... wrong to sneer at this outpouring of public grief ....

Posted: Mon 29 Jun 2009 6 20 pm

It would be wrong to sneer at this outpouring of public grief

Michael Jackson took on the martyr's mantle once worn by Diana, Princess of Wales, says Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson
Published: 6:31AM BST 29 Jun 2009

I happened to be driving late into the night, listening to the radio, on the day Michael Jackson died and it was obvious that the disc jockey was completely out of touch with his audience. The station repeatedly carried the news that the 50-year- old star was dead, and then the presenter would add that they did not usually play his records because â€“ we gathered â€“ they were much too hip to do so.

The most he would offer, as a special favour to Michael Jackson fans, and in recognition of his "iconic" status, was to play one of his hits every hour. But as the night wore on it was clear that the position was untenable. The presenter plaintively reported that the station was being flooded with texts, emails and calls. The listeners wanted Jackson. The snooty old code was bowing beneath the weight of popular demand.

Like the courtiers of Buckingham Palace who eventually caved in and flew the flag at half-mast to mark the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the radio producers decided they could hold out no more. As I tapped the steering wheel to Thriller and Billie Jean, it was clear that something was growing out there in the noosphere, and that the death of Michael Jackson was unleashing significant emotions in the popular consciousness.

In the intervening days it has become clear that the hysteria has not gone away. In tribute to the rhinestone-studded uniform of the late performer, Lily Allen is apparently to be seen wearing a single white glove at the Glastonbury Festival. Candlelit vigils have begun at the hospital where they failed to revive him. More than 1,000 Filipino prisoners have filmed themselves miming one of his dance routines, and posted the results on YouTube to global acclaim. The BBC has already flown Newsnight's Emily Maitlis and a vast taxpayer-funded retinue to the scene of the tragedy, and the ether is being churned with her heavyweight political and cultural apercus.

And who can fault the BBC's news judgment? By the middle of this week, senior politicians will no doubt be chivvied in front of the camera to confirm that he was the prince of pop, or the people's prancer, and Gordon Brown will probably moonwalk into Prime Minister's questions. Now you or I may not share these emotions. We may not be the kind of people who queue to place flowers at the Neverland ranch, or hurl ourselves sobbing at the foot of his catafalque. We may not feel a sudden gap, a strange hollowness, in our lives. But some people do. Lots of people do.

"I feel what I should have felt at the death of Diana," said one young man at a wedding party this weekend, while two women vigorously agreed. In the face of this kind of authentic feeling, we would be mad to sneer. It is the function of this column to hold up a mirror to our society, to analyse, to explain. There is no doubt that Jackson was astonishing as a singer, a dancer, an all-purpose musical talent. He was the first black performer to make it on
to MTV.

But was he notably more gifted than Otis Redding? Was he a better singer-songwriter than Marvin Gaye? Absolutely not. And yet the BBC didn't fly out Jeremy Paxman when Marvin Gaye was shot by his own father, and the crowds didn't come out for Otis â€“ or not in the same way.

To understand the cult and martyrdom of Michael Jackson, we need to go back to Thriller, the 14-minute masterpiece directed by John Landis in 1982. Jackson hired Landis after seeing An American Werewolf in London and he told him: "I want you to turn me into a monster."

<snip>

A worldwide Diana moment ... And I no more understand this one than the one that went before.
Rolling Eyes

Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: North of Watford

Nor I, curiously enough. Wink

Spartacus

Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 809

There has been no visible mass outpouring of grief where I live, but there has been quiet sadness, especially from Little H who was a big fan of Michael Jackson.

I was in the local shop and a woman was buying her paper. She tapped the headline. "Sad isn't it?" she remarked. The girl behind the checkout nodded and said "Mmm." That was the main public outpouring in my locality. I personally did sit for a couple of hours glued to CNN, watching the live coverage. Michael Jackson has been around for my whole life and so this was major news for me. He was the musical icon of my and Little H's generations. I had similar reactions to the deaths of Elvis, John Lennon, John Peel and Maurice Gibb. And I'll never understand why the world did weep when Les Grey died.

