You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 30th, 2009.
This gem straight from CNN TV: King of Pop’s Hair to Produce Diamonds.
So yesterday, I met for lunch with my friend Emma. We met in the line at Subway some years ago, her overhearing a conversation between myself and a friend regarding which of the Star Trek captains was the best. Longtime readers of Saint Superman are well aware of my stance on the issue, a firm and contrarian “Sisko,” from Deep Space Nine. Emma, on the other hand, is a staunch Kirkist. Most women, I’ve found, tend to be; perhaps its his rugged good looks or cowboy demeanour, but chicks can’t get enough of Jim Kirk. We quickly struck up a lasting friendship which has, unfortunately, fallen into disuse. We agreed to meet for lunch on the grounds that we’re both leaving Richmond forever in the next month.
After drifting into a number of areas, we ended up discussing the detritus of Michael Jackson’s life, and Emma made a telling comment, that it was strange to have lived through his death. His death wasn’t shocking like Heath Ledger’s, because Jacko’s always been a little sickly, but neither was it wholly expected, like, say Walter Cronkite’s or Ed McMahon’s, both of whom were elderly fellas. She had difficulty elucidating what, exactly, struck her as odd about Jackson’s death, but there was something wholly odd about it. “He was always there,” she said. “Strange, yeah, but he was always sort of around.”
In this conversation, it occurred to me: Jackson’s death forced us to do something we were simply unprepared to do, which is to take stock and analyze the man’s life, to try and make sense of it. While he was alive, he could be shrugged off and ignored, mocked, belittled, or admired. He was still, er, evolving, and who knew what the future might bring? Perhaps an explanation for the last twenty-five years, some sense about the scandals and the surgeries, or some new groundbreaking work which would render everything forgiven. We could sit back and think “He’s insane, but he’s a genius,” and get on with our lives. When he died, though, this became impossible, because all of a sudden, we were plunged into a spirit of confusion, mourning, anger, or frustration, all stemming from the sudden termination of this strange and controversial life.
Quite unexpectedly, he was done, and his oddly-uneven body of work — from the stunning supernova brilliance of Thriller to the strange and disappointing Invincible — alongside his decidedly unsettling ;ife needed to be reconciled with each other, with the media, and with the fans and detractors. Stock needed to be taken. Sense needed to be forged. Somehow, we felt, it all needed some interpretive key, something to make it fit together so we could finally pick a narrative and move on. Because all the greats have a narrative.
- Elvis is the King of Rock. He was a musical trailblazer who introduced the beat to white mainstream audiences but fell into his own excess, struggled to reinvent himself, and ultimately succumbed to the very wealth and fame he had built for himself.
- Johnny Cash is the Man in Black, the contentious, contrarian saint and sinner, always at odds with himself, whose conflicted life fed his music.
- John Lennon is the Walrus, the hippie prophet who came with a message of peace and love, with overtly communistic overtones, whose life was cut tragically short.
Each of them has a conventional line. But what can we say about Jackson? He made excellent music but was driven mad by his fame? That his desire to be a childlike led him to take advantage of children? Was his music worth it? Did he hurt others, or just himself? How does it all fit together? These are the questions we still don’t really have a solid answer for, and I’m not sure when we will. In sixty years, will we remember his dalliances with kids, or will we remember Thriller?
