Without rhythm and blues, there would be no Elvis Presley, but you might not know it from the way the King has traditionally been depicted in pop culture.
Presley, born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, made early connections with the Black community, finding inspiration in its culture, religious traditions, and music. But often, this aspect of his life remains unexplored, white-washing his past or side-stepping thornier issues of appropriation.
Director Baz Luhrmann's Elvis isn't perfect in this regard either (it downplays Presley's more paranoid, law-and-order obsessed pivot in his later years), but it at least strives to show the world in which Presley came from.
