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August 16, 2002, marked the 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. Despite pouring rain, some 40,000 Elvis fans gathered at Graceland, Presley’s home and grave site in Memphis, Tennessee, and paid their respects in an all-night ceremony called the “Candlelight Vigil.” Presley’s tomb in Graceland’s Meditation Gardens, a small plot of land where Elvis, his parents, and his paternal grandmother are buried and where his stillborn twin (Jesse Garon Presley) is memorialized with a bronze plaque, was piled high with gifts and tributes from fans, including bouquets of ®owers, stuffed teddy bears, votive candles, photographs, records, trinkets, handwritten letters, and poems reading “From Graceland to the Promised Land/We followed you here/We will follow you there.” During the vigil, fans held candles and listened to Elvis songs such as “If I Can Dream” and “How Great Thou Art” broadcast over loudspeakers; they also listened to the reading of Psalm 23 and joined in singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Some fans queued for nearly 24 hours to pass through Graceland’s gates and visit Elvis’s grave; among the last to appear were Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter and inheritor of his estate, and her new husband, the actor Nicolas Cage. As one fan from Chicago put it, “This isn’t a fascination. This is a love. A love forever” (Blank 2002). Another fan who deeply loves Elvis is a former language and psychology teacher from Athens who in 1985 married a Greek-American and emigrated to Memphis to “be closer” to Elvis. “The day he passed away, it hit me like lightning ,” she recalls. “That very day I started making my arrangements, using the gold foil from cigarette packages, and decorating Elvis pictures. I feel so blessed that I can live in Memphis and do this. Elvis, his image, is so alive inside me.”1 This fan, whose Memphis apartment is covered with pictures and photographs of Elvis, spends every spare moment she can at Elvis’s grave, honoring him with small portable shrines and handmade angels featuring images of Elvis. 10 Popular Culture Canonization Elvis Presley as Saint and Savior Erika Doss Her image-making and grave-site rituals symbolize her deeply spiritual relationship with Elvis. A devout Catholic (raised Greek Orthodox), this fan does not worship Elvis but sees him as a man sent by God “to wake us up, to shake us, to ask us, what are we doing, where are we going?” She views Elvis as a mediator , an intercessor, between herself, and between other fans, and God. As she says, “There is a distance between human beings and God. That is why we are close to Elvis. He is like a bridge between us and God.” If, along with other fans, she imagines Elvis as a saint, she also sees him as a redemptive ¤gure. “I believe in Jesus Christ and I believe in God,” she remarks, “but Elvis was special. Elvis was in our times, he was given to us to remind us to be good.” A servant of God and Christlike savior, Elvis brings this fan joy, intensity, pleasure, and purpose. “I don’t go to church much now. I don’t ask for anything else from God, my prayers have been answered,” she says, acknowledging that her personal relationship with Elvis and the artworks she makes and the rituals she performs express that relationship and are the most meaningful cultural and social practices in her life (Harrison 1992:53, 68). WHY ELVIS? Why has Elvis Presley become sancti¤ed as the central ¤gure in what some call a quasireligion? Despite dying in 1977, Elvis remains everywhere: his image is seen on the surface of every conceivable mass-produced consumer item, his music is honored in multiple tribute concerts and greatest-hits re-releases, his life is dissected in endless biographies, art exhibitions, and documentaries. Contemporary folklore has it that the three most recognized words in the world are Jesus, Coca-Cola, and Elvis. Elvis fans are everywhere, too. Some belong to the 500 or so of¤cial Elvis Presley fan clubs that currently exist around the globe. Others habitually visit Graceland, making it the second most popular house tour in America (after the White House). Each year during the anniversary of his death, during Elvis International Tribute Week, Memphis swells as thousands of fans gather in grief and celebration around Elvis’s grave, displaying a kind of emotional intensity and reverence that...

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