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[merylsilverburg]

Despite the man's personal life, his music career was a great and influential one. I think his death may have more of an effect on those who grew up listening to his music. Even if you didn't, you can't deny he was such an icon at the time.

I feel a bit sad because, although I don't know for sure, I think his troubled childhood and upbringing caused him to be the way he was as an adult. So it's pretty sad to see a misunderstood person pass away like this.

RIP.

[Pu the Owl]

Though I was never into his music, I'm no exception: everybody growing up the 80's had in a way or another I confronted his big icon, like it happened for many other icons. Of the confrontation everybody made what he wanted, some turning it into indifference, some into influencial presence, some into something else entirely.

Sadly, too often icon and person are not made to coincide and the results are traumatically alienating, like in this case. I don't feel like praising or condemning the man or the artist, but after all these years, I couldn't help thinking he's made so many mistakes because his artistic ego wasn't made to be relegated like it was, leaving only the man exposed to the public, with all his ineptitudes and wrong turns. His misfortunes were like caused by misconception he had himself of his public role and his private life.

I'm quite sure figures like these are condemned to disappear in the music industry, with all these changes and novelties of the new times. It has its positive side, but in some cases probably it has also a negative side to it. Icons are becoming so throwaway, so disposable. Something totally undeserving seems to have become iconic today and it's already forgotten tomorrow and our attention is fragmented among all these till everything, including the notions of genius and importance, becomes as flat as anything else.

RIP MJ

[Harry]

I have also never been into his music, but I am also one of the few that did not believe the accusations behind the trial that probably marked the end of his career.

I personally hate most of the music of the 80s (yes, with some big exceptions, that I learned to like only recently), but I have always said that, among the stuff that was out there, his music was among the best, considered into its genre. As Pu said, MJ represented a type of iconic pop heroes that seem to be destined to be no more. The democracy of the Net has given space to independent bands, new temporary icons are born overnight and disappear the next day, and this freedom is something wonderful, that the artists (but maybe not the industry) has been waiting for a long time.

Yet, there is something fascinating, sad because naive, and lonely, in artists that were able (or were forced) to become something so disproportionately "bigger", something that goes beyond the reasonable limits of a single human being. And god, if there is one thing that a lot of new bands seem to have forgotten is that pop music gives you the additional fun (and creative layer) of creating a character around yourself, with no need of compromising the honesty of your music because of it.

To me, MJ always seemed to have the aura of a very sad and distorted Disney, a mixture of Citizen Kane and a twisted Tim Burton's character.

He was a bit like the sad feeling I occasionally get when I go to a place like Disneyland. I know it is all fake, I know it is all made of plastic, I know it is all a money making machine: yet the original idea behind it all - building a fantasy world better than the real world - is desperate and human. To the point of giving the whole experience improbable and twisted honesty and romanticism.

[merylsilverburg]

Originally Posted by Harry

To me, MJ always seemed to have the aura of a very sad and distorted Disney, a mixture of Citizen Kane and a twisted Tim Burton's character.

Exactly! What you said is the perfect way to describe him. I always felt the same way but I could never find the right words. That's the problem with me because I could always understand and feel it but I lack the means to describe it.

Originally Posted by Harry

He was a bit like the sad feeling I occasionally get when I go to a place like Disneyland. I know it is all fake, I know it is all made of plastic, I know it is all a money making machine: yet the original idea behind it all - building a fantasy world better than the real world - is desperate and human. To the point of giving the whole experience improbable and twisted honesty and romanticism.

I agree with you which is why I feel a bit more sad for his passing on this reason rather than feeling sad solely because of his musical or artistic prowess - while others may mourn for him for these reasons and more. I don't deny that I like some of his songs and I think they're classics, therefore it's sad that the man who created and sang these songs is gone, but I can't say I idolized or worshipped the man and his music either. But again, despite of it all, his "iconism" was something that was powerful and explosive and it's tragic to think about it all now that he's gone. I hope I'm making sense here.

Originally Posted by Harry

I personally hate most of the music of the 80s

Hehe, I actually think 80s music is great. There's something so very fun and carefree about it, almost "refreshing" because of the way the scene transitioned from the 70's disco-delique and lingering 60's hippie music. Well, that's how I feel anyway.

