Bubba Ho Tep

1125 Words5 Pages
The movie, Bubba Ho Tep, is not just a movie where Elvis and a delusional man who claims he is JFK are the main characters, but a movie about every elderly person trying to discover where they came from and where they are going in their senior years. It serves as a deliberation on aging and the meaning of life. It shows how, inexplicably, in a B-movie sort of way, our body parts and functions mock us into our final years, giving us hope one moment and a fleeting glimpse of our past the next. Elvis was the symbol of sexiness and vitality in America by his early adulthood. He was deeply in love with Priscilla but as Erikson’s Psychological Stages points out, he was at the intimacy vs. isolation stage of his life and although he was capable of a committed, loving relationship, he chose to isolate those feelings in drugs and other women. His superstardom delivered him into empty relationships and barrier of loneliness that could not be broken through. Ironically, in the movie, the former sex symbol reflected on how he had had erectile dysfunction, which effects over 25% of men over the age of 65, for years. As history dictates, most young stars have not followed the normal social clock, or typical sequences of adult life experiences. Their adult lives seem to start at a much younger age and as the author of The Journey of Adulthood states, if those lives are out of sync with what society expects in the way of timing, it may lead to some personal doubts later in life. The movie shows Elvis reaching his middle adult stage with the realization that he did not want the life he was leading any longer. He becomes a man who traded away all his money and his fame for a more simple life. Papers were signed stating that he could change back personas with Sebastian Haff at any time. An unfortunate grilling accident consumed that contract in a fireball. I believe that was a
Open Document