Joined: 13 Aug 2005 Posts: 2902

Spartacus wrote:

Nor I, curiously enough. Wink

Spartacus

Really? I can just picture you standing there in the Mall back in '97 with a picture torn out of Hello! or some similar eikon of Diana wailing about the Queen of Hearts. Wink

Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: North of Watford

tjwmason wrote:

Spartacus wrote:

Nor I, curiously enough. Wink

Spartacus

Really? I can just picture you standing there in the Mall back in '97 with a picture torn out of Hello! or some similar eikon of Diana wailing about the Queen of Hearts. Wink

A pretty picture, no, tjw? Wink

I remember being in Paris shortly after Diana's death and the owner of my "local" there going out of his way to sympathise with me as a Brit over the death of "a beautiful lady" who died "too quickly and too young".

So yes, Diana was a "showbiz" figure rather than a royal in most eyes, and there's a long history of this sort of thing .... Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis ... even JFK, to some extent.

So overkill yes, but a canny expectation on the part of the poular media, that that's what the punters want.

Spartacus

Posted: Tue 30 Jun 2009 10 13 am

Mob grief proves Britain is more wacko than Jacko

By Richard Littlejohn

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1196373/LITTLEJOHN-Mob-grief-proves-Britain-wacko-Jacko.html

When the head of RCA Records was told that Elvis had died, he is said to have remarked: 'Great career move.'

His modern counterpart at Sony must have entertained similar sentiments after being informed that Michael Jackson had popped his pumps.

Since the news of Wacko Jacko's death Twittered out of Los Angeles, his albums have gone platinum all over again. The megastore shelves have been stripped bare, the Amazons and eBays looted of Jackson memorabilia.
michael jackson cartoon

People who hadn't bought a Michael Jackson CD for a quarter of a century, some who had never possessed a Michael Jackson record, were suddenly overcome with a compelling urge to fill their boots with his back catalogue.

For some unfathomable reason, they felt a primeval need to touch the hem of his garment, to lay their hands on a piece of the legend, to be able to tell their grandchildren that they were there; to give them something to occupy their attention until the next series of Britain's Got Talent.

The inconvenient fact that this was someone they didn't know, who lived on a compound thousands of miles away, wasn't going to stand between them and their inalienable right to emote in public.

He was, like, awzum. We love you, Michael!

Tributes for Michael Jackson were seen around the world

While there were displays of sympathy across the world, no one managed to pull it off with quite such sphincter-tightening mawkishness as the British.

In Central London, the provisional wing of the Friends of Dorothy and the usual coven of madwomen took to the streets in a vomit-inducing display of sentimentality and exhibitionism.

Given that they couldn't afford to fly out to California to flaunt their compassion, they manufactured their own Glastonbury of Grief in the West End.

Half of them didn't even know the words. Bobby Jean, you're not my mum!

Seized with the spirit of Lady Di, Old Compton Street clones and bovine birds with pierced navels in Matalan crop tops united in the hedonistic pursuit of vicarious grief.

If ever a crowd needed 'kettling' this was it. I'd have even turned a blind eye to a baton charge and the judicious application of a water cannon.

Television brought us interminable vox pops of assorted non-entities explaining how much Michael had meant to them, with the emphasis on them.

We used to do mourning well in Britain and we still do in some circumstances - think the Queen Mum and the recent 60th anniversary of D-Day.

But there is a frighteningly substantial section of the population which grasps a celebrity death as an excuse for an open air festival of self-pity and self-indulgence.

This is mob grief. There's even a shrine in Piccadilly, for pity's sake.

I couldn't help wondering how many of those on the streets proclaiming their sadness at the death of Saint Michael would have been banging on the side of the prison van if he'd been convicted of child-molesting - just as those who screamed 'racist pig' at Jade Goody were first in the conga line behind her cortege when it came to burying her.

<snip>

Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: North of Watford

Bestbear wrote:

While there were displays of sympathy across the world, no one managed to pull it off with quite such sphincter-tightening mawkishness as the British.

Why pick on the Brits? Surely it was much the same in the country where Littlejohn lives?

Spartacus