So Michael Jackson has died and that’s all very sad, of course, but now the circus has begun in earnest. The frenzy of mourning. The collective “falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right,” to quote “Evita.”
I mean, random people are now posting YouTube videos of themselves weeping over Jackson’s death while his music plays in the background, for God’s sake.
Honestly, I find it ridiculous, the narcissism there, the appropriation involved, strangers making Jackson’s death about them.
When it’s not. It’s just not.
I remember the day of my aunt and uncle’s memorial, a week after they were killed on Egypt Air 990 in 1999. Family and friends gathered at a nearby church — along with reporters and cameramen from every TV station in town, big, small, and medium. It was titillating, oh, yes, it was, this “local connection to the Egypt Air crash.” And it was total mayhem. A circus. My cousins were sobbing and frightened by the reporters. Cameras were set up across every inch of the back of that church. There was crazy jostling for position, for the best shot. MB, shooting footage for the family with his own professional video camera, was bombarded by media who thought he was “one of them.” Once they saw him talking to us, it began in earnest:
“Hey man, do you know the family?”
“Can you get me close to the family?”
“Can we talk to the family?”
Literally, there were more of them than there were of us. A mob of media. Just a tad menacing, you know? And God bless him, MB stood a stubborn sentinel for the rest of us, his shattered family. NO ONE got past that man. There we were, this broken little clan, huddled in a corner trying to keep our wits about us, trying not to be ripped apart, at the memorial service of our OWN family members. The media basically chased us into the shadows and forced us into hiding, before the service had even started. Our private grief was cheapened because the public insisted on sharing. It was total insanity and a violation of something sacred.
And, no, it wasn’t the same kind of situation that Jackson’s death is. It wasn’t the death of a worldwide icon — no, it was an unacknowledged terrorist action, you know, whatevs — but, still, some of it echoes with me right now, watching the current feeding frenzy.
Every story of public tragedy becomes an act of appropriation to some extent. People crave a piece of it, there must be “a local connection,” however flimsy, the insatiable beast of curiosity must be fed. And in the process, precious private things are wrangled away from their rightful owners and tossed to the crowd, who gobble them up unthinking.
People seem to forget a basic lesson from childhood:
There’s what belongs to you and what doesn’t.
For me, as a member of the general public, feeling sadness and shock over Jackson’s death is appropriate, I suppose. That level of reaction “belongs” to us, all strangers to Michael Jackson. (And, honestly, I’m more sad than shocked. I mean, did anyone envision that man living to a ripe old adulthood? Really?) So I’m “sad,” yes, but in an oblique, distant sense.
I didn’t know Michael Jackson.
These other public reactions I’m seeing, the weeping, the wailing, the sobbing — are, I’m sorry, inappropriate. Weeping and wailing belong to his family and friends. People who actually knew him. Because, let’s be honest, how much of Michael Jackson have any of us really lost? Nothing. I have no less Michael Jackson in my life than I had four days ago and neither does anyone else in the general public. We had his music when he was alive — I worked out to it, as a matter of fact, the day before he died — and we still have his music. We’ve lost nothing more of Michael Jackson than we ever had to begin with. Our personal lives are not affected by his loss. I’m not trying to be callous; I just wish the great sobbing masses could have a more measured response. (Which is a really stupid, Trace. I laugh at you.) What have you lost? What have you lost? The hope of meeting him someday? Not likely. The man was a recluse. A chance to see him in his final concert tour this summer? Well, I guess that’s a loss, but it’s not a weeping-and-wailing loss. Get your money back. Enough with the wailing. Please.
Don’t appropriate grief that doesn’t belong to you.
Again, there’s what belongs to you and what doesn’t and shrieking grief over Michael Jackson’s death does not belong to you.
I’d rather people be honest enough to name what the maudlin spectacle is really all about: Fear. Fear for yourself. If an untouchable icon — a megastar — can fall so suddenly, what does that mean for me, a mere earthbound mortal?
Honestly, I don’t think people are crying for Michael Jackson — at the core of this. No, at the core of this we all feel a little more vulnerable. When might our number be up? We freak out when our icons die because we feel small compared to them so why, we wonder, have we so far been spared?
Well, why, indeed? I’m pretty sure it’s not so you can sob into your hands on YouTube while “Man in the Mirror” plays in the background.
So stop it.
I know I sound irritated and I guess I am. It’s bringing back things I’d rather not think about right now.
Honestly, there’s what belongs to you and what doesn’t belong to you and, oh, how I wish more people understood the difference.
