Jim Morrison

Hopkins and Sugerman (2006) and Stone (1991) developed the image of Morrison as a shaman and as Lizard King based on the development, by Morrison, of his role as a shaman and the image of the Lizard King. This image was the “existing value structure” of Morrison at the time of his death, despite attempts made by Morrison to change this image. As the “the way in which the total image grows determines or at least limits the direction of future growth,” Hopkins and Sugerman (2006) and Stone (1991) were working within the parameters of Morrison's image. Thus, the image of Morrison as a shaman and Lizard King became internally coherent and consistent through repetition and served to organize both historical and posthumous ideas about Morrison, superseding reality.

Peter Jan Margry (2008, 145), in “The Pilgrimage to Jim Morrison's Grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery: the Social Construction of Sacred Space,” writes of Stone (1991) “[giving] a whole new impetus to this mythologizing [of Morrison].” “The film” writes Margry (2008, 145), “partly confirmed the existing image but added new, powerful iconographies and narratives.”

Popular biographies of Morrison, published since Hopkins and Sugerman (2006), have emphasized the mythic implications of Morrison's life story, such as the development of mythos surrounding Morrison during his life, his mysterious death and the development of a cult following, involving pilgrimage to his grave in Paris (see Davis 2005; Densmore 1990; Henke 2007; Hopkins 2010; Mazerak 1999; Riordan and Prochnicky 2006).

The significance of understanding Morrison as a shaman relates to the origins of attribution. Morrison, through self-characterization as a shaman, instigated the assignment of a religious aura sur...

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...onal autonomy and archetypal rock star decadence. As Morrison has not been subject to a study of commodification, as has Presley, then the study of Morrison as a commodity, and its religion to consideration of him as a “religious figure,” warrants future study.

Ultimately, to understand the development of a religious aura, surrounding Morrison, and Morrison as a “religious figure,” all aspects of his life and image must be accounted for. Historically, his life, self-propagated myth, image, death and potential as a commodity. Posthumously, his popular myth, pilgrimage to his gravesite and commodification of his image. Morrison as a shaman and Lizard King is only one reason for his religious aura; its contribution to the development of the popular myth, along with the central values contained in his image, contributed to the idea of Morrison as a “religious figure.”