Rasna Warah
5 July 2009
opinion
Nairobi — HE DIED AS HE HAD LIVED -- in a blaze of publicity. The news of Michael Jackson's sudden death filled the airwaves for hours, and led to such a huge surge in Internet activity that search engines such as Google thought that they had been hit by a virus.
Those of my generation have all had our MJ moments, but news of his death has to be the one we will not want remember. It seems so long ago now when he entered our lives and left an indelible impression.
I was a child when the Jackson Five hit the music scene and a young adult when Michael Jackson's Thriller, the biggest-selling album of all time, was released.
It is hard to believe that 25 years have gone by and I can still remember the thrill of dancing to hits such as Beat It and Billie Jean in dingy nightclubs in Boston, where I was studying at the time.
Under the direction of Quincy Jones, his music defied description and catered to all tastes. It was rock infused with disco and embellished with soul, a perfect mix that left fans wanting more. His dance moves, on the other hand, were so original, no one can claim to have mastered them completely.
Michael dramatically changed the way the world viewed music and dance. For one, he set a new standard for the music video. Two, he made dancing fashionable for men -- so much so that the ability to dance, or to be more specific, to dance like Michael Jackson, became the yardstick by which women judged men.
Three, he spawned a whole industry in far-flung places, such as Bollywood, where upcoming choreographers and dancers mimicked his style. Farah Khan, a renowned Bollywood choreographer, has publicly acknowledged that Jackson was the source of her inspiration.
Several musicians have tried to reach the heights that he did, but did not have either the skill or the creativity that he possessed. There never will be another Michael Jackson.
His contemporary, Madonna, has tried to achieve his iconic status, but I doubt if anyone will miss Madonna in the same way that they now miss Michael.
As feminist writer Germaine Greer has written, "As she (Madonna) could neither dance nor sing at 25 no one is going to mind that she still can't do it at 50. But to see Michael Jackson faking it would have been heartbreaking. Among the hearts that would have broken is Jackson's own."
UNFORTUNATELY, MICHAEL'S CAREER went downhill after Thriller. A series of face-altering surgeries and allegations of child abuse left him a broken man, a shadow of his former self, a freak whose black brothers couldn't understand why he wanted to look white and whose fans diverted their attention to other musical icons.
But the media attention on his weird and puzzling lifestyle left many wondering if stardom had not damaged him psychologically. Stories of his unhappy childhood under an authoritarian father made psychologists ponder whether he had paid too high a price for being a child star.
It was hard to see a star fall, especially one that shone so brightly once. Failed marriages, bizarre parenting styles, financial losses, court cases, and a fantasy-filled lifestyle made many fans wonder whether their icon had finally lost his marbles.
But I digress. What I do know is that this boy-man made music and danced like no other, and my youth would have been poorer had he not entered my life.
But in the end, it is us, his fans, who destroyed him. When he died, he was scheduled to perform 50 concerts in the next few months, a gruelling feat that someone even half his age might have reconsidered. He was broke, and was living in rented accommodation. No one --not even his family or his doctors -- cared enough for him to tell him that he was on the road to self-destruction.
We loved him -- but from a distance, which added to his loneliness. Because all we wanted Michael to do was to perform for us and to entertain us, even if it meant that he could die in the process.
Greer's obituary in the UK's Guardian newspaper said it all: "Like Orpheus, Jackson was destroyed by his fans, whose adulation and adoration prevented his living in any kind of normal society. The creativity ebbed away day by day. He became a parody of himself. It is time now to forget all that and salute the miraculous boy who will triumph over death as Dionysus did, becoming immortal through his art."
Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.
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