted from there an interesting piece I eventually had published in the KoreAm Journal as the first installment in a regular series of non-fiction pieces in that magazine. I didn't get paid, alas. In any case, here it is, in its more raw form, before the many slight edits and trims I had to do to get it in the magazine. Of course, this made the work leaner and meaner, but it also lost a little bit of edge. I lift and graft it here straight from the year 2000-ish, when I first wrote and posted it. I was a true-blue blogger, back when they just called it a "web page."
"I Saw Elvis in a Korean Taxi"
Many people have claimed to see Elvis, in a variety of forms. I saw him in a Korean taxi. He didn't actually look like Elvis, or quite talk like him, but he certainly was alive and well in the memories of a taxi driver I came to know in a trip across Seoul.
I think I caught this particular taxi at City Hall, but I can't be sure. I do recall that it was nighttime and I was happy to have found a cab where I was, and catching a taxi near City Hall was always a real pain in the ass. So I hop in the front seat, and thankfully this driver was not giving me a hard time about using the seat belt, since some drivers take it as an offense to their driving skills. This, despite the fact that I was told early on in my time there that Korea had the highest traffic accident death rate in the world; I had not trouble believing it. So the fact that I wasn't having a hard time with this particular driver had already settled me somewhat.
I quickly gave him directions in perfect Korean, much to his surprise. I say "perfect Korean" and I mean it; my Korean had progressed to a pretty high point but was far from perfect, but my taxi driver Korean had evolved to a whole other level. I could give directions such as "I'd like to go to Tongdaemun" and "Please take a right at the traffic light next to the white van" like a pro - I was no joke.
But the problem with these little prideful displays was that the taxi drivers - who didn't know me from Adam - completely overestimated my Korean abilities, and spoke to me at a very high level. This had its good points, as you'll soon see, but it also sometimes poses problems, so after the initial conversational groundwork had been laid, I generally tried to keep my mouth shut. If all went well, the driver would usually go off into a monologue about something that would eventually lose me, but I would be able to fake it well enough to make him - or her - think that I was absolutely the coolest and linguistically able foreigner they had ever come across. The driver would be happy - and I would have whiled away a good 20 minutes or so.
"You speak Korean pretty well. What do you do?" would be the opening remarks most of the time. I would simply respond that I was a middle school teacher in Chejudo, and after getting over the fact that I lived in a place most Koreans think of like Americans do Hawaii, the conversation inevitably would turn in the direction of something the taxi driver wants to talk about. Me being American, this often means a discussion of the land of hamburgers, pizzas, and apple pies. However this time, it took a more interesting turn.
"Do you like Elvis?" the driver asked me as we rounded a bend.
As I looked around the taxi and noticed that there was Elvis paraphernalia on the windows, the dashboard, hanging from the mirror, and even in the tape deck, I politely responded that I did - and that I actually liked him quite a bit. I sort of winced even as I said that, but I thought it would be nice to say.
So he popped in a tape - Elvis of course - and started singing along to "Love Me Tender" or some such slow song I never knew the title to. I found that the driver actually did a pretty good Elvis. One would think that this might have been a somewhat awkward moment, but it barely rated a tick on the surreality meter by this point in my stay in Korea.
Between lines of song, the driver explained to me that he was Elvis's #1 fan, and that he had been ever since he was a teenager. I nodded and politely prodded for more, and he obliged by explaining how difficult it had been during the times of martial law under a virtual dictatorship to enjoy a large variety of popular music. And apparently, when Elvis hit the airwaves in the States, he had hit them just as hard in Korea, perhaps finding an even more receptive and eager audience in the relative vacuum of popular mass music culture.
Elvis had been an inspiration to him, and was a welcome escape as he struggled through a pretty harsh life in the late 50s and 60s, the driver added. He didn't claim to worship American pop culture, and added that he hadn't even particularly like American music - it was Elvis and only Elvis. You see, the driver explained to me, Elvis was not only a music star, but he had been able to cross over into the movies as well. He asked me whether I had seen any of his movies, and I instantly replied with a half-surprised "Of course." What red-blooded American hasn't seen an Elvis movie, right? I was lying like a rug, but I didn't think I would be called upon to prove myself. It was simply a verbal cue for the driver to continue the conversation.
"Well, then you probably know how talented he was, since he could act as well as he could sing," he surmised. I agreed, even though the sight of an Elvis film had always prompted me to quickly turn the station away from TNT - the lone nevue besides The Nashville Network where Elvis movies always seem to be on - as quickly as possible.
But I soon found myself glad that I had lied as much as I had to this point in the conversation, because the driver soon made it clear how happy he was to be having this conversation with me. He said that he had never been able to speak to an American about this thing which he felt so strongly about; of course, he had foreign passengers occasionally before, but the language barrier had always been a problem. And other Koreans his age tended to think that the level of his infatuation with Elvis was a bit strange, the more he described it in detail.
Apparently, he found it quite nice to share his obsession with someone whom he felt could understand, and I guess I was the first candidate to come along. Now this may sound a bit hokey, but I felt somewhat honored to be that person - it seemed like the driver was intensely enjoying sharing his hobby unapologetically and freely with a kindred spirit. And it started to become surreal for me, since I had always been a Black man who had always been somewhat bothered by Elvis. The last time I had thought about Elvis was in high school, when Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" track reminded and admonished Black folk "Elvis - that sucker was simple and plain. Motherfuck him and John Wayne." Of course, I kept that inner monolgue to myself.
So despite the fact that phrases like "cultural imperialism" and "hegemonic discourse" kept flashing through my brain, I found it fascinating to get a new perspective on something I would have never have thought to ever think about again. Even as Elvis was crooning to millions and pissing off a helluva lot of us Colored folk, there was a reception all the way across the Big Water - at least in one person's mind - that was completely different, even if completely unintentional.
I can't say exactly why this taxi driver liked Elvis so damn much without me thinking that I am putting words into this guy's mouth. But I did get the distinct impression that Elvis struck some sort of chord for this guy - I mean Elvis was cool, macho, and he got chicks. Maybe that's not the most poignant sentiment in the world, but it was enough for me. For some odd reason, it really struck me that my mind had been broadened. Admittedly, it wasn't horizon-expanding in the same way that reading books by Stephen Hawking or studying Russian verb conjugation would be considered to be, but the point was that I had suddenly a new take on something that I had filed away in my head in a neat little category, never to be opened again.
I guess many things were lost in the cultural translation - as often happens - and the painful histories of racial discrimination and cultural appropriation that Elvis personified were left by the wayside in the journey across the Pacific; they had no relevance here, as Elvis was, for at least one person, a symbol of youth, attitude, and being eminently cool in a time when it was difficult to be anything more than cold, hungry, and worried about the future. In that context, Elvis signified something for this Seoul cab driver raised in the harsh, Cold War South Korea which would offer little democracy, personal freedom, or comfort for decades to come. This is a far cry from the Elvis I had come to know as a Black-Korean kid raised in Ohio in the 1980s. For me, Elvis was a pre-Civil Rights era joke.
But somehow I felt more right than wrong to be a Black man sitting in a cab in Korea lying about how much I liked Elvis. I got to my destination feeling like I had just had a real conversation, had made a connection with someone. And I really do believe I saw a little glimpse of Elvis that day.