[Pu the Owl]

To quite a few, Disney already seems the distortion of something. Disney the man and the creator, not the company. Though I think Disney was more focused on transferring deviant fantasies to something outside of himself, to his creation, maintaining a certain degree of sanity as a person. After all, I think in his view he was a craftsman and a businessman before being an artist. I suppose Jackson was sort of attracted to that kind of perception of reshuffled childlike fantasy, as much as can be an adult who couldn't fully grow up and develop his person in directions considered healthy and normal, but differently from Disney, he absorbed everything and incorporated it in himself, becoming sort of parodic version of his former self: l'enfant prodige became a grotesque being; person and persona became one in spite of everything. That's something that made him lose contact with reality from a point on, and it would be thus for almost anybody.

[Faile]

As someone who often complains about the sinisterness of Walt Disney yet enjoyed a trip to Disneyland recently, it's hard for me to figure it out. Certainly Disney does scare me on a level; the sprawling egotistic agenda of it all, yet it's also comforting. And this was the vision of the man in a way; to export his work and his world to everyone, in a way that combines wholesomeness with profit margins. Fair play to him, it worked even if certain cartoons do scare me.

Perhaps Michael Jackson lived in a similar way, in that he put his world up against that of the real. By allowing himself to be judged by the world in such a way, he was always going to become property of it and that can't be healthy.

Certainly in his case, he came off worse. You can see my hard-line view in the post that Harry has linked to, but with time I think I've certainly lost that edge of accusation. I think whilst he may not have committed a crime (and the courts didn't think so), he certainly didn't act in a way that was morally and ethically correct. Still, I believe history will judge him kindly, in the blind way that history often does. I feel sorry for his children as they may well fall in to the same trap he did, whereby the media and fans and everyone who wants to make some money rules their world.

I can't say I was sad at his death. I think it was strange to see an icon pass away (and he was iconic, no question there). However, his world was never something I sought to aspire to. Sure, Billy Jean is a good song, but that's where it ends.

I'm not sure this had made much sense. I don't know, I'm perhaps sick of false gods having lived through the canonisation of Diana. We all live and die and there's so much more of worth in the world! Perhaps I'm just a cold person after all.

[Harry]

Originally Posted by Faile

As someone who often complains about the sinisterness of Walt Disney yet enjoyed a trip to Disneyland recently, it's hard for me to figure it out. Certainly Disney does scare me on a level; the sprawling egotistic agenda of it all, yet it's also comforting. And this was the vision of the man in a way; to export his work and his world to everyone, in a way that combines wholesomeness with profit margins. Fair play to him, it worked even if certain cartoons do scare me.

Perhaps Michael Jackson lived in a similar way, in that he put his world up against that of the real. By allowing himself to be judged by the world in such a way, he was always going to become property of it and that can't be healthy.

Certainly in his case, he came off worse. You can see my hard-line view in the post that Harry has linked to, but with time I think I've certainly lost that edge of accusation. I think whilst he may not have committed a crime (and the courts didn't think so), he certainly didn't act in a way that was morally and ethically correct. Still, I believe history will judge him kindly, in the blind way that history often does. I feel sorry for his children as they may well fall in to the same trap he did, whereby the media and fans and everyone who wants to make some money rules their world.

I can't say I was sad at his death. I think it was strange to see an icon pass away (and he was iconic, no question there). However, his world was never something I sought to aspire to. Sure, Billy Jean is a good song, but that's where it ends.

I'm not sure this had made much sense. I don't know, I'm perhaps sick of false gods having lived through the canonisation of Diana. We all live and die and there's so much more of worth in the world! Perhaps I'm just a cold person after all.

All good to me, but as far as I can tell, he was never found guilty by the court (the thread I linked above from these forums was about these). And if you are taking into account the out of court settlement, I think Berserker's point in that thread holds true.

[Faile]

Ah, perhaps I wasn't so clear sir! I meant that I had softened my more angry views of youth, in that I no longer think he wad guilty, much like the courts didn't think he was. My silly use of words!

[goodman]

Definitely a sad thursday last week, between him and farrah fawcett passing. I grew up directly in the generation of the jacksons and was well in tune with the jackson 5 and michael's music at times. At one time Michael and his family were literally on the top of the entertainment industry, and its not likely anyone will get the chance to be as highly esteemed as he and many of his family members had been. It would have been interesting to see how his tour was going, he had sold millions of tickets in advance. Im sure he will be in the news for months to come as new stories unfold...