How do these splashy experiences square with their subjects’ problematic pasts?
After Party
Fresh off the heels of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley biopic — which details Elvis’ relationship with her that began when she was only 14 and he was 24 — a British hologram company is planning to resurrect the king of rock and roll using artificial intelligence and bring him back to stages around the world.
As The Guardian reports, the “immersive experience company” Layered Reality plans to use archival footage of Elvis to create a “memory-making experience that will be a bucket-list item” for fans in cities like London, Tokyo and Las Vegas.
On the splash page for the series, titled “Elvis Evolution,” Layered Reality boasts that guests will get a “personal invite to the After Party” that takes place 46 years after his death, though the company didn’t expound on what that foreboding promise entails.
Walking Dead
Approved by Authentic Brands Group, the giant conglomerate that has owned the Elvis estate for a decade, this latest holographic gambit is the latest in a string of real and proposed AI resuscitations of artists from a bygone era — many of whom, including the Beatles’ John Lennon and The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, also happen to have allegedly been, er, quite problematic in their dealings with women.
“You can have a posthumous business now, can’t you?” Jagger told the Wall Street Journal last September. “You can have a posthumous tour.”
Most notably, Jagger, who is still alive at the ripe old age of 80, purportedly shared Presley’s love of teen girls. In early 2020, actress Rae Dawn Chong said that she slept with Jagger when she was only 15 and he was 33, though like many other women who claim to have had sexual encounters with rockstars when they were underage, she insisted that it was consensual.
Presley’s widow also maintains, to the deceased superstar’s credit, that she did not have sex with “the king” until their wedding night, when she was 21. The fact remains, however, that that icon and his libidinous contemporaries lived and operated within a world with far different sexual mores than our current one.
People have already poured millions into these sorts of holographic concerts and will undoubtedly spend billions more as they become more commonplace. With nostalgia fueling these kinds of expensive experiences, one has to wonder if some who attend are reminiscing of the bygone days when adult men could have sex with underage girls consequence-free.
More on AI resuscitations: Peter Jackson Threatens to Release Even More AI Beatles Songs
