Farrah Fawcett died. So has Michael Jackson. Both were pop culture icons. Even people who knew little about American pop culture could identify Farrah and Michael, Farrah for her beauty, Michael for his voice and style, and then later, his eccentricity.
In that sense, a chapter in the American novel has closed. Fawcett's death, in many ways, was expected. She was 62 and had been sick for some time. While she never reached the cultural zenith that Marilyn Monroe reached, she did capture our attention, and that tv-screened moment has passed.
Michael Jackson's death, on the other hand, was completely unexpected. Even through the strange twists and turns of his life, he was the "King of Pop". The artist, whose album "Thriller" is the most widely sold record worldwide, grew in the public eye. From a small child to the man with a surgeon's face, he was a mixture of the many elements of our culture: sweet-faced little singing angel, crotch-grabbing attention-making twenty-something, and fading incongruent star. I don't think we'll ever quite understand Jackson and we don't have to understand. He gave us music and images and strange tabloid stories, and behind all that surface was a person.
A generation earlier, there was Elvis Presley. His rise to fame and excessive stardom was part of the American cultural core in every connotation, good and bad. Michael Jackson was a creator of my generation. In some ways, I am a "Thriller" boy. There are strings of memory which reach out to a singer who is now dead. Yes, like Elvis, he can be written about and spoken about and admired and ridiculed. The range of connotations fit. People will wonder why and some might not believe. All this is a reflection of us, our nature.
We have turned a page. Another chapter is writing.
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