Editor’s Note: This article is a special post guest written by a good friend of mine, Ashok Karra, who also runs a great blog of his own with many great written posts on literature, history, culture, and movies! So I urge you to go and visit his blog here and enjoy your stay. Thanks! Also check Ashok’s twitter account here and give him a tweet of yourself, @akarra.
I had to abandon watching Twitter updates tonight because while quite a few were more than willing to admit we all grew up with Michael Jackson, and that dying at 50 sucks, there was just too much “he was a child molester I’m not sorry he’s dead” stuff. It is true people not only make mistakes, but that some mistakes cannot be forgiven. Morality has a very nasty side to it: it has to make sure people live in infamy, that their lives are not emulated again.
But that’s Michael Jackson the celebrity, perhaps. Michael Jackson the entertainer is something else. You can see in the video that the dance is cheesy, as is the white glove and the over-expressed emotion. But the music moves; he’s into it; every move he makes on that stage seems perfect. It’s fun, and fun in a way you want to get into it. “King of Pop” may sound like an exaggeration, but every moment of that video it looks like the only way to describe what one is seeing. In a sense, what one is seeing is innocent; it’s just fun, there’s nothing political or subversive or desperate about it. And it takes immense talent to pull off – a quick comparison with the recent performances of others demonstrates aptly that not everyone can be a pop star, much less a good pop star.
Rest in peace, Michael Jackson. Good or bad, better or worse, you will be missed. As I watch that video and look out at the audience, I realize something: as you changed, something about America was changing too, and that is certainly a topic for later.
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