Squinting at the crowds lining up to view Michael Jackson’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Sunday 15-year-old Olivia Holiman had a simple reaction: “What’s the bi deal?” The teenager knows Jackson died suddenly at age 50, and she certainly knows who Jackson was. But her memory of the pop superstar i distinctly different from that of he father, Gary, who fondly remember Jackson from his days as a child star with the Jackson 5.
Did this happen when Elvis o John Lennon died? Despite the media’s non-stop coverage of Jackson’ mysterious death, was there a hug generational shrug of the shoulder then, as there seems to be now? Jackson was certainly famous enough to be part of the consciousness of younger people, but not really for his music or videos. For most of this decade, and parts of the last one Jackson was a towering tabloid freak hopscotching from one weird incident to the next. From the first allegations of child molestation in 1993 Jackson’s behaviour — his legal and financial troubles, his face-distorting surgeries, his marriages and his 2005 trial on criminal molestation charges — long ago overshadowed his contributions to music.
Not only has Jackson grown ‘old’ by the standards of pop music stardom, but also his musical output in recent years has been slight. Invincible, his last release was in 2001.Which means that anyone born much after, say, 1982, the year Thriller was released, might not view Jackson as someone worth celebrating.
“For me, (his life) is more like the (tabloid) media picture of him,” said Paivi Mikkolainen, a 26-year-old bank employee from Lahti, Finland. “I cannot remember the 80s, so that is all I have.” Instead of bopping to some of Jackson’s recordings and videos, she said she spent some of her formative years listening to the Spice Girls.
With the sun shining brightly, hun- dreds still lined up along the barricaded sidewalk to walk over Jackson’s star and view the growing pile of trin kets, posters and mouldering flowers left in Jackson’s name. Some people, most of them young, wondered why.
“I respected him, but I think (the media coverage) is blown out of proportion,” said Cameron Denning, 23, a guitarist in an alt-rock band from Orange County. “I know he was famous and I know his death was sudden, but they need to give it a rest.” The question becomes even more complicated when it’s put to blacks
Black Americans have expressed pride at Jackson’s accomplishments and success. The once-adorable 11-year-old with a radiant Afro haircut, dark skin and obvious ethnic features became in adulthood a bizarre trans-racial figure
“He wasn’t my guy,” said Byron McElwood, an 18-year-old African American. “ I know who he is and I know his music but he’s too old for me.” His musical taste, he said, runs to R&B and hip-hop stars like Ne-Yo and Usher; McElwood seemed not to know that both artistes owe at least some of their style to Jackson. -- The Washington Post
