the news of Michael Jackson's passing. His life was not conventional in any sense and even in death he is not free from comprehensive speculation and criticism.There are a great number of jokes going around about Michael's death. Some are funny, some aren't. Laughing at tragic news can be a way of broaching a subject and trying to understand it better. There were jokes about the World Trade Center in 2001, very soon after the two buildings were destroyed by terrorists and thousands of people killed. Perhaps a reaction to a situation, whether it's laughter or outrage, is better than no reaction at all. Some countries don't give people the right to speak so freely on taboo subjects, so comedians in America and England etcetera are lucky.
We all know what tends to happen to people who are famous from a young age. It makes living a normal life impossible. How a person deals with fame varies. Drew Barrymore rose to fame as the little girl in E.T. and went through years of being pretty mucked up, but she managed to turn things around and get back into acting on her own terms. However hard it must have been for Michael to live consistently in the public eye, he kept on performing and giving the fans what they wanted,
but the detriment to his personal life is evident. Developing true friends and connections would have been near impossible when surrounded by security staff twenty-four hours a day. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to be in such a position.As to whether or not Michael was involved with children in a way that wasn't appropriate, I don't know. No one knows, or may ever know, except for the man himself and the children who spent time with him. I want to believe that he simply enjoyed the company of children in an innocent sense, but there's no way to know either way. He was cleared of all charges after numerous lawsuits, so at least the law believes him.
His death has a lot of question marks around it and that's no surprise. His life was extra-ordinary by definition and his last hours are no exception, including the fact that he was fit and healthy practising for a show the day before and the disappearance of his personal physician on
discovery of his body. Since then, many 'sightings' of Michael's ghost have been revealed, one of which was apparently filmed by CNN in a documentary tour of Neverland Ranch. It's open to opinion whether the footage was tampered with or whether it was just a shadow of a passing crew member, but many people are certainly up for believing it was supernatural. There was a guy who said he took a photo of his car to sell it on eBay, noticing a cloud that looked like Michael in the reflection on the bonnet. I've looked closely at the picture and can see a rectangular border around the edge of the cloud where someone has obviously Photoshopped it in. The sky colour isn't even the same... Nice try though. I guess there's a need for fans to keep him alive any way they can, or perhaps some obsessive people have convinced themselves he's not really gone.The main thing to remember is that not many people knew the real man. The only sense that we, the public, can obtain of him is from his music. Surely everyone in the world, bar a few isolated tribes, must have heard one or more of his songs. 'Billie Jean' or 'Beat it', 'Earth song' or 'Thriller', there are so many tunes that made it into the public arena and have stayed there ever since. Even though the man is gone, the fans still have his music. And the people who enjoy mocking him will still be able to, as there will be stories about him for years to come.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment