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Originally Posted by Zhukov
 But now he's dead, and we can leave all that to the historians and sociologists. Nothing will burnish a career, while forgiving it's failings, like a pre-mature death. In the cultural landscape today, Michael Jackson is moonwalking, hopscotching across an illuminated sidewalk, traveling through space and just generally killing it (my apologies) with his superhuman skills. Everything that followed is diminished and ultimately rendered irrelevant. I'm not saying that this is right, or admirable, but it is reasonable. Popular culture has reclaimed Michael Jackson as he once was, before the megalomania and rumours and lawsuits: he was once the most talented man in the world.* This is why we put young Elvis on the stamp instead of old Elvis, it's why Marilyn Monroe is damn near a Jungian icon of sexuality and desire despite being drugged up and used by the end, and it's why Heath Ledger won an Oscar (no disrespect, as they say). Jackson's case is unique in that he ascended higher than anyone else (Elvis comes close, but he's not global on the scale Jackson was), and he fell further. Now that he's gone, it's as if all that weight bearing his cultural holographic imagery into the depths of mockery and disgust has been jettisoned.
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If he'd lived to 80, I think we'd be similarly inclined to momentarily forgive him his weirdness and sketchy relationship with children, although you'd have a younger generation much less familiar with him at his prime.
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| This doesn't excuse him, if the allegations against him are true. In that case he is a monster; a sick and needing monster, but a monster nonetheless. In the shadows there will always be a shadow of Jackson as Grendel, the warped offspring of a lustful parent (although in this abstraction, the parent is played by a celebrity-stricken society). His physical transformation only serves to highlight this disjunction. Perversely, this dynamic acts to heighten the cultural and popular response to Jackson as he was, as opposed to as he became. Dig too deep into his tragic narrative and this same cultural/popular framework begins to appear deeply corrupt, destructive and ultimately empty. But society is a funny thing, and perception becomes reality. He is now idealized in the hopes that the darker meanings of his downward spiral can be simply replaced, with the notion a young kid defying physics through sheer will and imposing his talent on a world that desperately wanted it. |
Oddly enough, this is refreshing. In an age where we feel the need to know our celebrities on a personal level, when even those artists who once thrived on their dark and mysterious images have had their family lives laid bare on TV (hi, Ozzy), it seemed as though we might have forgetten how to evaluate the art (or cultural phenomenon) separately from the artist. I don't think the outpouring of affection for Jackson over the last few days represents cultural amnesia when it comes to his transgressions; I suspect that few praising him do so without reservations. Instead, they're rightfully embracing the iconography of his public persona and artistry of his work.
