Mourning Michael Jackson

I was in a hotel room in Edmonton when I heard that Michael Jackson had died. In case this proves to be as significant an event as, say, the death of JFK, people may ask this of us all. I was actually in a hotel room in Edmonton when CNN first reported that he had collapsed and, then, that he was in a coma. The BBC news service soon pronounced him dead, as did TMZ online. CBC Newsworld simulcast the BBC while Perez Hilton, online, proclaimed a hoax that never was.

How different is the media from a dozen years ago when Princess Diana died? I had three channels back then, and no internet at home. CBC broke the news, running in the late evening the stories to which Londoners were just waking up.

I have hundreds of channels now, and, as so many of them are obliged to report on this story, there are many, many ridiculous angles covered. I have no doubt that the outpouring of grief is genuine, but when compared to that afforded his friend Diana, the coverage seems forced, contrived.

How many people mourn Michael Jackson through their own disappointments? How many people see him as one who found his greatest fame when we felt our greatest promise, as individuals and perhaps as a society? How many people lament their own unfulfilled promise, knowing how much more he could have been, and wondering what we might have done? And, I wonder, how many people look back at Michael Jackson and remember a time when everyone, seemingly, shared the same point of reference, a time when everyone knew Thriller?

Comments

[Craig]

It's very interesting, isn't it? The early '80s culture to which I was exposed was reacting against disco, and MJ was decidedly uncool. Much better was the late '80s, "Bad," a time associated with my working in a record store: much more fun, though less well-paid, than expelling students. But Di and MJ were products of a very different media sensibility than that before, than that we have now. And this mourning, something that can seemingly ignore everything we know about the man, is clearly part of a cultural nostalgia that is fascinating and, likely, quite dangerous.

[Rohan Maitzen]

Honestly, all this MJ nostalgia (not yours in particular but the cumulative mass of it) seems bizarre to me. Not everyone is wrapped up in pop culture in the same way at the same time. Despite being a teenager in the 80s, I was wholly uninterested in Michael Jackson. I am STILL wholly uninterested in Michael Jackson except insofar as I became repelled by what a freakish human being he turned into. I know 'Thriller' only dimly as one of those 80s things people refer to. It reminds me of the annoying generalizations about Canadians and hockey. I have no interest in hockey and never have and really, the same is true of my family and friends. Geez. Pop culture is so, like, totalizing! :-)