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Farrah Fawcett died today after being defeated by anal cancer. It was a sad end to a struggle for life that had only been recently brought to our attentions. She was a sex symbol to millions, myself included. I am too young to have experienced her advent, but when I became conscious of her as a post-pubescent teen in the 90s, she had just posed for Playboy and I could appreciate her beauty. She had that 1970s hotness that I find so appealing and makes me think I would have truly enjoyed spending the last 10 years of my life in that decade. I was sad to hear of her death.
And then Michael Jackson was rushed to the hospital, having suffered from cardiac arrest. I’ve never seen so many people in the social networking community post on the same thing. TMZ was reporting that he had died, but no one in the traditional news media takes TMZ seriously, so everyone on Twitter and Facebook was waiting with baited breath for a reputable news organization to confirm that he had died. It was almost comical in a way. And then the LA Times confirmed it.
Michael Jackson is dead. The King of Pop has passed away at 50 years of age.
Talk about stealing Farrah Fawcett’s thunder.
I let it sink in for a moment and let the gravity of the situation take hold of me. Except nothing happened. I felt no shock and no sadness. I was then as I am now, completely indifferent. At first I thought it was because of the economic situation. Or because of all the turmoil in Iran. Or because I’m waiting for Obama to enact health care reform. But no, it wasn’t any of those things. And then I realized what it was.
Michael Jackson has been dead to me for years, just as he has been to all of you. Sure, everyone will pretend to be sad and remember moments in their lives that had Michael Jackson music playing in the background so they can take part in the shared global mourning that is going on right now. But all those moments were more than 15 years ago. And it doesn’t change the fact that he hasn’t made any music that any of us could shake our asses to in years (the last song I remember was Scream). Or that if we all look at our music collections (if we haven’t packed them away or gotten rid of them) most of us won’t find a single Michael Jackson CD or cassette. He may as well have died back then.
You see, Michael Jackson, while being the King of Pop that was so loved for ABC, Thriller, Bad and We Are the World, had become wholly irrelevant in the last 10 years. The child molestation charges, the mutation into a white stand-in for Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, the bizarre antics, Neverland Ranch – all these things plagued the image of the man we’re all pretending to mourn today. Think of the last thing you said about Michael Jackson before today. It probably wasn’t anything nice and it probably had something to do with one of the things I just listed.
If I feel anything for him, I feel bad. I’m guessing he suffered a lot because of these things and while we’re all responsible for our own actions, I’m sure the derogatory slant in the media coverage had a lot to do with it as well. This is the same media that is now celebrating his life by showing snippets of his early career. I feel somewhat sickened by the two-faced nature of it. I’m glad that he’s free of all this now. Media outlets around the world will put on a circus in the coming weeks to celebrate the man they vilified for so long and act as if his passing was a huge ripple in time. If he had died 15 years ago, it may have been. Aside from his family, he has not been a part of any of our lives in any meaningful way for a long time and to act any differently is insincere. I do understand the need for a proper tribute to a man who so heavily influenced the world of music, but I don’t know, it just feels forced.
Don’t get me wrong; I have my own Michael Jackson memories. Thriller, the song and the video, was the first piece of media that truly scared the living bejeezus out of me as a child. Before Freddy Krueger haunted my dreams, it was Michael Jackson in Thriller. That was some scary shit, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I remember trying to Moonwalk. I remember watching Captain EO at Disneyland. I remember the Pepsi commercial with the zip line. I remember singing Man in the Mirror and Bad because I was oh so Bad. But I came to terms with all these memories long ago when the man who was responsible for them completely disappeared.
So, Michael Jackson, rest in peace. But I feel no sadness for your loss because you were lost to us long ago. I loved your music and will honor your memory by continuing to listen to it. But I’ve been doing so for years. I don’t really know what else to say, except for “thanks for the memories.”
And if Thriller was any indication, we know you’ll be back soon.
