When I was a little girl (say 2 or 3 years old), my Dad used to sing Don’t Blame it on the Boogie to me, but he refashioned it as “Don’t Blame it on the Blankie“. My security blanket had the very imaginative name of “Blankie”. Apparently I would wail and say, “No-o-o-o-o-o! Don’t blame it on the Blankie. Please don’t blame it on the Blankie!”
So obviously, I’ve known of Michael Jackson for a long time. Yes, he was an incredible dancer and a talented musician. And yes, I feel sad and shocked that he died at only 50. But his death didn’t have the personal resonance for me which it seems to have had for many - the people pictured crying in the streets.
I’ve said before that I don’t really understand the public outpouring of grief for dead celebrities. Certainly, I had crushes on characters in books or movies (mentioned in detail, as I recall, in the speech at my 21st birthday, with the requisite blush-inducing effect). But I have never felt a personal connection with a celebrity. I suspect I’m unusual in this. I never even had posters of actors, bands or singers up in my room.
There are two issues I want to explore in this post:
- The utter hypocrisy of the press with regard to celebrities; and
- The phenomenon of “conspicuous compassion”.
The hypocrisy of the press
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.”
(Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
First, I was horrified to read some of the schmaltz about Jackson in the press over the last few days. While the man was still breathing, they were happy to hound him and ridicule him. Now he’s dead, suddenly he’s a saint, and his absence will be a great gaping hole in our lives. The hypocrisy of it is breathtaking.
Just like Princess Di, Jackson himself was not entirely blameless, as he had originally propagated some of the rumours which surrounded him. And like Princess Di, I always saw Jackson as a flawed figure, to be pitied rather than admired. In interviews, he comes across as a lonely, damaged and utterly self-obsessed person. The poor man did not have a normal childhood or a chance to develop normal interactions with other people. He was a puer aeternus, desperately trying to recapture his lost boyhood, and more comfortable around children than adults. He even called his ranch “Neverland” in a nod to Peter Pan. And clearly, he loathed his own body and appearance. The problem was - the more he tried to “improve” his appearance, the worse he looked, in my opinion. The plastic surgeons who let him do that to his face were negligent.
But let’s not kid ourselves - the press loved those flaws, and wanted to prise open the cracks further. They slavered over stories of “Whacko Jacko’s” bizarre behaviour, and positively worked themselves into a frenzy when there were allegations that Jackson was a child molester. They loved the thought that Jackson’s nose might be about to collapse, or that he endangered his third child by dangling him over a balcony. The whackier his antics, the better.
So to see the press crying crocodile tears over Jackson’s death is repellent. The cynic in me suspects that if there’s any genuine crying, it’s on account of the fact they won’t be able to run any more stories about Jacko’s antics.
Conspicuous compassion
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
(Matthew 6:5 - 6, KJV)
The other thing which Jackson’s death has brought to the fore is the phenomenon which has been called “conspicuous compassion“. Patrick West wrote a book exploring this phenomenon in 2004, in which he argued:
This book’s thesis is that such displays of empathy [such as buying flowers for a deceased celebrity] do not change the world for the better: they do not help the poor, diseased, dispossessed or bereaved. Our culture of ostentatious caring concerns, rather, projecting one’s ego, and informing others what a deeply caring individual you are. It is about feeling good, not doing good, and illustrates not how altruistic we have become, but how selfish.
I’m not quite as harsh as West is. But I would observe that, paradoxically, it seems people are more comfortable with expressions of grief about the death of a celebrity than they are about the death of a loved one.
I can’t help thinking of a discussion I had with a friend whose mother died about 10 years ago. Apparently I had said something that really reminded my friend of her mother, and she laughed with pleasure. I had never met her mother; she had died before I knew my friend. We then talked about some other funny things her mother had done. “I like talking about Mum,” said my friend, “She was a great person.” She said it had been really difficult once the initial grief had receded, because she had wanted to talk about her mother and her feeling of loss, but no one knew what to say, so they just avoided the topic entirely.
The conspicuous display of grief in the wake of the death of a celebrity is an odd phenomenon. In some ways, I think people feel more comfortable with displaying grief in those circumstances precisely because they didn’t really know the person who died. Perhaps, for some, the death of a celebrity is a proxy allowing them to express grief about other losses, and to breach the subject of their own bereavement with friends. Perhaps there are positive aspects. But I cannot help feeling that the whole thing is bizarre.
When Princess Di died, I went into the City, and had to step over piles of flowers outside St Paul’s Cathedral to meet my friend at Flinders Street. The messages on the flowers were variations on a theme: “I loved you so much Diana, what will we do without you?” Reality check, please. Unless you were a close friend or family member of Princess Diana, I suspect you went on very much as you did before. Of course it’s sad, but it’s not comparable to the distress of losing a person whom you genuinely loved and knew. At the time, there was a real sense that if you didn’t share in this bathetic mourning, you were somehow heartless or nasty.
Conclusion
How do the two points I raise link together? I think we have a sense that we really know celebrities - almost a sense that we own them. And songs are potent stuff indeed: songs which had importance in a particular time in our lives make us feel like we know the person who wrote and performed them.
But let us be under no illusions - this sense that we know celebrities is false. It is manufactured by the media, for their own purposes - primarily, of course to make money. They make money because most of us are fascinated by the stories they print or show.
Of course we can feel sorrow for the death of someone like Jackson, but it’s as well to remember that we didn’t actually know him or own him. At least now hopefully he’s at peace.
Update:
This piece has been cross-posted at Online Opinion on 1/7/2009. Have a look, there’s some interesting comments there.
