So we’ve had some celebrity deaths, and like all things they come in threes, although science can’t explain that. Granted, science is also still not sure if eggs are good for you, if we’re all biologically the same, or what quantum theory underlies all matter. But scientists will arrogantly tell you The Absolute TruthTM nonetheless.
The trifecta of celebrity mortality is complete: Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays.
A pin-up, a jingle writer, and a late-night TV pitchman.
Is this our “culture”? It’s the culture of non-culture. If you don’t have an ancestral culture with its dances, language, rituals, ceremonies, food preparation, costumes, literature, art and values, you just sort of pick up whatever trends are popular.
Michael Jackson was, at best, a talented songwriter in the pop style. Pop music, known for its endless repetition of catchy themes, is not rocket science to write. In fact, most of the best musicians avoid it because it’s really boring if you know anything about music or life. But Jacko was the king of pop, etc etc because we needed a hero and he was on our side during the Cold War. Awesome.
Farrah Fawcett, while a nice person, was known for her clingy swimsuit more than anything else. She did not invent rockets. She probably participated in human rights missions, but so do millions of others, except they’re not celebrities. Oh well.
Billy Mays was a lot of fun, because if you did encounter late-night TV when he was selling you some nostril cleansing product or tomato growing apparatus, he made it more amusing than most. But there’s not much distinction in that either.
What I’m getting at here… our culture is like the sweepings from the floor of history. We dote on these people because they’re famous, but then the trend changes, and things move on. We accumulate what’s left over and call it culture because we have nothing, because some wise idiot convinced us that culture like strong government was a form of oppression and we’d finally be “free” when we threw it out.
So now we get… heroes who aren’t heroes, a culture of non-culture, a society based not on working together but barely tolerating each other?
Good thinking.
I don’t even think Jacko wrote much of anything, I believe others did most of that for him, so the term “songwriter” may be incorrect. The only reason anyone around him is sad he’s dead is because he was a meal ticket for so many of his family and friends – adults who should have had the foresight to detach themselves from that mess of a human being and create something of worth that they could call their own, whether it ended up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars or not. This is especially true considering he was lined up to make $50million for himself on 50 concerts in London starting in July.
I saw a hilarious interview someone sent me with Corey Feldman, the 80s child acting star. Apparently he had been mad at Michael Jackson for a few years because Michael got “bored” with him after listening to his problems. Feldman has been dicked around by his parents, managers, etc., so apparently MJ was just one more person who didn’t fulfill his childhood desires to be loved by a parental figure. Now of course, he’s sobbing about how he feels regret but was “going to make amends before he died”. Uh huh.
Jackson wrote most (if not all) of his own songs. His producers made the music what it was, but the songs were his. Just sayin’.