Genuine grief belongs to the people who have truly lost Michael Jackson, family, friends, whose personal lives will forever be altered.
Leave it to them.
As a friend of mine noted, we haven’t seen this kind of frenzy over a single death since Princess Diana’s death in August of 1997. I think a lot of the response to Jackson’s death is also a symptom of the cult of personality in this country and worldwide.
The people I most feel for in all this are his children. You know their custody is going to turn into a circus. Who will look out for their best interest? Who will be concerned with their emotions and well being?
Well said Tracey.
And why are they being called “orphans”? We know the mother of two of them — and the other one HAS a mother, even if her identity is secret. So weird to me.
Superior post, Tracey.
I,too, was puzzled by why they are ‘orphans’. I suppose it’s just more pathetic that way.
I said the same thing when Heath Ledger died: http://dameonline.blogspot.com/2008/01/heath-ledger-briefly.html and I agree wholeheartedly. I think that sometimes people only know how to approach tragedy by making it about themselves. I have tried to judge this inclination as little as possible, both as a phenomenon that I have viewed from outside and in the light of the media frenzy over tragedies in my own life in the past couple of years. Some of it is simply self-centered behavior and a need to be a part of something that is in the public eye, but some of it – as far as I can see – comes from some sort of genuine sorrow, an emptiness and feeling of separation and sadness all at once over deaths that seem to have taken place in their own living rooms. Whether it’s a celebrity that people have watched in films and listened to on records for years dying or the news coverage of a tragedy that had played out on national television for days – it leaves people with this strange sadness that they feel some compulsion to justify by making it personal to them. By finding a way to DISPLAY that it is personal to them.
It doesn’t belong to them, not really. But I try to be patient with other people needing to express some kind of sorrow. I figure either they have some sort of gaping hollow place in them that drives that need to create hysterics over something that doesn’t impact them directly OR they do feel sadness because a celebrity’s work meant something to them on a personal level so they are trying to justify this sorrow by defining some sort of personal connection.
Um. I’ve thought about this a lot.
You hit the nail on the head with this, Tracey.
Perfectly said.
Marisa — No, you’re more patient with it than I am, I think. Or I just wrote this when I was feeling particularly irritated and prickly about it. I understand — people need to find meaning. But his work will still be there. The connection to his work is no different, I would think. I don’t know ….. other than this post, I’m just not participating in the show of it all. I’m literally changing the channel — TV or radio — if they start to go there. Something about this particular thing is hitting me weird and I can’t quite explain it.
I think I’ve been more, like you said, sad, but also contemplative about the whole thing. It makes me contemplate my understanding of the afterlife, and the grace and mercy of Christ.
I read the article that Lisa Marie Presley wrote about him, and she said something that I could always kind of see in him, that is, that he was always searching for love.
The naming of the ranch Neverland? Not creepy to me, exceedingly sad. What about his childhood made him feel like he needed to reclaim it in such bizarre ways?
Aren’t those people, the ones who struggle their whole lives through with yes, bad decisions, but also just a weird life and a feeling that they have somehow succumbed to the spiritual battle that rages around us all, aren’t they the ones (along with everyone else) that Christ died for?
Oh yes, Michael Jackson was creepy. Probably a child molester, drug user, etc…But when I look at him and his life and the isolation he must have endured, I can’t help but hope (believe?) that in the final seconds, the One who says, “I come that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” said to Michael Jackson, “I’m here. Come by me. I love you.”
I don’t know…just the sadness and melancholy that’s been on my heart, I suppose, despite never having known the man and not being particularly influenced by his existence in the world.
Brilliantly written and stolen from my own unscribed thoughts.
Michael Jackson’s life phased me in the same way his death did – not at all. Like you, I’m not being callous, I’m being honest. To me, Michael Jackson was as as nebulous as his highly produced music. He was over there…out there; call it what you will and if I ever thought of Mr. Jackson, it was because I was standing in line at my grocer’s check out line and briefly saw another one of those “Wacko Jacko” headlines smathered across the front of a tabloid.
I agree with you…how can I grieve that which I’ve never really understood, much less ever ‘had’ in a tactile sense? Albums and CD’s don’t count
What you wrote has tremendous merit: “There’s what belongs to you and what doesn’t belong to you and, oh, how I wish more people understood the difference”
As do I. There’s also that which you lose and that which is taken away from you. I wish people understood the difference in that and the responsibility (or lack thereof) that alwasy coincides.
This is my first time to your blog and it certainly won’t be my last. Color me duly impressed.
Best,
Laurie Kendrick