This May Lose Me Some Friends

[poliphilo]

The music never dies. It goes on and on and on. Ad nauseum. Someone switch the bloody thing off.

Jackson's work is kitsch. Even the better stuff is slick and empty.

Fred Astaire said Jackson was the greatest dancer of the 20th century. I refuse to believe he meant it.

Bad? Not in the way he wanted us to think.

I find it shocking that people make excuses for Jackson that they wouldn't dream of making for other middle-aged men who like to share their beds with children.

By the time of his death he was a freeloading junkie who indulged himself in every little whim- but couldn't be bothered to pay his staff.

Celebrity turns men and women into monsters. The strong-minded get out before it destroys every last scrap of decency and truth.  Jackson wasn't strong-minded.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

heh - when I read your statement that "I'm keeping my mouth buttoned about Michael Jackson" I knew as sure as day follows night that a post like this would follow.

re the paedophilia, I am a believer in "separate the artist from his work" except perhaps if you are a mass murderer or tyrant - thankfully Hitler was a crap artist so that POV is not tested in his case!

I'm interested to know which celebrities have kept an authentic sense of self - a lot of people seemed to think Kate Winslet did, but then when she dumped the nice well-intentioned loser for the ambitious American director and started losing weight, people accused her of selling out. I'm wondering if it's possible, to be honest.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Bruce Springsteen maybe?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's been bubbling away. In the end I had to let it out.

I agree about separating the artist from the work. Few great artists are "nice" people. In the case of Jackson I don't like the work much either.

I think it's very hard to be a celebrity and keep it "real". I can't think of a celebrity whose integrity I admire. But that's partly because (by definition) integrity isn't something you parade in front of the world's media.

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Does an authentic sense of self really exist, though? For anyone? Jackson was clearly never going to be 'normal' in any sense that you or I would realise, and possibly his whole life was condemned to be 'inauthentic', but that doesn't excuse him from being a decent, moral human being. Karl Lagerfeld, to take another random example, appears to be a power-crazed monster who lives in a foppish fantasy world, but he creates heartbreakingly beautiful fashion and never once strays to the wrong side of the law. He's profoundly 'inauthentic', but he appears to have a baseline of decency. As does Winslet, for that matter. I care less whether someone's authentic than whether they're abusive.

But with you, I believe in separating the art from the artist. Of course. And I've sneered at Jackson most of my life, but I do think his work was pretty damned accomplished.