Technology Thursday
In the wake of Michael Jackson's untimely passing there was, as usual in our tabloid-celebrity culture, endless commentary. I managed to avoid most of it. While I appreciate his talent and own some of his material, I can't say that I felt a terribly emotional connection. I'm also temperamentally averse to maudlin celebrity culture as filtered through the 24x7 mediagasm that takes place whenever something like this happens (although I do confess to becoming a bit teary while watching Princess Diana's funeral.)
Anyway, I avoided most of the commentary, but did come across a couple of things that I found interesting.
The first was one of the Newsweek pieces that ran the week after he died. Apparently the editors at Newsweek had planned an issue to focus on books. Newsweek has recently revamped itself, striving to meet a higher standard and to be less prone to the typical media frenzies.
We had planned a double is-sue on books and reading as a counterintuitive offering in a world where those of us who love the news find ourselves overwhelmed by the story of the moment, whatever that story might be. Then Michael Jackson died, which put our noble sentiments about transcending the pack to the test. Jackson was an undeniably important cultural force, the kind of figure about whom I would like to read a piece or two on his -bizarre life and artistic legacy, but not much more than that. Since we edit the magazine on the assumption that our readers are like us, we moved quickly to produce just those pieces while preserving the books coverage.
They couldn't ignore Jackson's death, of course. I thought David Gates' write-up was surprisingly sharp (but, admittedly, as I said, i haven't read much coverage). I found this observation particularly thought-provoking:
In retrospect, so much of what Jackson achieved seems baldly symbolic. This was the black kid from Gary, Ind., who ended up marrying Elvis's daughter, setting up Neverland in place of Graceland, and buying the Beatles' song catalog—bold acts of appropriation and mastery, if not outright aggression.
That sort of aggression is not something I had typically associated with Michael Jackson, but Gates is right, of course. Quincy Jones, in the same issue of Newsweek, also highlighted Jackson's business acumen, by the way (although one wonders about the apparent debt of recent years).
But aside from the mainstream coverage, what I wanted to share in this post was a truly fascinating response by Jay Smooth, a hip-hop video blogger, that I came across via Rebecca's Pocket. It's a five minute video. In it Smooth considers what a lifelong culture of ubiquitous cameras and microphones meant for Michael Jackson, and what it means now that even non-celebrities are often subject to cameras and microphones recording even the most mundane of activities. A few pull-quotes from the video, just to tantalize - it's hard to properly quote video commentary.
"..crazy mix of powerful human emotion and bizarro media circus.."
"...more than half of us had cameras of our own.."
"...trying to process our own grief by making media out of it..."
"...curse of Michael's life was that almost every second of it was defined by our ability to make media out of it..."
"...life based on commodifying the beauty within him brought so much ugliness upon him..."
"...mix of tremendous gifts and tremendous dysfunction..."
"...this same camera and microphone that gave him a life without peace also filled his life with these transcendent moments of grace..."
"...with these tools he got to share that with us a billion at a time..."
"...limitless opportunity for liberation and for imprisonment that the camera and the microphone provide...paradox of trying to reconcile this human connection we make between artist and audience and the dehumanizing connection these tools create between consumer and mass media product...how to balance these two opposing forces and keep yourself whole..."
"...validate our life by making media out of it...our kids born into a world where everyone has to struggle with that balance..."
"...have to believe we can do better..."
"...next generation deserves to be loved in a way that's not about these cameras."
Really thought-provoking stuff.
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