The Original American Idol

''He's still alive, everywhere you go. To be able to bring the kids in there and say, 'Look, this is all Elvis.' They can see it with their own eyes, you're not just telling them a folk story.''   -- SHARON, 32, GRACELAND VISITOR IN MAY 2006

Of all the scurvy crimes American Idol committed against real American culture, the worst was the May 9, all-Elvis edition. As Sharon, speaking outside Presley's home, put it: ''The minute I heard it, I was like, Oh God, this is gonna be horrible.'' Her husband, Tony, asked to name his favorite Elvis song, said, '''If I Can Dream.' And Elliott [Yamin]butchered it.''

And there you have it. As is glowingly apparent in Martin Parr's serenely observant photographs, Graceland remains startlingly relevant to contemporary pop culture. It contains all the contradictions of its famous owner: commercial triumph and garishness, an air of welcome and defiant hedonism. Graceland is at once an open shrine and an unknowable sanctuary. It is not, like American Idol, an ersatz phenomenon. It is, like the American artist who called it home, a genuine one.

Graceland, a 1939 white-columned mansion, is located eight miles south of downtown Memphis, where Elvis cut his first hits at Sam Phillips' Sun Records studio. The original owners, Dr. and Mrs. Thomas D. Moore, named it for Mrs. Moore's great-aunt Grace; Elvis bought it for a little over $100,000 in 1957.

Conceived by Elvis as his fortress of solitude, Graceland also became the living quarters for Presley's family and his ever-present entourage of buddies and hangers-on. It also became, inevitably (given the sway of Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker, a true visionary regarding what what we'd now call ''multiplatform profit centers''), a tourist attraction that currently draws more than 600,000 visitors a year.

As Parr's photos suggest, Graceland is where adoration and commercialism meet and blur, just as surely as peanut butter and banana slices melt and conjoin in one of Elvis' favorite snacks, still served at Graceland. To see tourists bedecked in Elvis paraphernalia, posing with cheerful dignity in various Graceland rooms, is to behold the pride and curiosity that the singer continues to inspire. People make pilgrimages here to get in touch with Elvis' humanity, as one visitor told EW: ''Just to see where he sat and ate dinner, know what I mean? As a human being, his presence. Just to see the couch he actually sat on. It makes him a little more human, seeing what his personal space was, and hearing how he spent his time.'' They also come for confirmation of Elvis' eternal presence well beyond Graceland. ''Elvis is not American,'' said Brian, a 37-year-old from Vancouver speaking to EW with metaphorical eloquence. ''Elvis is worldwide. You don't think of Elvis as being some guy from the United States. Elvis is Elvis. And he just happened to live at Graceland.''

In this sense, Graceland is an environment of Elvis energy still alive in the land, alive in a way that no Taylor or Katharine, no Ryan or Paula, can imagine. Its restless, yearning spirit of freedom resonates in all of us, now.