Michael Jackson hasn't been on my radar for sometime now. For almost a decade I think. Of course as someone who grew up in the 80s, I know and enjoy his music immensely and believe he was a great entertainer, one of the greatest ever. A CD of his number 1 singles is in my car and I play it often. But that was about it. Even news of his comeback tour `This is It' stirred just minor curiosity.
So the global outpouring of grief at his death on June 25th came as a surprize. Especially when you go by the media coverage and references to his lifestyle in the past few years. His behaviour seemed to have become progressively bizarre and he was clearly alienated from common reality. And then there were those unproven but damning allegations that he was a child molestor.
So why then this overt, collective outpouring? Is Michael Jackson in death bigger, more powerful than Michael Jackson alive? Why is there this almost instinctive need to participate in a global televised memorial service? Is it about what we collectively, really feel for Michael Jackson or is it about the role assigned to all of us, one we willingly perform, in the age of mediated reality and celebrity? The role of the audience - of spectators - who participate real time as the drama of life unfolds before us? Are celebrities who live out and die exceptional, sometimes abnormal, lives in full public view the gladiators of the 21st century?
My final question is do we pity Michael Jackson and somewhere deep inside are we muttering a `thank you God', for our normal lives, or, do we envy him the power of his talent and the scale of his celebrity? And see his abnormal, mysterious and perhaps unhappy life as the tradeoff for the kind of talent,fame and money that he had had?
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I wrote on 26th June '09
So, I see some cynics write about why we are going on about a child abuser and why we have such short memory on bad experiences. Do all that Modi and Bush have to do is die, for people to go on about them ? - someone asked on my friends list.
NO. Nobody forgot the "crimes" that MJ was accused of. But realize, that his music was what helped define us as a generation. He sang what we felt. He danced like only he could and we wanted to.We each have a moment, a song, an instance, a story that includes him in our lives, in our past.
We mourn the loss of a great entertainer - whose life in many ways had finished long before, at his own hands. We mourned the waste of great craft even while he lived. And now when he was making attempts at a comeback, we all hoped our fallen hero would resurrect himself. We needed that for him as much as we did for us.
He was a music ICON. And we mourn the loss of that. The loss of an Icon.The out pouring you see on the net, in the media, is real. Believe it.
That's the point, while i accept MJ is one of the greatest entertainers ever, I never thought snd still don't think that his music defined us as a generation. Different strokes for different folks, huh?
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