AND MUCH, MUCH MORE
 
 
 
You can spend a couple of hours or all day at Graceland--there's so 

much to see and do! Our visitor center offers two restaurants--one 

with burgers and fries served in a nostalgic diner atmosphere and 

one with Southern home style cooking and a salad bar. There are 

also several gift shops offering T-shirts, recordings, videos, and 

Elvis collectibles of all kinds, making for great adventures in 

shopping. Then, of course, there are the Graceland tours and 

attractions, for which tickets may be purchased individually or in a 

package. Admission for children under four is free for all attractions. 

(Elvis Presley's Graceland 1992) 





Processual/performative texts consist of EVENTS IN WHICH FANS AND FUNS PARTICIPATE, some corporate sponsored, others not:

tours of the mansion&car museum&up-close museum&bus&plane& high school&birth home&Sun Records&Beale Street&fan club parties &conventions&International Elvis Week&the Annual Candlelight Service&impersonators' tribute concerts&weddings&tv series&commemorative specials&cd's&Elvis is Dead parties&Dead Elvis Ball&El-Vez Concert&Krewe D'Elvis&pilgrimages to the gravesite&the church of Elvis&shopping&people watching
 
 

Whatever performance YOU choose to participate in at Graceland Plaza, you will be always be A CONSUMER.
 
 
 

[I]n our society the conditions of production are ones over which people have no control, no choice about if or where to work, or about the conditions under which to work; consumption, however, offers some means of coping with the frustrations of capitalist conditions of production. It thus serves both the economic interests of the producers and the cultural interests of the consumers while not completely separating the two. . . . Consumption, then, offers a sense of control over communal meaning of oneself and social relations, it offers a means of controlling to some extent the context of everyday life (Fiske 1989b, 25). 

So go head, TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE.

Engage in a performance at Graceland Plaza.
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

where YOUR memories live again

Sharon and I were sitting on a bench 
outside the visitor center watching people walk by.
From our vantage point we could see the sidewalk 
that runs the entire length of the Plaza. 
I noticed a small group of people who had 
"tourists" written all over them--
the cameras dangling, the guidebooks open,
the heads turning, the eyes gawking, the fingers pointing--
emerge from the ticket area.
I guessed them to be a family on vacation:
father, mother, small boy and teen-aged boy. 
They looked like every other family we'd seen pass by that day,
withered from the heat but full of pre-tour excitement. 
But not everyone in the family was excited.
The oldest child, a boy of around fourteen, 
APPEARED COMPLETELY BORED. 
He was hunch-shouldered, tallish,
dressed in baggy pants, baggy "Massimo" t-shirt,
sandals. His shoulder-length, mouse-brown hair
looked uncombed, unwashed and uncomfortable.
He slouched, hands in pockets,
a few feet away from the rest of the family,
as if to indicate he was not part of them 
or as if he could easily escape. 
But his mother kept talking to him. 
Didn't she know? 
Couldn't she see how uncomfortable he was,
how out of place he felt?
Or was she used to this behavior and able to ignore it?
Sharon turned to me and said,
almost at the same time I was thinking it,
"Surly teen,"
our term for teen-aged people 
who are forced to be with their families.
He was the epitome of the surly teen.
He would have none of Graceland 
or Elvis,
but he had to endure.
An Elvis impersonator in a bright red jumpsuit
walked near the family.
The younger child pointed at him, 
which caught his attention. The impersonator 
Elvised over to the family
and began to perform for them. 
The surly teen was not amused. 
His face turned as red as the jumpsuit.
How could they do this to him? 


--Dan, an ethnographer

 

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