Technological voyeurism and Michael Jackson

June 30, 2009
By Aimee Horwich

Michael Jackson's death created a veritable twitstorm

Michael Jackson's death created a veritable twitstorm

With today’s technology connecting millions around the globe in a matter of seconds, when news broke of Michael Jackson’s death, the events which ensued were in a surreal sort of way, pretty exciting. Rather than feeling saddened by talk that a living legend might have passed, Michael Jackson’s death didn’t quite invoke the absolute devastation that Princess Diana’s did, when she was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997. Instead, on Thursday night there was an intriguing technological buzz about the reports. I watched footage of passers-by gathering outside UCLA hospital I felt like a voyeur, glued to the television set, giddy for confirmation that the rumours were true.

This may come across as hard-nosed but then, being part of the generation that have become completely desensitised from real tragic events by the modern day media circus, I wouldn’t know any better. The media had kept me informed of Jade Goody’s losing battle with cancer and Britney Spears’s head-shaving public meltdown, and would serve the same purpose in Michael Jackson’s final hours.

Jokes about Bubbles the chimp emerged as a trending topic on Twitter and there were endless status updates as Facebookers cottoned on to the reports, but throughout, I was more taken aback by the media’s response to the death. The ‘sorrow’ which was emanating from my sky box all seemed so contrived. Where was the slander and the scorn? No conspiracy theories or finger pointing in sight? I felt at odds with the grief that was oozing out from the media. After all, weren’t these the journalists who had ripped Michael to shreds in the post-Bashir era? Didn’t they egg on the accusations of child molestation and challenge the strange child-dangling-over-the-hotel-balcony incident back in 2002? Yet here they were now, thick with devastation for his sudden fatality.

I’m not sure with whom I am more frustrated; 1. The media for providing myself and my peers with endless MJ defamation throughout the nineties and noughties, or 2. Myself for being drawn into it all as a child. Regardless, I have been ensnared by journalism’s jargon and can only see Michael Jackson as his dubbed alias, ‘Wacko Jacko’. Unlike the media, who abandoned their well-established opinion on MJ when it suited them to, I remained steadfast in my opinion that the stigma attached to the man Jackson, seems entirely isolated from the brilliant music he produced. The fact that we will never know the truth about Jacko’s reclusive goings on almost takes something away from the ‘messiah-esque’ status he reached as an international icon. Ultimately, the real sadness in Michael Jackson’s death lies in the fact that most spent only a moment remembering his life, before proceeding to worry about concert ticket refunds or conjuring up death-related puns which included one of his song titles. This wasn’t the finale Michael Jackson warranted but rather the one today’s media has conditioned our generation to bestow him with.

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