For those not enamored by the Michael Jackson-mania that has overtaken the world since the singer’s death, this article by Gilles Hertzog of France’s Liberation may prove satisfying.
Decrying what the phenomena says about modern civilization, Hertzog’s intense 1100-word intellectual diatribe says in part:
“It was a universal tsunami of tears and lamentation; a worldwide communion ad nauseam from one end of the global village to the other; a media-mounted liturgy never before seen coupled with a marketing effort from hell.
“And then there were the innumerable masses of the weeping; the orphans by the millions of a universal big brother; the idealized mirror of their alienated lives; bearer of their dreams of escaping the postmodern condition of being nameless and faceless; and tomorrow, as such a crisis demands, without purpose or status for many. As if they had all lost a part of themselves, deprived by his death of the only transcendence still at their disposal.”
Later, writing of the artist and his music, Hertzog writes:
“The artist. ‘He was the Mozart of the 20th century,’ a fellow on TV beamed (Mozart would have been the Michael Jackson of the 18th?). Less than a choreographer, he metabolized the erotic ballet of the body. He was a techno-puppet teleported onto the scene; a walking Game Boy; a Photoshoped video-clip abusing aerobic syncopations. The music? A cheap soap of supermarket kitsch, a pompous and pretentious disco-funk.”
OUCH!
By Gilles Hertzog
Translated By Mary Kenney
August 13, 2009
France – Liberation – Original Article (French)
There are the globalized icons of the good, like Obama and Mandela; icons of planetary success, such as Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg; icons of evil like bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Bernie Madoff; and then there’s the family of tragic icons, illustrated recently by Marilyn Monroe or Lady Di, into which Michael Jackson has just entered, propelled thanks to his sudden death into the firmament of shattered destinies. It was a universal tsunami of tears and lamentation; a worldwide communion ad nauseam from one end of the global village to the other; a media-mounted liturgy never before seen; a meta-spectacle that Guy Debord could never have imagined, coupled with a marketing effort from hell.
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