The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon

5. Elvis’s DNA

[Ivis's DNA n popular culture, Elvis Presley has become a genetic construct, driven by his genes to his unlikely destiny. In a 1985 biography, for example, Elaine Dundy attributed Presley's success to the genetic characteristics of his mother's multiethnic family: "Genetically speaking," she wrote, "what produced Elvis was quite a mixture." To his "French Norman blood was added Scots-Irish blood," as well as "the Indian strain supplying the mystery and the Jewish strain supplying spectacular showmanship." All this, combined with his "circumstances, social conditioning, and religious upbringing ... [produced] the enigma that was Elvis."l Dundy traced Elvis's musical talents to his father (who "had a very good voice") and his mother (who had "the instincts of a 79 TH[ DNA MYSTIQU[ performer"). His parents did provide a musical environment, Dundy noted, but "even without it, one wonders if Elvis, with his biological musical equipment would not still have become a virtuoso."2 Another Elvis biographer, Albert Goldman, focused on his subject's "bad" genes, describing him as "the victim of a fatal hereditary disposition."3 Using language reminiscent of the stories of the Jukeses and the Kallikaks, the degenerate families of the early eugenics movement, Goldman attributed Elvis's character to ancestors who constituted u a distinctive breed of southern yeomanry" commonly known as hillbillies. A genealogy research organization, Goldman said, had traced Presley's lineage back nine generations to a nineteenthcentury "coward, deserter and bigamist." In Goldman's narrative, this genetic heritage explained Elvis's downfall: his addiction to drugs and alcohol, his emotional disorders, and his premature death were all in his genes. His fate was a readout of his DNA. The idea that "good" and "bad" character traits (and destinies ) are the consequence of "good" and "bad" genes appears in a wide range of popular sources. In these works the gene is described in moral terms, and it seems to dictate the actions of criminals, celebrities, political leaders, and literary and scientific figures. Films present stories of "tainted blood," and "born achievers," of success and failure, of kindness and cruelty, all written in the genes. The most complicated human traits are also blamed on DNA. Media sources feature jokes about Republican genes, MBA genes, lawyer genes, and public interest genes.4 Human behaviors linked to DNA in these accounts range from the trivial-a preference for flashy belt buckles-to the tragic-a desire to murder children. Such popular constructions of behavior draw on the increasing public legitimacy of the scientific field of behavioral genetics. Behavioral geneticists have been able to demonstrate that some relatively complicated behaviorscertainly in experimental animals and possibly in human beings-are genetically determined.5 Studies of animals reveal the genetic bases of survival instincts, mating rituals, and certain aspects of learning and memory. Border collies 80 [lVIS'S DNA herd sheep in a unique, characteristic way whether they have been trained or not, even if they have never seen sheep before. Some behaviors associated with particular hormones have been indirectly linked to genes: Both aggressive and nurturing behaviors-in mice-can be manipulated with adjustments of hormone levels. Though such research highlights the biological events involved in some behaviors, it does not support the popular idea that genes determine human personality traits or such complex phenomena as success, failure, political leanings, or criminality. Nonetheless, the claims that genes control human behaviors have received significant support from some behavioral geneticists who have positioned themselves as public scientists. Among the most cited and widely promoted scientists in this field is University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard. Bouchard, a student of Arthur Jensen, has studied identical twins reared apart in order to determine the relationship between genetics and IQ, personality, and behavior. Bouchard's work has attracted significant popular attention since he began promoting his findings in 1982, but it has been controversial in the scientific community. Identical twins growing up in different families have long been seen as Unatural experiments" in human genetics, even by the eugenicists of the 1920s (see Chapter 2). Bouchard, like others before him, has concluded that all similarities in identical twins reared apart are caused by their shared genes. But Bouchard's research subjects were self-selected (he advertised to find them) and interested in being twinlike. Some of them had also been reared together for several years before they were adopted into different families, therefore sharing at least an early environment...