#MAN IN THE MIRROR MOVIE#

Magic Johnson put in a plug for Kentucky Fried Chicken. There was the queasy sight of groups of children, including his own, singing over the coffin. The memorial service for Jackson was a celebration of celebrity. The producers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles made sure the 18,000 attendees and the television audience (even the BBC devoted three hours to the tribute) watched a funeral that was turned into another maudlin form of uplifting popular entertainment. No one achieves celebrity status, no cultural illusion is swallowed as reality, without these armies of cultural enablers and intermediaries.

#MAN IN THE MIRROR MOVIE#

Those who created JacksonРІР‚в„ўs public persona and turned him into a piece of property, first as a child and finally as a corpse encased in a $15,000 gold-plated casket, are the agents, publicists, marketing people, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, recording executives, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers and television news personalities who create the vast stage of celebrity for profit. Life, Bradbury understood, once it was packaged, scripted, given a narrative and filmed, became the most compelling form of entertainment. In РІР‚СљFahrenheit 451,РІР‚Сњ Ray BradburyРІР‚в„ўs novel about a future dystopia, people spend most of the day watching giant television screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal apprehensions. The public greedily consumed РІР‚СљnewsРІР‚Сњ about Jackson, especially in his exile and decline, which often outdid most works of fiction. News reports on television are mini-dramas complete with a star, a villain, a supporting cast, a good-looking host and a dramatic, if often unexpected, ending. News thrives on РІР‚Сљreal lifeРІР‚Сњ stories, especially those involving celebrities. The lurid drama of JacksonРІР‚в„ўs personal life meshed perfectly with the ongoing dramas on television, in movies and in the news. We fed on his physical and psychological disintegration, especially since many Americans are struggling with their own descent into overwhelming debt, loss of status and personal disintegration. Jackson, by the end, was heavily in debt and had weathered a $22 million out-of-court settlement payment to Jordy Chandler, as well as seven counts of child sexual abuse and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent in order to commit a felony. O.J Simpson offered a tamer version of the same plot.

The stories we like best are РІР‚Сљreal lifeРІР‚Сњ stories - early fame, wild success and then a long, bizarre and macabre emotional train wreck. It was a haunting echo of what destroyed her father. Janet Jackson, before the girl could get a few words out, told Paris to РІР‚Сљspeak up.РІР‚Сњ As the child broke down, the adults around her adjusted the microphone so we could hear the sobs. And it concluded with JacksonРІР‚в„ўs daughter, Paris, being prodded to stand in front of a microphone to speak about her father. It was the final episode of the long-running Michael Jackson series. The ceremony, which featured performances or tributes from Stevie Wonder, Brooke Shields and other celebrities, was carried live on 19 networks, including the major broadcast and cable news outlets. His memorial service - a variety show with a coffin - had an estimated 31.1 million television viewers. He was a reflection of us in the extreme. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate, disfiguring quests for physical transformation were expressions of our own yearning. He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that are at the core of our corporate culture. He became a commodity, a product, one to be sold, used and manipulated. He could not disentangle his public and his private self. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever-changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. The commercial exploitation of Michael JacksonРІР‚в„ўs death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship.

Man in the mirror