For that matter, it's not been a good month for high-profile celebrities. David Carradine died in spectacular fashion at the beginning of June. At least, most celebs don't go down in a blaze of self-gratifying glory. But the second-to-last calendar week of the month gave Death a fourpeat. Ed McMahon one day, then Farrah Fawcett a couple days later. But later Thursday afternoon, word came that of all people, Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. The Fark thread on the incident suggested that Jackson was not breathing when his body was found, and premature word of his death was circulating. By 6:30 that evening, the BBC (you know, as opposed to TMZ) had confirmed the death of a music and pop-culture icon.
Way to steal Farrah's moment, Jacko. But with all respect to Ms. Fawcett, one of these celebrities is not like the others. Farrah Fawcett was a noted and successful actress, to be sure. But Michael Jackson? Sure, we've all exhausted the jokes on the guy. In grade school, it was "I pledge allegiance to the flag, Michael Jackson is a fag." (I can't recall if I actually knew what a fag was, aside from it not being a good thing in grade-school vernacular.) Thursday night, the first greenlit Fark headline was "Michael Jackson begins work on 'Thriller 2.'" Maybe insult is the second-most-sincere form of flattery. All humor aside, Michael Jackson is undoubtedly the biggest pop icon from my lifetime, and the biggest to fall.
The thing is, you can't help but have an opinion on whether or not you'll miss Michael Jackson. I guess that's because he's just a polarizing figure who gave us a lot to talk about. You can't argue that Michael was a gifted performer. For his time, and maybe even transcending his peers, Michael was a talented singer and a stellar dancer. He also had the advantage of skilled songwriters, choreographers and backup dancers (see Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers), but Michael's work was still the cornerstone of all those music videos and live performances and recordings. But in his life off the stage (and sometimes on), Michael was a mess. For that matter, there's still plenty that we'll never know. The liaisons with little boys and even grown men, his marriages, the children, his bankruptcy and the sale of his Neverland estate. Whether he lived or died, I'm not sure we'd ever know the answers or the reasons. And it's sad that a lot of young people never knew Jackson as a young, talented, black singer and dancer on stage. They know a creepy, effeminate white man who might have molested children. What a blow to his legacy, but then, can you really expect an eleven-year-old to know what "Thriller" was without the advantage of YouTube?
I was actually speculating on this tonight, after considering how a co-worker of mine and my grandfather both looked down on Michael Jackson for being despicable in life, regardless of his achievements and talents in performance. It's no secret that Joe Jackson was something of a slavedriver, a stage father with harsh requirements for his children. Michael was a performer from his youth, and had it not been for that steady encouragement and drive, he may not have grown into the performer we knew. But at the same time, what life did Michael Jackson ever have beyond that of a performer? Is it possible that, in retreating into himself to become a better performer, he simply never grew up? Could he have not known how people would view his relationships with children because he legitimately did not understand it was wrong? It's something worth asking.
I wonder if, years later, we'll remember the death of Michael Jackson the way we remember when Princess Diana was killed. My sister was the first to confirm it for me, via text as I was waiting in traffic to get into the new "Transformers" film. (She used TMZ as a source, though.) But while we were watching the preview reels before the movie, they kept playing this one animated music video, sans audio. The song was titled "Michael," by a band called No More Kings. The obvious connection, clearly a coincidence, was a bit chilling.
But wait, there's more! OK, I didn't make up that segué, but it was fitting. Michael Jackson stunned me, but Billy Mays' death shocked me more, if only for the amount of press it got. Billy Mays wasn't a celebrity per se. He was a new version of Ron Popeil. However, in this era of the Internet, somehow the infomercial guys got traction. They became memes, and from that they became celebrities. All of a sudden, Vince, the smarmy pitchman selling ShamWows and Slap Chops and condescension, and Billy Mays, the loud and enthused guy hawking OxiClean and OrangeGlo and all manner of shopping-network and late-night TV retail fare, were household names. Vince's legal battles against the Farrelly brothers and the Church of Scientology became well-known, and he received further notoriety for beating up a prostitute. Billy, meanwhile, had built himself a brand, and even appeared on some new reality show on the famed infomercial names we were coming to love.
Billy Mays was a guy you may know nothing about (I know I sure don't know anything about him), but you know who he is. You recognize the voice, the beard, the exuberance and energy. Now, those commercials for all the stuff he was selling will be eerie reminders that Billy is no longer with us. I guess they can't pull them off the air, but you almost wish they would, that to keep them running would be sort of awkward. And while everyone becomes a saint in death, from reading the over-1000 posts on Fark, quite a few people seem to say they've had pleasant experiences knowing Billy, that he was one of the legitimate good guys out there. (Take that as you will, but they could as easily call him a dick. What's it going to matter?)
The celebrities we follow are kind of a mirror of our own society. Carmine and I were talking about society's obsession with celebrity lives (or the lives of those we deem celebrities), and how we have this increasingly-voyeuristic approach. His thought is that anyone who really cares what's going on in the lives of Jon and Kate (Gosselin, the parents of eight children who are the focus of a TLC reality program and who recently announced their impending divorce) needs to find a hobby. Maybe we find release from our own lives by justifying that others have it worse even though they have it better, that money can't buy happiness or a stable marriage. Maybe we simply don't put that much thought into it. It's just easy to be interested in someone else's situation, and easier to divorce oneself from it emotionally. We can mourn Michael Jackson's death without feeling any real pity or emotion. We can't be so fortunate with those who we really know. And yet, in a sense, don't we really know those faces in the news and on television?
Oh, well. I've already poured out a little for MJ. But I did wear my Kaboom!-colored purple polo shirt Monday, my own sort of tribute to the legacy of Billy Mays. I never bought a product on his recommendation, but it'll be different seeing someone else selling that stuff. It's like Drew Carey stepping into Bob Barker's "The Price Is Right" hostship. Drew will never be Bob Barker, and no one can ever sell the way Billy Mays did. But we'll always remember...until someone supplants these celebrities in a few years.
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